5 TAYSHAS or Lonestar List 2010

Wake by Lisa McMann


Janie has a strange talent that she has been hiding for several years, but since she has been in high school it has become a much bigger issue. When other people dream near her, she is taken into their dreams without her permission and can see what they dream. Her life is odd enough with no father and an alcoholic low-life for a mother. Janie keeps herself productive with good grades and a job at a nursing home where she has befriended an elderly woman. Her recent discovery that she has a crush on a mysterious boy at school provides even more trouble for her and her odd talent. Her relationship seems star-crossed because just as things seem to be right with him, she gets wind that he is a dangerous person who is engaging in the selling of drugs at her school. Nothing seems like it can go right for Janie, but there are people around her who seem to keep her going and help her enough to make things right in her life.

Bullrider by Suzanne Morgan Williams

Bullriding is a family legacy in the O’Mara clan. Cam, on the other hand, prefers to skateboard. His family is okay with this, but when Cam’s older brother and crackerjack rider, Ben, enlists in the military and is shipped to Iraq things change. The war changes this small town ranching family’s life when it sends Ben home with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder after and IUD exploded near him. Cam has many issues in trying to deal with his new brother who cannot take care of himself and a family that now cannot afford to keep going because of the mounting expenses since Mom had to quit her job to spend her time caring for Ben at the VA hospital. Bullriding becomes a very viable idea when Cam realizes that he can win enough money to bail the family out of their financial hole if he can win a very lucrative pot by riding a famous unrideable bull.

WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead

Set in New York City in 1979, Miranda’s sixth grade life becomes very complex when she and her boy pal Sal part ways for reasons she cannot comprehend. After he is attacked for no reason outside of their apartment building Sal refuses to speak to her; she must find new friends, and this proves to be a very interesting process as the intersects of class and lifestyles teach her about kids in very different situations than hers. Her mother is very consumed with her job and her boyfriend, and has no clue that strange notes keep appearing to Miranda that make everything around her mysterious- but who is sending these notes? She doesn’t know. A Wrinkle in Time and the possibilities of time travel become a very real concept for these curious kids.

BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY by Carole Weatherford

This picture book is more than just pictures. Although the artwork is amazingly like old photos that show the times so well, it is the text that is put in poem form that elicits such feeling from the reader. The poems are titled with Holiday’s song titles and tell of her story from birth until she released her big hit at the age of twenty-five. Holiday’s life was far more tragic than it seems a picture book could tell, but this book is made for older readers to read of the hardship, rejection, and discrimination that Holiday lived through to become one of the most amazing women singers of her day. The book does a beautiful job of telling of the hardships of her life and staying true to what Holiday experienced while ending it before her life became a tragic one while she was still high on success of her music.

IF I STAY by Gayle Forman

Mia is different than her family. Child of used to be punk musician and groupie whose blonde headed style is matched by none, she is a dark-haired cellist whose conservative look just doesn’t seem to match her parents and brother. One morning the entire family’s lives take a devastating halt as they plan to go on a family outing. Mia’s boyfriend Adam, lead singer of a hip punk band, and many other family members are taken along in this tragic ride that spans only twenty-four hours but includes memories and a storyline that lasts a lifetime. Questions about being different than her family and the oddity of her genuinely cool boyfriend choosing this classical music listening outcast as a girlfriend swirl through Mia’s mind as she contemplates whether or not staying on Earth is her best choice. Will she stay? Should she stay? Those are the questions the reader asks throughout.