Hana Banana Reads

Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson Age Range: 13 & up Release Date: June 13, 2017 HarperTeen 9780062393548 Time jumping in a story can be tricky. If it isn’t done right, it leaves the reader confused and unsure of the thread of the narrative. At worst, it causes frustration with the book itself. Midnight at the Electric does not have this problem. Anderson starts her story in the year 2065. We then jump back to 1934, then again to 1919, and far from being frustrating, each new time jump pulls you in even farther than the one before. Our first narrator is Adri, a loner who doesn’t know how to connect with anyone around her. Her life’s purpose has been to go to Mars as a Colonist. When she finally gets the chance, Adri relocates to Kansas for her final months of training and lives with an elderly woman named Lily, her only living relative. In her early days on Lily’s farm, Adri stumbles across a collection of letters from a young woman named Lenore, ...

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor 9780316341684 Age Range: 14 & up Release Date: March 28, 2017 Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Junior librarian Lazlo Strange has long been obsessed with the city of Weep. A mythical place cut off from the rest of the world, Weep is purely the stuff of legend. Even the city’s true name is lost. When the leader of Weep, a fierce warrior called Eril-Fane but known as the Godslayer, assembles a team and offers Lazlo the opportunity to see the long-lost city, the young man does not hesitate. Once in the mysterious place, he thinks all his dreams have come true, only to find that his actual dreams are soon filled with visits from a beautiful blue goddess. Wasn’t he told all the gods were dead? Sarai isn’t supposed to exist. Known amongst her small family of “godspawn” as the Muse of Nightmares, she dutifully spends her evenings using her strange power to silently terrorize the sleeping citizens of Weep. When the Godslayer brings ...

***Upcoming Release!*** The War I Finally Won Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 9780525429203 Age Range: 9-14 Release Date: October 3, 2017 Dial Books Due in October, TheWar I Finally Won is the sequel I never knew we needed. Its predecessor, The War That Saved My Life , took the kidlit world by storm in 2015, snagging a Newbery Honor the following year. That powerhouse of a book followed Ada, a ten-year-old girl with a clubfoot who suffers terrible abuse at the hands of her mother. Because of her bad foot, her mother insists Ada is simple, that no one could ever love her (including herself), and never allows Ada to leave their flat in London. But it is 1939, there is a war on, and London is under constant threat of being bombed. The abuse Ada suffers, both physical and psychological, sits with her, even after she is accepted into a loving home as an evacuee. This is where our sequel picks up, and it is Ada’s psychological state and emotional developme...