"A triumphant story of bravery and defiance that will shock and inspire. (photos, author's note, sources notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 14 & up)"
The epic tale of the siege of Leningrad and its native son, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose seventh symphony comforted, consoled, and rallied a population subjected to years of unspeakable suffering.
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"Better-read fans will discern strains from Swift, Tolkien, Burroughs and others (not to mention Grey's Anatomy and Fantastic Voyage) within this climactic orchestral cacophony of ickiness and farce. (Burlesque horror. 11-14)"
Frequent shifts in point of view amid a welter of journeys, captures, escapes, lampoonery and alien invasions cap the Norumbegan Quartet with a patchwork close.
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"Readers new to the series will find themselves hopelessly lost; returning fans will find the unapologetically intellectual looniness uncannily, happily familiar. (Fantasy. 12-14)"
The third of what is now billed as the Norumbegan Quartet, this sequel to Game of Sunken Places (2004) and Suburb Beyond the Stars (2010) gives new meaning to the term "introspective."
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"Hysterical—for readers willing to surrender to a walloping smart ride. (Satire. 10-14)"
Readers need to be sure, when entering M.T. Anderson & Kurt Cyrus-land, they've securely fastened their disbelief to some high and sturdy hook, because as soon as they crack the binding, they will be assaulted by more looniness than any regular person could imagine.
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"Leaving the trio plunging through an interdimensional gateway in search of help for humanity, Anderson dishes up another strange, exhausting and masterful tale—with at least a promise of further sequels. (Fantasy. 11-13)"
The lads who played and won the deadly Game of Sunken Places (2004) discover that the powerful alien Thusser are back to conquer Earth—and this time they're Cheating.
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"Prefaced by an outline of volume one, this can stand alone, but readers who finish both will feel that they have been part of a grand and special adventure. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)"
In the sequel to The Pox Party (2006), Octavian Nothing escapes the College of Lucidity and flees to British-controlled Boston, where he will swear fealty "to whoever offers emancipation with the greatest celerity."
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"Gee willikers, guys, when's the next one? (Fiction. 9-14)"
Lost in the labyrinth of metafiction, this sequel to Whales on Stilts (2005) continues its send-up of everything from chick-lit to the Hardy Boys, from books that address the reader to books once popular, but now shelf-sitters.
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"A 19th-century tale presented in grand, 19th-century style. (afterword) (Picture book. 7-9)"
To commemorate well-documented old sightings of huge sea serpents gamboling off the New England coast, Ibatoulline paints richly detailed scenes of wide seas and narrow shores, of small boats, monstrous writhing coils and astonished onlookers—to which Anderson pairs an old man's reminiscence in verse: "The serpent was twirling, just chasing its tail, / And showed all intention of staying. / ‘Is it back in the deep?' ‘Is it eating our sheep?' / ‘I think,' I said, ‘that the serpent is playing.' " Young monster lovers will share the wonder of this never-solved mystery, and applaud when a company of sea-hunter's strenuous efforts to kill the monster yield only a large mackerel.
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"As with so many games, the fun of the novel is not in the ending but in the getting there, and readers willing to suspend every ounce of disbelief will be rewarded by this smart, consciously complex offering that never panders to its middle-grade audience. (Fiction. 10-14)"
When wise-cracking Gregory and brainy Brian go to Vermont to visit Gregory's "strange . . . [p]robably insane" Uncle Max, they "couldn't know what an adventure it would be."
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"Anderson closes with notes on recommended books and pieces—good thing, as this portrait makes an irresistible invitation to discover a relatively little known, but profoundly influential, 20th-century artist. (author's note) (Picture book/biography. 8-10)"
The author of Handel, Who Knew What He Liked (2001) profiles another musical original: Erik Satie, surrealist composer and all-round oddball, a capricious, temperamental rule-breaker whose works reflect the dreamlike quality of his eccentric life.
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"The crystalline realization of this wildly dystopic future carries in it obvious and enormous implications for today's readers—satire at its finest. (Fiction. YA)"
"I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before than, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe."
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"Handel himself, with his cherubic face and large fuzzy white wig, bounds from almost every page, fairly glowing with good will and music. (chronology, discography, further adult reading) (Biography. 8-12)"
Readers don't need to know anything about the composer to enjoy this lively biography, but it is hard to imagine anyone reading these pages who wouldn't want to run right out to hear the "Water Music" or a snatch of the "Messiah."
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Savaging young love, male adolescence, and—with tender attention to detail and wildly funny results—the fast food business, Anderson (Thirsty, 1997) pits a teenage doormat against a larger, smarter, nastier rival.
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In a first novel for which the word offbeat could have been coined, a modern Massachusetts teenager is swept into a plot of cosmic proportions as adolescence dishes up an unpleasant personal revelation—he's on the cusp of becoming a vampire.
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THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION: VOLUME II, THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES
