Handler, D.  (2011).  Why We Broke Up.  New York, NY:  Little, Brown and Company.  354p. ISBN-10: 0316-12725-6.

Summary:  When Minerva (Min), the artsy, plain girl gains the attention of Ed Slaterton, the popular, handsome co-captain of the basketball team, she cannot believe her amazing luck!  While she feels she does not hold a candle to the many girls who have dated Ed, he convinces her that he loves her because she is different.  She becomes consumed with their relationship and even puts her own friends on hold because she is so sure of his love…until it all comes crashing down around her.  This novel is the letter that Min writes to Ed as she sifts through the box of treasures and memories she’s stored up during their relationship.

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Myers, W.D.  (1999).  Monster.  New York, NY:  Harper Collins Publishers.  281p. ISBN-10: 0-06-028077-8           

Summary: Sixteen-year-old
Steve Harmon has been accused of being an accomplice in a drugstore murder and is sitting in jail awaiting trial.  He begins to question whether or not he is the monster that the prosecutor has accused him of being and wants nothing more than to prove he is not that person.  He keeps notes of his experience in jail and in court in the form of a movie script.

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Anderson, L.H.  (1999).  Speak.  New York, NY:  Farrar Straus Giroux.  198p.  ISBN 10:  0-374-37152-0.

Summary:  At a high school party the summer before her freshman year, Melinda Sordino is raped by a popular senior boy.  She calls to tell the police but chickens out, and as a result, the party is busted and some of her peers are arrested.  Melinda spends her entire freshman year holding in her terrible secret and enduring the vicious stares and hateful attacks from students who are angry that she was stupid enough to ruin their fun.  She becomes an outcast and is welcome nowhere.  When her former best friend begins dating the very person who attacked her, Melinda struggles to find her voice to speak out, and in the meantime begins her own healing process.    

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Myers, W.D.  (1988).  Fallen Angels.  New York: NY.  Scholastic Inc.  309p.  ISBN-10:  0-54500576-8.

Summary:  Fresh out of high school and with no other options, seventeen-year-old Richie Perry enlists to fight in the Vietnam War leaving his mother and brother back home in Harlem.  Perry is quickly thrown into a world full of devastation, fear, and death.  While experiencing the harsh destruction of war, he forms an intense bond of brotherhood with his squad members as they struggle to live with the constant threat of the unseen enemy and the possibility of never making it out alive.  


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