The Heir

Cass, Kiera. The Heir. 2015. 342p. ISBN 978-0062349859. Available at FIC CAS on the library shelves.

When America Singer competed in The Selection and managed to conquer Prince Maxon’s heart, she did not realize she would change history. With the death of Maxon’s parents, the king and queen of Illéa in The One, she ascended the throne and became Maxon’s queen

Twenty years later, the country has changed. The caste numbers have been eliminated, and massive programs have taken place to allow people freedom of choice to live their lives how ever they wanted. The king and queen have had four children, including oldest twins Eadlyn and Aaron. As the firstborn (7 minutes before her brother), Eadlyn will inherit the throne.

At eighteen, Eadlyn is not in any hurry to unite her life with a husband. Unrest in the country lead her parents to suggest to her that it would be a good show of unity if she were to participate in her own selection. After much arguing she gets Maxon to agree that she doesn’t have to marry any of the candidates.

With the heavy responsibility of the crown soon to be hers, Princess Eadlyn must play the part and pretend to be interested in the three dozen boys who have been selected. Unlike her parents’ love that grew out of meeting during their selection, Eadlyn expects nothing, and in fact would rather not share even a sliver of herself. But as the selection proceeds and the stakes mount, Eadlyn finds that even when your mind is dead set against falling in love, her heart may not agree...

A companion book, Happily Ever After, features several novellas about beloved characters from the series.

Reached

Condie, Allie. Reached. Book 3 of the Matched series. 2012. 512p. ISBN 9780525423669. Available at FIC CON on the library shelves.

When they abandoned the Society, Cassia, Indie, and Ky had different hopes. Cassia was looking for a way out and to reach the Rising, the rebel outfit planning to bring down the Society. Ky just wanted to be with Cassia and hoped to make a life for themselves outside of the Society. Reaching a rebel camp at the end of Crossed, they find themselves enrolled in the Rising.

Dispatched to Central, Cassia is told to continue working as a sorter but to look for variances in the patterns. The Rising is about to strike, and those variances will be the signal that it has begun. Ky and Indie are pilots, and are flying ships around the country. Meanwhile, Xander continues his work as an official, but he too is looking for the telltale signs that the Rising has begun.

When a plague is unleashed on the Society and more and more citizens fall victims to the debilitating disease, the Society can no longer hide that it is falling apart. Cassia reports the rise of the plague, while pilots begin to fly in the cure to the plague, as both were engineered by the Rising.

Unfortunately, the plague mutates, and suddenly the Rising itself is in trouble, unable to provide enough medicine for everyone. As people begin to die, people grumble that the Society would have taken better care of their citizens. Cassia, Ky, Indie, and Xander find themselves in the middle of a pandemic that threaten to completely eliminate human life. Can they work together to discover a cure before it is too late? Can the Rising survive the very plague it unleashed to topple the Society?

Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer

McCartney, Scott. Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer. 1999. 262p. ISBN 9780802713483. Available at 004.1 MCC on the library shelves.

The dawn of the Information Age can be rightly placed during the Second World War when two individuals, John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, one a physics professor, the other an electrical engineer, got together and proposed a novel way to perform high speed calculations by counting binary signals from electrically powered vacuum tubes. This general purpose computer was the first digital device and exponentially increased the number of calculations that could be processed in any given time frame.

Initially interested in the weather, Mauchly pursued a digital computing device to help him crunch reams of weather data. However, as there were no markets for such a machine, he and Eckert, whom he had met at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering, approached the Army, which was always trying to calculate artillery firing and trajectories tables due to the high demands from the military conflict and offered their revolutionary design. Prior to ENIAC, no calculation were done purely electrically.

Over the course of three years, their small team of engineers developed rat-proofed wiring, soldered over 5 million links, used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, and built a giant computer weighing over 30 tons. The first device capable of executing if / then calculations, ENIAC came too late for the Second World War, but heralded in the atomic age by providing the calculations for the hydrogen bomb.

The story of ENIAC’s development is well coupled with the personal tragedies of both Mauchly and Eckert, who became computer pioneers, but who ultimately failed to capitalize on their inventions, and who spent the better part of the following thirty years defending themselves against claims by others that they had merely stolen their designs.

McCartney’s book provides a fascinating look into the origins of computers and the cut-throat world of technological advances.

The School Library Manager

Woolls, Blanche, Ann C. Weeks and Sharon Coatney. The School Library Manager. 5th Ed. 2014. 278p. ISBN 978-1-61069-133-8. Available at PROF 025.1 WOO on the library shelves.

The School Library Manager covers the running of a busy and successful school library from the hiring process through the evaluation of the program. An excellent book, it presents all of the facets that affect the school library in today’s global environment.

First, the authors explore the history of school libraries, including how they came about to be, how they evolved, and how they function in today’s world. Of particular interest is the discussion on collaboration between school librarians and teachers, where the emphasis is on limiting the number of activities to ensure that they are successful, and expanding services slowly but steadily to ensure that the librarian has the opportunity to collaborate with every teacher.

Programs offered by school libraries are then explored, including inquiry learning and information literacy, and how these activities are incorporated in the structures of the Common Core. The library is in a unique position to support Common Core goals by pairing informational texts with units of studies, as well as continuing to properly support pleasure reading by offering captivating novels for students and staff. The library is also a place to compile and provide professional development books for staff, and the librarian is uniquely placed to distribute professional learning opportunities for teachers.

Other chapters explore the process of becoming a school librarian, managing personnel and the library budget, and advocating, evaluating and assessing the programs offered by the school library. Finally, the book describes several ways for school librarians to pursue effective leadership opportunities and contribute to professional associations.

This book is a must have for every school librarian!

Monster

Myes, Walter Dean. Monster. 2004. 281p. ISBN 9780064407311. Available at FIC MYE on the library shelves.

Steve Harmon hails from the streets of Harlem, but he currently resides in a juvenile detention facility, where he awaits his trial for murder. Life can be a slippery slope, and each bad decision Steve made took him led him to be a lookout for a robbery gone wrong.

Now that he’s facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, Steve must participate in his defense. To pass the time and to stop himself from going insane with the activities both in the courtroom and in prison, Steve think of his situation as a movie, and narrates it as such.

With the prosecutor calling him a monster, Steve is in the fight of his life. Will his past mistakes cost him everything?

I’ll Give You the Sun

Nelson, Jandy. I’ll Give You the Sun. 2014. 371p. ISBN 0803734964. Available at FIC NEL on the library shelves. This book has been nominated for a Flume Award in 2015.

The twins Jude and Noah have always been very close, close enough to refer to themselves as NoahandJude. Noah falls in love with Ben, the athlete next door who is only spending the summer here. Jude is a daredevil, and her entry into her teenage years have caused a chasm between herself and her mother, who is an art critic and a biographer, and who clearly loves Noah more.

Both teens are hoping to enter a special high school for artists. The death of their mother makes them question everything they knew, and both cope with this tragedy in different ways. Noah stops making art, and tries to live a more sedentary life while hiding his homosexuality. Jude, meanwhile, goes from being a tease to hiding herself underneath oversized sweatshirts, while actively believing in ghosts.

Told from both Noah and Jude’s perspective, I’ll Give You the Sun also adds a few years to the narration. Noah relates events and thoughts from his isolated and artistic life at thirteen, whereas Jude describes her life three years later. And yet, somehow the two of them speak to each other as if it was happening at the same time. Having been separated by thoughts and by action three years ago, can the two twins find a way to make peace with each other and begin the healing process they haven’t had following their mother’s death?

Glow

Ryan, Amy Kathleen. Glow. Book 1 of the Sky Chasers series. 2011. 307p. ISBN 0312590563. Available at FIC RYA on the library shelves.

With a complete social and environmental collapse on Earth decades ago, a plan was hatched to build giant spaceships and send them to a new planet where humans could colonize and rebuilt. The Empyrean was the second ship to be launched, a year after the New Horizon. Now decades later, life on the Empyrean is idyllic. The inhabitants of the large colony spaceship grow their own food, tend their animals, and prepare for the distant New Earth, where they will erect a new society. The ship is filled with kids and laughters. But underneath it all is a dark undercurrent.

Kieran Alden was the first child born on the ship, and is currently training to succeed the Captain. He is deeply in love with Waverley, the oldest girl on the ship, and together they share a comfortable history. Waverley, for her part, is sometimes also attracted to brooding Seth.

The Empyrean has been in a gaseous nebula for the last year and a half when they receive strange communications from the New Horizon. The first colonial ship should be so far ahead, but now the Empyrean has caught up with it, and suddenly everything changes. The New Horizon’s crew has been unable to have children, thus dooming its colonizing mission. They planned and executed a perfect mission, kidnapping Waverley and all of the girls from the Empyrean for their own nefarious purposes. The assault causes the death of most of the adults on board the Empyrean, and the leaking reactor kills the rest.

Left in charge of the Empyrean, Kieran must not only contend with the adults’ disappearance, but with an open rebellion among the ranks of the boys left on the ship. Led by Seth, they are clamoring for a change of leadership.

With the two lovers separated by increasing distance, can they survive enemies both from without and from within?