From the website: Thirteen-year-old Quest (Q for short) used to live with his mother, a singer, on a sailboat in Sausalito, California. Fifteen-year-old Angela lived with her father, a songwriter, in a loft in San Francisco. Now their parent are married and Q and Angela are on a luxury motor coach traveling around the country on tour with their parents' new band called Match. Their schoolwork for the year is a Web diary of their travels. Perfect… Q can practice his magic tricks and Angela can read her spy novels. What could go wrong?
Suck it up... by Brian Meehl, yes another Texas Lone Star. This one is about vampires...thanks, have enough of them now!
From the website: The origin of Suck It Up? Teeth-grinding frustration.3 Willows: the sisterhood grows by Ann Brashares. Okay, never read any of the "Sisterhood" books, but came across this one and downloaded it to my MP3 player and listened to it every day. It's about 3 girls and how their lives during one summer suddenly changes (divorce, camp, job, love). I have to admit I did get kind of hooked on this one and if you listen to it their is an interview with the author at the end :-) (and this was not a Lone Star list book...)!
When I was writing lots of kids TV for PBS back in the 90s I was often told by politically correct TV producers that I couldn't put such and such in a show because it might offend so-and-so. I couldn't put angels on a wedding cake because it was too Christian and might offend non-Christians. I couldn't write about birthday parties because Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in celebrating birthdays because it's a celebration of self.
At some point, I became brainwashed by all this political correctness and had a eureka moment. The one minority that no one seemed to care about was our bloodsucking brothers and sisters: vampires. I mean, c'mon, they have special needs too. They're subjected to unfair stereotyping. They even suffer from a terrible hate-crime: staking.
So I found my cause. I was determined to write a story that would let everyone know that vampires are like everyone else. They just have a slight drinking problem--correction--they're diet-challenged.
The story started as a screenplay for a movie (with the likes of Jim Carry playing Morning McCobb). It was called "Don't Call Us Vampires – We're Undead Americans!" It even won a screenplay competition, taking 1st place in The New England Screenwriting Conference of 1998. The Conference gave me a wonderful staged reading of it. But the screenplay never sold and became a film.
After I finished Out of Patience, I decided to resurrect the screenplay as a YA novel. And that's how Suck It Up rose from the grave of a writer's trunk.
From Ann's website:
The new book from Ann Brashares, the bestselling author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Seeds
Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead.
Roots
Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a bus girl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. . .
Leaves
Ama is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products.
It is a new summer. And a new sisterhood. Come grow with them.
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