Realistic Fiction

Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15745753-eleanor-park

I really enjoyed how this book went from Eleanor's perspective back to Park's perspective.  This book really showed the difference between student's lives and how different they can be.  I liked how this book really portrayed that many times we don't understand why someone does or say something until we understand where they come from.  My favorite from the book was that Park loved that Eleanor smelled like vanilla and Eleanor worried about it but it was the cheapest "perfume" they had.

I would use this book when talking to students about someone is perceived on the outside compared to what is truly going on in their lives.  This would be an excellent book to start a discussion on how different our lives are from others.

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. Needing to make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41014903-warcross

WOW!  I loved everything about this book.  I didn't want to put it down and I was constantly telling others about it.  This is an amazing book to get students excited about reading novels.  This book provided an amazing story-line to follow with great conversation starters for young adults.  I loved the action within the book and I could just picture everything Marie Lu described.  This would be an excellent book to promote to encourage readers and help them realize that not all novels are about history or about hardships in life.

I really enjoyed this book because I feel like Sharon Draper does a great job explaining life's difficult situations but in a way that is respectful but written with heart. I could see using this book as a mentor text to help students with their writing. Writing from a characters point of view can be hard and providing the depth of a situation presented. This book would be great to gather excerpts from the book to show how Sharon Draper uses different types of language to get her point across. Excerpts from her book would also make a great bulletin board of figurative language.

2017

Printz Award

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend, Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit, and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart. 
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28243032-we-are-okay

I found the way that LaCour wrote this book from all three friends point of view from where it picked up for them was interesting. About the time the story started to become stagnant, the book would change to a different character's point of view. I liked that because this book would be a great mentor text for students to learn about their own writing style. It would be a great read for high school students to write like LaCour with their own plot line.