The Rule of Thoughts by James Dashner

It is a very good book but I suggest that it would be for 10 and up as there is some violence in it. This is the second book in the series and I am about to read the third.

Basically it starts off with Michael waking up in a new body from when he was in the sleep, (sleep is when you go into a coffin and they put you in a real life simulator but with games). He is a tangent, (so he is actually just a computer program, not a real person), and is put into Jackson Porter. 

He is quite confused and feels sorry for the real Jackson because that guy is gone. Jackson's girlfriend comes over and he tries to talk things out saying that he isn't Jackson. She doesn't believe him and leaves. He finds out where his friends, Sarah and Bryson from the sleep, are based and he goes to find them. He finds Sarah. Then Kaine, the evil tangent, takes them. They find Bryson and go to a secret Agent Weber VNS. She doesn't know who they are, but she is pretending because they were at an off place with people who didn't know about the Mortality Doctrine plan. 

They get captured by police because everyone thinks they are terrorists, then escape, and crash into a building in a helicopter. They escape the 60 story building and  go to the proper VNS. Weber puts them in the sleep to fight Kaine and squeezes them. (Squeezes means to squeeze them through code so they are only one sentence of code and it s very painful.) In the end, they thought they were in Life Blood Deep but really they were in real life and they blow up a building.  They are put in prison and eventually get visitors who tell them things. 

Reviewed by Peyton                                               

To This Day: For the Bullied and Beautiful by Shane Koyczan

This book began as a poem then became a You Tube video that went viral and now it’s a beautifully illustrated book. The following description is from the Good Reads website:

'To This Day is an authentic rallying cry for anyone who has been affected by bullying.

In February 2013, Shane Koyczan's passionate anti-bullying poem "To This Day" electrified the world. An animated video of the lyric narrative went viral, racking up over 12 million hits to date and inspiring an international movement against bullying in schools. Shane later performed the piece to sustained applause on the stage of the 2013 annual TED Conference.
Now this extraordinary work has been adapted into an equally moving and visually arresting book. Thirty international artists, as diverse as they are talented, have been inspired to create exceptional art to accompany "To This Day." Each page is a vibrant collage of images, colors and words that will resonate powerfully with anyone who has experienced bullying themselves, whether as a victim, observer, or participant.
Born of Shane's own experiences of being bullied as a child, "To This Day" expresses the profound and lasting effect of bullying on an individual, while affirming the strength and inner resources that allow people to move beyond the experience. A heartfelt preface and afterword, along with resources for kids affected by bullying, make this book an invaluable centerpiece of the anti-bullying movement.'
See the video version of the poem on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY (less)

The video version of the poem is wonderful, especially Shane’s narrative (he’s an award winning spoken word poet), but I loved being able to go through the book more slowly and savour the words and illustrations.

You can find the book in the teen non-fiction section of Paraparaumu Library at call number 821. 

Reviewed by Carolyn