Ethan - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Ethan Wate, a high school sophomore, plans to escape his small Southern town as soon as he can. Life has been difficult since his mother died; his father, a writer, has withdrawn into his study. Then Lena Duchannes arrives, and this strange new girl is the very one who has been occupying his dreams. She and her kin are Casters, beings who have supernatural powers. Getting to know her exposes Ethan to time travel, mortal danger, and love. The teens can hardly bear to be apart, but Lena's 16th birthday, when she will be Claimed for dark or light, is only 6 months away. To save her, they fight supernatural powers and the prejudice of closed-minded people. Yet, good and evil are not clearly delineated, nor are they necessarily at odds. In the Gothic tradition of Anne Rice, the authors evoke a dark, supernatural world in a seemingly simple town obsessed with Civil War reenactments and deeply loyal to its Confederate past. Slide2

Jaime Carpenter is a sulky, antisocial teen. Having moved several times in the past two years, he is the perpetual new kid and constant target of bullies. But what does he expect after his father is gunned down by the authorities for aiding terrorists? Jaime is attacked and his mother is kidnapped by a being of unbelievable power. The teen is only spared his mother's fate when Frankenstein's monster appears on the scene wielding strange weapons. It whisks Jaime away to a hidden government installation occupied by Department Nineteen, or Blacklight, the most secret of secret agencies. He soon discovers that vampires, like Frankenstein's monster, are real and are an actual threat to Britain and the rest of the world. He is told that Stoker's Dracula and Shelley's Frankenstein are accurate recordings of historical events. He also learns that his father was a slayer of vampires and other dangerous creatures. The director of

Blacklight

reluctantly agrees to let Jaime and Frankenstein search for Mrs. Carpenter with the help of a captured teen vampire to whom Jaime is unnervingly attracted

. Fans

of Darren Shan and Marcus Sedgwick will eat this up.Slide3

In this edgy debut (definitely not for the fainthearted), first in a trilogy, promising author Roth tells the riveting and complex story of a teenage girl forced to choose, at age 16, between her routinized, selfless family and the adventurous, unrestrained future she longs for. Beatrice "Tris" Prior lives in crumbling dystopian Chicago, where citizens are divided into five factions: Candor, Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity, and Erudite - depending on their beliefs, passions, and loyalties. When Tris forsakes her Abnegation family to become one of the wild, fearless Dauntless, she must confront her deepest fears, learn to trust her fellow initiates, and guard the ominous secret that she is actually a Divergent, with the strengths of multiple factions, and is therefore a target of dangerously controlling leaders. Roth's descriptions of Tris's initiation process are as spellbinding as they are violent, while the tremulous romance between

Tris and her protective and demanding instructor, Four, unfurls with heart-stopping tenderness. For those who loved The Hunger Games and are willing to brave the sometimes sadistic tests of strength and courage

Tris

must endure, the reward is a memorable, unpredictable journey from which it is nearly impossible to turn away.Slide4

At 16, Hazel Grace Lancaster, a three-year stage IV-cancer survivor, is clinically depressed. To help her deal with this, her doctor sends her to a weekly support group where she meets Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor, and the two fall in love. Both kids are preternaturally intelligent, and Hazel is fascinated with a novel about cancer called An Imperial Affliction. Most particularly, she longs to know what happened to its characters after an ambiguous ending. To find out, the enterprising Augustus makes it possible for them to travel to Amsterdam, where Imperial's author, an expatriate American, lives. What happens when they meet him must be left to readers to discover. Suffice it to say, it is significant. Beautifully conceived and executed, this story artfully examines the largest possible considerations life, love, and death with sensitivity, intelligence, honesty, and integritySlide5

In foster care for most of her childhood, Emma aches to belong to a family. She gets that chance when her foster brother frames her for theft and discredits her with a disturbing snuff film on the Internet that reveals a potential sibling. As a result, she is forced to leave her foster home. Emma immediately sets out to meet the mysterious star of the film only to be plunged into assuming the role of her popular and privileged dead twin sister, Sutton Mercer. Readers might initially balk at the easy acceptance of Emma playing the role of her twin. However, Sutton's friends are just shallow enough to barely notice the difference between mean-girl Sutton and introspective Emma. In fact, Sutton's friends appear to be her enemies as Emma works to uncover the truth about the girl's death. As she searches for answers, she learns about the Lying Game, a group of teens, including Sutton and her friends, whose object is to humiliate and frighten the students and parents in their community. The suspense reaches a dangerous frenzy as Emma gets closer to finding the identity of her sister's killer. The first in a projected series, this is a thrilling mystery with just the right doses of romance and danger.Slide6

Popular author Picoult tackles the controversial topic of gay rights in her latest powerful tale. When music therapist Zoe Baxter’s latest pregnancy ends in a stillbirth, her husband Max decides he can’t handle any more heartbreak and leaves her. As she picks up the pieces of her life, Zoe is surprised to find herself falling for a school counselor who happens to be a woman. While Zoe is finding happiness with Vanessa, Max falls off the wagon and is helped by a pastor from his brother’s evangelical church. Vanessa and Zoe wed in Massachusetts, and Vanessa offers to carry one of the fertilized embryos Zoe and Max stored. Excited by the prospect of being a mother, Zoe goes to Max to get him to release the embryos to her and is shocked when he instead sues her for custody of them, backed by his church. Told from the perspectives of all three major characters, Picoult’s gripping novel explores all sides of the hot-button issue and offers a CD of folk songs that reflect Zoe’s feelings throughout the novelSlide7

In the late summer of a long-ago year, Alton Turner Blackwood brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy. Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, re-creating in detail Blackwood's crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family--his wife and three children--will be targets, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer. As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return.Slide8

While 16-year-old Gemma is en route to Vietnam from England with her parents, she is drugged and kidnapped from the Bangkok airport. She regains full consciousness in a rustic house deep in the Australian Outback with a 25-year-old man who is going to "keep her forever." Ty never sexually abuses her, but she is truly a captive. Little by little, Ty wears down her defenses as Gemma realizes that escape is impossible. Soon she discovers the stark power and vibrancy of the wilderness and becomes absorbed in it. She also learns that Ty has been stalking her for years, devising a crafty plan to steal her away to make her love him-which she ultimately believes she does. Ty's capture, taming, and release of a female camel effectively parallels Gemma's ordeal. Her unique first-person narrative is written to Ty after her release. Both characters are as vivid as the desert setting in which they are immersed. Despite the fact that Ty is a kidnapper, the revelations about his difficult youth and his usually caring behavior allow readers, like Gemma, to eventually care about him. Disturbing, heartbreaking, and beautiful all at once,Slide9

This prequel to Graceling (2008) introduces Fire, a monster-woman with the fundamental elements of her kind: a breathtaking beauty that inspires nearly irresistible sexual attraction and the dual powers of reading thoughts and bending another's will to her purposes. Though her father used his monster powers to control the kingdom for his own evil purposes, Fire struggles to use hers only for good. Her growing regard for the king, his brothers, and his sister leads to some uncomfortable dilemmas and decisions as well as, eventually, the revelation of old secrets. Drawn in to tip the delicate balance of forces struggling over the realm, she begins to trust herself to act on behalf of the royal family, though in doing so she violates a long-held principle that has held her considerable powers in check.Slide10

On a Sunday in May 2008, an F-5 tornado struck the town of Parkersburg, Iowa, killing eight people and destroying 250 homes and businesses within 34 seconds. The next day, Parkersburg's beloved football coach, Ed Thomas, made a stunning prediction: 'God willing, we will play our first home game here on this field this season.' One hundred days later, the home team scored a victory on the field they dubbed 'The Sacred Acre,' serving as a galvanizing point for the town to band together and rebuild.But just as Parkersburg was recovering, another devastating tragedy struck. While working with a group of football and volleyball players early one morning, one of Ed's former students walked in and gunned him down point blank. Ed Thomas was 58.The murder of this hometown hero spread across national news headlines. Ed's community and family reeled from shock. Yet the story doesn't end here.What happened next proves that even a double tragedy is no match for faith, love ... and the power of forgiveness.Slide11

The true story of a high school senior whose faked pregnancy rocked her community and made international headlines. It started as a school project…but turned into so much more. Growing up, Gaby Rodriguez was often told she would end up a teen mom. After all, her mother and her older sisters had gotten pregnant as teenagers; from an outsider's perspective, it was practically a family tradition. Gaby had ambitions that didn't include teen motherhood. But she wondered: how would she be treated if she "lived down" to others ' expectations? Would everyone ignore the years she put into being a good student and see her as just another pregnant teen statistic with no future? These questions sparked Gaby's school project: faking her own pregnancy as a high school senior to see how her family, friends, and community would react. What she learned changed her life forever, and made international headlines in the process. In The Pregnancy Project , Gaby details how she was able to fake her own pregnancy--hiding the truth from even her siblings and boyfriend's parents--and reveals all that she learned from the experience. But more than that, Gaby's story is about fighting stereotypes, and how one girl found the strength to come out from the shadow of low expectations to forge a bright future for herself.Slide12

When Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy, his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren't expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed-a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy's trip to heaven and back. Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his body during the surgery-and authenticated that claim by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on. He talked of visiting heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was born. He also astonished his parents with descriptions and obscure details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not yet learned to read. With disarming innocence and the plainspoken boldness of a child, Colton tells of meeting long-departed family members. He describes Jesus, the angels, how "really, really big" God is, and how much God loves us. Retold by his father, but using Colton's uniquely simple words, Heaven Is for Real offers a glimpse of the world that awaits us, where as Colton says, "Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses." Heaven Is for Real will forever change the way you think of eternity, offering the chance to see, and believe, like a child.