Having a Moment

I feel lucky to be teaching middle school reading at a time when juvenile literature is really having a moment.  There is a plethora of wonderful stories to choose from and to recommend to students.  I've found that many of my students are really gravitating towards a certain type of story, the one where we are still on our planet but the world has radically changed somehow, things are fine in this society until suddenly they aren't and our young hero or heroine must save the day.

Sound familiar?  Probably, The Hunger Games, The Giver, Divergent, The Selection Series, Uglies (and those are just the ones that came to my head right away, I'm sure I could list more if yo u wanted) all share that basic story line .  But that's GREAT!! Sure these stories share a similar theme but they are all soo different.  It's the kind of story line I see my students getting hooked on and I gotta admit I am right there with them.

D.J MacHale's SYLO is another one of these our young hero must save the day type of stories and I loved it.  Tucker loves living on Pemberwick Island (something I can identify with-faithful readers will note that I have always wanted to live on an island).  Unlike his friends, Tucker would be content to live the rest of his life on the island eventually taking over his fathers gardening business.  All of that changes when the mysterious branch of the Navy, SYLO, comes to the island saying everyone must be quarantined because of a virus.  Tucker goes along at first but things aren't adding up and he decides he has to figure out what's really happening.

Now of course I'm not going to tell you what's happening.  Partly because it's a spoiler and partly because I don't fully know. That's right, SYLO is the first book in a series.  Which is exciting because now I have another book to read but also frustrating because I still don't know who these SYLO people are.

Saving the world...that's kids stuff.