All Titus and his friends wanted was a fun spring break on the moon. But they got more than they bargained for. While at a club, a hacker attacks them, and they all end up spending time in the hospital, their feeds gone, nothing to do for days. This is when Titus meets Violet. Violet, the smart girl, trying to defy the feed and it's ability to categorize people's desires. Violet makes Titus think about what life would be like without the feed, without the constant information flow going in your head. Feed is a novel that will make readers think about their life now, and realize that the future that Anderson describes isn't too far away from our own.

Feed is a definitely a quick read, and pulls you in right at the beginning. While the language takes a little getting used to (the slang that they use in the future), Anderson does a good job of getting the reader engaged right away. I also found the concept fascinating, especially since it is a world that we could easily slip into. A world where we are constantly bombarded with information, advertisements, news, etc. Except instead of it being our phones, computers, tablet, etc., the computer is inside our brain. And once it is there, it is almost impossible to get out. Anderson does a good job of making the reader think about the future, and while the novel could be considered a satire on our own society, it still gives you chills to think about the fact that we aren't too far away from this kind of future ourselves.

I think this book would be great to pair with another classic dystopian novel, like 1984 or Brave New World, because it would create an interesting discussion in a classroom about dystopian fiction. I also think, since The Hunger Games was published, and maybe even before that, the market for young adult distopian fiction is big, and any of these books would be great to pair with a dystopian classic. As a teacher, you could even create dystopian reading groups, with each group reading a dystopian novel, and then leading a discussion about these kinds of futures and whether or not they could actually happen. Overall, Feed is a great novel, one that kids will definitely enjoy.

Danny may be a rising gymnastics star, but to the rest of the school, he's just the runt that gets picked on. He, and his other teammates are the constant target of the school's football stars. The two teams engage in a prank war that escalates and escalates, until something horrific happens to one of Danny's teammates. However, Kurt Brodsky, a new recruit for the school's football team, comes to their unlikely rescue, and becomes an unlikely ally. Told from the alternating points of view of Danny and Kurt, Leverage paints a realistic and difficult to digest picture of high school sports, one that isn't often talked about.

Usually, I don't read sports novels, and this one took a while for me to get into. To me, it was kind of slow moving at the beginning, and I honestly wasn't really sure where the novel as a whole was headed. However, once I got to the middle of the novel, I started getting into it, because I had learned more about the characters and cared more about them. However, I did get kind of annoyed the way the author kept hinting at Kurt's horrible background, and wouldn't just come out and say it. I think that aspect of the novel could have been handled a little better. As a whole, though, it was a generally fast paced read, once it picked up. Once things start to happen, it just escalates and escalates until the end of the novel, and keeps you on the edge of your seat. If you're a fan of sports novels, Leverage is definitely worth a look.

School wise, I don't think that this is one that you could embed into the curriculum. There are too many points in the novel that could be considered controversial, and it definitely would only work for an upper high school audience. This would be a novel that you could keep on the bookshelf in case you had a student that was interested in sports novels, being wary that it does contain some controversial scenes. This book is definitely worth keeping around.

Ed Kennedy is a cab driver who doesn't see his life changing any time soon. No one really expects much of him, not even his own mother. His live isn't a very exciting one, until one day he stops a bank robbery. Then, the cards start coming. Each card, an ace, include a message that Ed is supposed to deliver. Some of them good, some of them bad, but the messages send Ed on a journey that will change him forever. He makes his way through messages, until there is only one thing left to figure out. Who is the one sending the messages?

This book is also one that I have been wanting to read for a while, especially after reading The Book Thief a few years ago. Markus Zusak is a beautiful writer, and he has a way of creating characters that makes them seem completely real. The characters are probably what I enjoyed most about the book, just because they are all so unique and all have their own stories. I could see them existing in real life. I must say, I was a little surprised that this book was classified as a young adult novel, just because of the age of the characters in the book. Usually, in young adult literature, the characters are around middle or high school age, and this book, I feel, would be more appropriate for a college-aged audience. That being said, this book is still beautifully written, and there wasn't anything that I found fault with when I was reading. I flew through it, just because I was so engrossed in Ed's story, and I loved the way that it all came together in the end. Definitely a book that I would recommend to others.

As for a classroom setting, I don't think that this book would be appropriate to teach as a whole class book. I think it would work as one to have on the bookshelf in upper high school classrooms, but because it deals with alcoholism, drugs, abuse, sex, and other difficult topics, I don't see where it could fit in a classroom, except as a book that students could pick up to read on their own. It might be good to have, though, especially if there is a student that is interested in The Book Thief.