Kira is a pre-teen with a leg crippled from birth.  When the story begins, she is mourning her mother’s death.  Her father had been reported killed while on a hunting trip years before. Kira has just returned from the burial field to find that her neighbors are laying claim to the simple hut that she had lived in with her mother.  Because she has difficulty walking and is without an adult to support her, these neighbors want her to be cast out of the village to die.

The society Kira lives in seems to be a primitive and uncaring one.  It is a society of the future, when people are forced to live off the land.  Modern cities have been destroyed and civilization and technology have been lost. 
Kira finds she has an unexpected protector in one of the leaders in the village.  She also finds a friend in Matt, a younger boy, who seems to be from one of the family of outcasts who live at the edge of the village. 

Kira’s special talent as a weaver of colorful cloth, a skill she had been taught by her mother, is the reason she has been spared from being put out of the village to die. She is encouraged to improve her skills.  She also becomes skilled at making dyes and turning out thread of a variety of bright colors. 

Kira, at first, is pleased that her artistic talent can be used in repairing the ceremonial robe used in the village’s annual festival.  Gradually, she realizes she is being used by the group of elders that holds the village down in poverty and near slavery.  She learns through her experiences how she might be able to use her talent to bring about a better future for the little society in which she lives. 

“Gathering Blue” was written by Lois Lowry and published by Houghton Mifflin Company with a 2000 copyright date. The price is $15.00 in hardback. Some of you will recognize Lois Lowry as the author of the immensely popular and critically acclaimed book, "The Giver,” published in 1994. This latest book of hers has much of the same feeling of darkness and mystery that the earlier book exhibited. 
 
 

Wilma was in 8th grade at Claverford, a middle school she attended.  Her two best friends from kindergarten had both moved away from Claverford.   Now, she felt left out. Cliques had already formed, and Wilma couldn’t make any new friends no matter how hard she tried. 

On the train one morning on the way to school, she gave her seat to an old lady.  As a reward for her good deed, the old lady promised to grant Wilma anything she wished for.  “I want to be the most popular kid at Claverford,” was what Wilma blurted out.  The old lady frowned before replying, “Is it wise…?  All right, dear.  Granted.”

Suddenly, Wilma is the most popular kid in her school.  She had not realized how much pressure could be put on an 8th grader when everybody wants to be her best friend. She was especially worried because she thought everybody might like her just because of the wish she had been granted. What would happen to all these friends when she graduated from 8th grade in just a few weeks?  Would she still be popular when she left Claverford?  Did the other kids really like her or were they under some kind of a spell?

The book has plenty of laughs in it, but it has a very serious side, too.   The picture of how teenagers want to be popular and fear being ignored by their fellow students is realistic. Teenagers can be extremely cruel to one another and often are not concerned about it or even aware of it. Wilma had been on both sides of the “popularity contest.”  The reader can learn from her experiences and be entertained by her sense of humor.

“The Wish” is written by Gail Carson Levine and published by Harper Collins. With a 2000 copyright, the hardback version sells for $15.95.
 
 

Cap Wadell thinks he has what it takes to be a good football quarterback.  Unfortunately, he lives in a town so small that the high school doesn’t have enough students to put a team on the field.  Then his grandfather comes up with the idea of playing six-man football just as he had played it years before when he was in high school.  Cap is impressed when his grandfather is able to set up a league with other small town high schools participating. 

There are complications, of course.  One problem is that there aren’t enough players to put together two teams to practice.   Who ever heard of practicing with girls on the practice squad?  The girls persisted and the boys found out the girls could play pretty good football. 

Another complication was when an old high school rival of Cap’s grandfather insists on helping to coach the little team.  The rival is pushing for his grandson, Jimmy, to get the quarterback position rather than Cap.  The competition between the two older adults is more of a threat to the team than any rivalry between the younger players. 

Matt Christopher, the popular author of dozens of sports novels, is the author of “Long-arm Quarterback.”  The book not only tells a good story but it teaches the reader about six-man football, which has different rules and requires different strategies than regular eleven-man football.  Published in 1999 by Little, Brown and Company, the paperback sells for $3.95.
 
 

Some of you may have watched a television show called “So Weird” on the Disney Channel.  If so, you may be familiar with some of the characters in this book.  The book “So Weird: Web Sight” is based on a script from that show.  The title “ Web Sight” is based on the computer term “web site,” so you can probably guess that a computer plays a major role in the novel. 

Fiona, or Fi for short, is a fourteen-year-old who is traveling on a tour bus with her rock singer mother, Molly Phillips, and her fifteen-year-old brother, Jack. The father of the family, who had also been a rock musician, had died and left the mother to carry on the act alone. 

The bus driver is Ned Bell.  Other tour bus passengers include Ned’s wife, Irene, and their fourteen-year-old son, Clu.  Irene books the shows for the group as the bus tours around the country.  Ned acts as teacher for the three kids, who keep up their schooling as they travel.  The bus is the home on wheels for all of them. 

Fi has a computer in her bedroom on the bus.  She starts getting e-mail messages that tell her about events that don’t happen until the next day.  The mysterious messages can’t be traced so she doesn’t know who is sending them. The rest of the group doesn’t believe her at first.  But when she starts predicting events that occur the next day, they have to start accepting that something strange is going on. 

The book is a 2000 publication of Disney Enterprises.  In paperback it sells for $4.99.