Cinder and Ella 

   by Melissa Lemon

"If you drink water and breathe air, then you have heard the story of Cinderella. And, if you drink water and breathe air, you have heard it....wrong." 

  This mixed up fairy tale of adventure and love by Melissa Lemon, is about the family that lives in the cottage of Willow Top. Katrina, Beatrice, Cinder, Ella, their mother (Adela) and their father (Weston). One day, the evil Prince comes to visit and speaks words of deception to Weston, who shortly after goes crazy and abandons his family. This causes great sorrow to the rest of the family and changes them.
   Adela also goes insane and spends her day in the corner of the cottage spinning thread, never stopping for anything. Katrina becomes a stuck up brat obsessed with her appearance. Beatrice becomes spoiled rotten by Cinder, and can no longer function on her own. Cinder, is the only kind one left of the family, trying to hold everyone together. And Ella is all but forgotten. All the others ignore her, and forget she's even alive, except Cinder. The two become branded as one, Cinderella.
   When Cinder accepts a job in the castle, Ella is greatly saddened and runs away. She finally finds happiness when a knight, with order from the Prince, takes her away from it all.

"Sometimes, things come to you whether you go looking for them or not – danger, disaster… love.”  I'll let you figure out who she falls in love with (;

  I really enjoyed this book. Melissa Lemon is an amazing author. She explains everything so well, I felt like I was really there, experiencing everything just as Ella did. This book has just the right touch of adventure, danger, evil, and love. I would recommend this book to anyone (boy or girl) that likes fairy tales mixed in medieval times.

City of Bones

        “The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”
― Cassandra Clare 

        When Clary witnesses a murder by a group of teenagers at a club she is surprised that Simon and the club's security guard cannot see the killer, a boy called Jace. Jace claims that the boy he killed was a demon. The next day, Jace tells Clary that he wants her to meet his tutor Hodge Starkweather. Suddenly Clary gets a distressing phone call from her mother that freaks her out. She decides to go home only to discover her mother missing, their apartments destroyed, and a monstrous creature, a Ravenor demon, waiting. Clary uses a sensor that Jace had given her to defeat the creature by shoving the sensor down its throat, but is injured in the process. Jace finds her and takes her to his home called "The Institute", an old Gothic cathedral in New York that humans, or mundanes can't see, because it is concealed by magic. Here, Clary is neutered back to health and meets Jace's adoptive-siblings, Alec and Isabelle Lightwood. The four of them go through a numerous number of adventures throughout the book that lead to a massive unexpected event at the end.

        Cassandra Clare's City of Bones is definitely worth reading, and also one that I would read again. It took a little time to get into it but towards the end the characters, especially Alec and Isabelle Light wood, and the storyline was never dull, unexpected things were always happening, and the feelings between the characters changed. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves mysteries, non-fiction, and the Twilight series. You won't be disappointed.

Tucket's Home

Gary Paulsens tuckets home is a historical fiction and excitment filled book mixed together to make a really good book.

Tucket's home is the last book of the Tucket adventure's and usually in these type of books you have to read the whole series to know what is going on in the book but not this series. This series they tell you what is going on even though that you are reading the last book. In this book Francis tucket is on a quest to find his family that he lost in the first book by getting caught on the way to the west. He has two other people to help him on his journey they are Lottie and Billy which are the same age as he is which is pretty young for living out in the wilderness. In the book they find a gang of really disgusting people that chop up the bodies of people that they kill and take there guns and stuff. They run for there life and ride there horses until they can't run any more and stop for a day and rest they find there old friend Jason Grimes and says that he is dying and that he will wait and kill the gang of disgusting people. He finds a spot that he will fight and while francis, lottie, and billy are watching this in the forest near by. The gang comes and Jason grimes kills them all but they look down and see a.....

I really liked the book it was a little slow at the beginning but it got really exciting near the end of the book. If you like a little bit of cowboy and the west, mystery, and historical fiction then you will love this book.

Rangers Apprentice Five; The Sorcerer of the North

"...Halt has been known to burn water when he boils it," said will the young apprentice to the well known Ranger, Halt.


          Rangers Apprentice is a series of books based on a boy named Will.  Will is raised as an orphan in a kingdom called Araluen in Redmont Fief.  As a fifteen year old boy he hopes to be apprenticed to the battle master and one day be a soldier along side the king, but is disappointed when he finds he is to be the apprentice to a Ranger.  Rangers are feared to be conjurers of dark magic.  Will is afraid to find wether their is truth behind the rumors or not. Through out the series Will grows to trust his trades master Halt and goes through many trials.  He grows understand that the dark arts are simply hoaxes and strongly believes that there is no such thing as real magic.   By book five will is nineteen and is assigned to take care of his own fief.  When a string of strange things start to happen Will is forced to put his own beliefs aside and investigate the seemingly mystical things going on in a nearby forest.

          I really enjoyed reading "The Sorcerer of the North" because of two things.  The first is that the author (John Flannagan) is an amazing writer!  The way he writes is simply exquisite.  He manages to make the story so funny, but not with straight out comedy.  Have you ever met one of those people that is totally hilarious, but they don't even know it?  they do it all with a straight face. That is what i liked about his comedy it came to all of his characters so naturally.  LIke with the quote I gave above, the joke just comes to Will so easily and as a reader you laugh because you know its true from past books.  Which leads me to the second thing I like about this book.  The character development was amazing. Through out the series you get to understand the characters so well and it makes you feel like you know everything about them ( not in a stalker way:) ) By the time I reached the fifth book I was so surprised as i looked back at how the characters had changed because it was so subtle I barely even noticed!


       I would definitely recommend this book for teens our age.  This book is action adventure so If you like the sort of suspenseful endings and fast paced middles then you would love it!  There isn't really any romance or anything so if you are a sucker for love stories it probably wouldn't be your favorite...:).