Why We Broke Up

Recommended grades 7-12.  Why We Broke Up is the story of a boy and of a girl.  Min and Ed were a match made in... Shakespeare.  He is a jock and she is "arty."    Unlike Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, Min and Ed escape the relationship with their lives, if not their pride, and with a box full of artifacts.  In order to get past the heartbreak, Min undertakes the project of returning the artifacts to Ed, along with a 200+ page letter tracing the roots of their breakup.  Author Daniel Handler (the man behind Lemony Snicket and his Series of Unfortunate Events) brings intelligence and tragedy in the voice of Min.  Female readers in particular will be able to empathize with the thrill of her first love and the devastation of the fall out.  Artist Maria Kalman contributes color paintings of each item as it appears in the letter.  The paintings bring the stories into life and out of abstraction.  The marriage of the text and the images forms a sentimental, heart-wrenching tale that almost all readers, tween, teen, and adult can relate to.  Highly recommended, ****

The Phantom Tollbooth

Recommended Grades 5-8.  The Phantom Tollbooth (Yearling, 1969), is an established classic, for good reason!  After fifty years, it remains as fresh, brilliant and relevant as ever.  Author Norton Juster takes us on a brilliant quest through a magical world with our hero Milo.  Milo starts as a boy quite jaded to the world around him.  He doesn't care for school, he doesn't care for play, he doesn't much care for anything.  One day he comes home from another humdrum day at school to find a magic Tollbooth beckoning him to Dictionopolis, a faraway land where thoughts and ideas literally come to life.  He must save the Princesses Rhyme and Reason to bring balance to the kingdom!  Milo himself is not the true hero, it is the embodiment of his curiosity and intelligence that overcome the greatest odds, freeing him to explore the world around him with passion and enthusiasm.  With humorous and descriptive pen-drawn illustrations by Jules Feiffer, Milo's quest becomes our own.  The reader gains a new appreciation for the worlds of thoughts, words, ideas, and equations that we have built around us.  This book is filled with countless jokes and plays-on-words, so it could pose a challenge for some but these young readers, with aid, can cherish the book all the more for overcoming the challenges, just as Milo did!  Highly recommended, *****