Nonfiction: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry

For teens who want advice on attending, performing in, or organizing a poetry slam, this book is a great resource. From the basics right through to the nitty gritty details of booking a venue and marketing your event, The Complete Idiot's guide will show you the easy way. Check out the accompanying audio CD for some examples of real poets reading their work at slams.

Nonfiction

Grades 8 and up

Click here to go to the Port Moody Public Library's catalogue.

Nonfiction: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry

For teens who want advice on attending, performing in, or organizing a poetry slam, this book is a great resource. From the basics right through to the nitty gritty details of booking a venue and marketing your event, The Complete Idiot's guide will show you the easy way. Check out the accompanying audio CD for some examples of real poets reading their work at slams.

Nonfiction

Grades 8 and up

Click here to go to the Port Moody Public Library's catalogue.

Science Fiction: Pretties

This book is the middle volume of a trilogy by Scott Westerfield. In this sequel to Uglies, Tally Youngblood has all but forgotten her previous life as a teenage renegade. The surgery that made her and all her friends into physically mindless Pretties has made her content to enjoy a carefree life of pleasure...almost.

Tally can't shake the feeling that something is missing, so when a mysterious stranger from the Big Smoke gives her some pills that he says will "cure" her, she splits them with her boyfriend Zane. Her choice propels her and Zane into a headlong flight, as they discover that their beauty and life of pleasure come at a terrible price.

Science Fiction
Grades 7-12
Click here to go to the Port Moody Public Library's catalogue.

Fiction: Runaway

Wendelin Van Draanen has written a diary-style book that tells you what it feels like to be homeless, alone, and on the streets...at twelve years old. Runaway Holly was placed in foster homes at age 10, after he mother died. After a couple years of getting pushed around in the foster system, Holly decides that anything must be better than being locked in her foster parent's laundry room every weekend with no food. T

his book follows Holly as she travels across the States to California on her own, evading the police and the dangerous people who want to take advantage of her. Holly is smart and resourceful, but how long can she survive on her own?

This compelling book will keep you up at night as you wait to find out whether Holly will find safety and, perhaps, a place to call home again.

Fiction

Grades 7-12

Click here to go to the Port Moody Public Library's Catalogue

Fiction: Breathe: a ghost story

Jack has always had an affinity with the supernatural, people who lived long ago and whose spirits remain in this world. Following his father's death, he and his mother move to an isolated house. Instantly, Jack senses the presence of the previous owner. But he is soon aware of other spirits reaching out to claim him.

At the heart of the house is the Ghost Mother, who is long dead, but still mourning her daughter. In order to stay in the real world, she has imprisoned four children, all from different times and families. She has intercepted their passage from the living world to the afterlife and draws her strength by leeching their souls. Is it her intention that Jack meets the same fate? Or has she other plans for her latest resident?

Jack's encounter with ghosts leads him to the terrifying Nightmare Passage - a kind of purgatory to which spirits are violently, viciously condemned. His survival depends on his own powers, his understanding of the Ghost Mother's guilt, his contact with her dead daughter, and the resolution of his own grief. Breathe is a compelling stand-alone novel, not for the faint-hearted but immensely rewarding for its psychological depth and the literally breathless action sequences, the hallmarks of Cliff's writing.

Fiction
Grades 6-12
Click here to go to the Port Moody Public Library's catalogue.