Big Read 2011

1. Big Read 2011 Sign-ups begin May 25 in the library media ctr. Don’t miss out!

2. Don’t miss the BIG READAugust 25, 2011A night of free desserts & beverages, door prizes, book discussions, and an English reward grade.

3. Over the summer, if have questions or wish to sign up for the BIG READ, email Ms. O’Daniel @Jan.odaniel@hardin.kyschools.usThen, simply locate the Big Read book of your choice at a local bookstore, online, or at the public library and read it. Join us at The BIG READ on the evening of August 25, 2011 to discuss the book with others who read your choice book. Desserts and beverages will be served and door prizes will be awarded.

4. This year’s book selections are……

5. Auden gets a chance to recapture the carefree teen life she missed while her parents were going through a divorce when she goes to spend the summer with her dad and his new family in a charming beach town and meets fellow insomniac Eli, an intriguing loner fighting demons of his own.

6. After she dies in a car crash, teenage Samantha relives the day of her death over and over again until, on the seventh day, she finally discovers a way to save herself.

7. In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil.

8. Sixteen-year-old Gaia Stone, a midwife who dutifully delivers at least three babies a month and hands them over to the Enclave, a community within walls where the children are adopted and live with conveniences which are not available to the outside world, begins to question her loyalty to the group after her mother is brutally taken away from her by the people she serves.

9. When his wealthy uncle, a champion bridge player who has lost his vision, asks seventeen-year-old Alton to be a cardturner for him, Alton has no idea how much he will ultimately learn from his eccentric relative.

10. Fifteen-year-old Eli, locked inside a radiation-proof compound built by his father to keep them safe following a nuclear attack, begins to question his future, as well as his father's grip on sanity as the family's situation steadily disintegrates over the course of six years.

11. When her unstable mother dies unexpectedly, sixteen-year-old Lucy must take control and find a way to keep the long-held secret of her mother's compulsive hoarding from being revealed to friends, neighbors, and especially the media.

12. Still mourning the death of their mother, three brothers go with their father on an extended sailing trip off the Florida Keys and have a harrowing adventure at sea.

13. Sam LaCroix, a Seattle fast-food worker and college dropout, discovers that he is a necromancer, part of a world of harbingers, werewolves, satyrs, and one particular necromancer who sees Sam as a threat to his lucrative business of raising the dead.

14. The author reflects on her childhood growing up white in a predominantly African-American neighborhood and her struggle to fit in with her classmates after moving to a mostly Caucasian school district.

15. Examines the experiences of the children and husband of Henrietta Lacks, who, twenty years after her death from cervical cancer in 1951, learned doctors and researchers took cells from her cervix without consent which were used to create the immortal cell line known as the HeLa cell; provides an overview of Henrietta's life; and explores issues of experimentation on African-Americans and bioethics.

16. Teenage Reese, serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.

17. Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.

18. The people of Sterling, New Hampshire, are forever changed after a shooting at the high school leaves ten people dead, and the judge presiding over the trial tries to remain unbiased, even though her daughter witnessed the events and was friends with the assailant.

19. Terra, a sensitive, artistic high school senior born with a facial port-wine stain, struggles with issues of inner and outer beauty with the help of her Goth classmate Jacob.

20. An angry, grieving seventeen-year-old musician facing expulsion from her prestigious Brooklyn private school travels to Paris to complete a school assignment and uncovers a diary written during the French revolution by a young actress attempting to help a tortured, imprisoned little boy--Louis Charles, the lost king of France.

21. Fourteen-year-old Sig is stranded at a remote cabin in the Arctic wilderness with his father, who died just hours earlier after falling through the ice, when a terrifying man arrives, claiming Sig's father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold and that he will kill Sig if he does not get his money.

22. Five-year-old Jack and his Ma enjoy their long days together, playing games, watching TV, and reading favorite stories. Through Jack's narration, it slowly becomes apparent that their pleasant days are shrouded by a horrifying secret. Seven years ago, his 19-year-old Ma was abducted and has since been held captive-in one small room.

23. In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.

24. In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.

25. Anju and Sudha, cousins in an upper-caste Calcutta family, grow up together, bonded by fate and heart, but their lives take opposite turns when they are urged into arranged marriages, until tragedy brings them back together again.

26. Bethany Hamilton shares the story of her lifelong love of surfing, and tells how she was able to recover and return to competition with the help of her family, friends, and faith after losing her arm in a shark attack at the age of thirteen.

27. Sixteen-year-old Gemma, a British city-dweller, is abducted while on vacation with her parents and taken to the Australian outback, where she soon realizes that escape attempts are futile, and in time she learns that her captor is not as despicable as she first believed.

28. Motivational speaker and teen counselor Josh Shipp offers comedic and earnest advice to teenagers on a variety of life issues, based on his own experiences. 

29. Although they have never gotten along well, seventeen-year-old Levi follows his older brother Boaz, an ex-Marine, on a walking trip from Boston to Washington, D.C. in hopes of learning why Boaz is completely withdrawn.

30. Pia, the last person to see ten-year-old Katharina Linden before she vanished, is determined to find out what happened, but her quest becomes complicated when a second child disappears.