Ideas to Inspire

Readers young and old like to read certain authors. My mother-in-law insists on reading every Danielle Steele book even though the stories all start looking alike to me. If reluctant readers are given a book that they like, they’ll tend to trust that author to tell a great story. Here’s a few (if you have others, be sure to comment):

Cap lives in a commune that’s been existence from the 1960s, but now holds just 2 members, Cap and his grandma Rain. When Rain is hospitalized, Cap is thrust into a middle school and pretty much fed to the sharks. As in other Korman books, the hero triumphs in his own hilarious way.

Gary Paulsen, he of Hatchet fame, also has a great sense of humor. In this story, the narrator’s grandma gives him an old riding mower for his 12th birthday and he becomes an entrepreneur immediately. Soon lawn boy has a partner, 15 employees, a lot of money invested in the market, and a prizefighter.

Beige by Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof, Queen of Cool) is about Katy who needs to leave Montreal when her mom goes on an archeological dig and spend two weeks with her aging punk rocker dad (Rat) in L.A. She’s a neat freak, and even his soap is dirty.

Revelations by Melissa de la Cruz is the third book in the Blue Bloods series. It’s got overpriviledged teens at an exclusive private school in New York (sounds like Gossip Girl), but these powerful teens are all vampires.

What Happened to Cass McBride by Gail Giles (Shattering Glass, Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, Playing in Traffic). I’ve posted about this book before and it’s not that recent, but I have got a lot of reluctant readers hooked on this story, so it works. Oh, so what happened to Cass? She’s buried alive.

Chris Crutcher was one of our authors for our Big Island reading festival, and as a reader he was just laugh out loud hilarious, but this one shows his counselor side. 18 year old Ben Wolf has one year to live, and he won’t let his doctor tell his parents and he is refusing any medical interference. He’s going to live his last year on his terms. A real tear jerker.

The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer. I must say I resisted reading these book (even though they were in my classroom library) until the last one came out. They are not small books. Like the Harry Potter series, they seemed to get longer, but I must admit I got hooked and read a a book a day. Girls go crazy for these books, and I’ve even seen some boys carrying them around, although one of the male English teachers at the high school said Twilight was the only book he almost stopped reading. I told him there was more testosterone in the other ones, but he was not having any of it.

Happy reading – and let me know what authors you trust!