Raiders Night

This grim, disturbing story about high-school football centers on Matt, who is a co-captain of the Nearmont Raiders. With Division One schools aggressively recruiting him, Matt's future looks assured. His present, however, is a nightmare. Addicted to Vicodin and "juice,"the regular shots of steroids he receives with the support of his father, Matt rides a nonstop emotional roller coaster: he hates himself for feeling embarrassed by his developmentally disabled brother, and he hates his father for living out failed dreams of athletic stardom vicariously through him. Matt even hates football after he witnesses his sadistic co-captain sexually assault a rookie player at a preseason hazing (a brutal, graphic scene involving a plastic bat). After initially going along with the team's cover-up of the incident, Matt cooperates when an investigation is launched.

Rubber Houses: A Novel

Kit is a junior in high school when her younger brother is diagnosed with cancer. Despite the difference in their ages, they are kindred spirits who share a love of baseball. When Buddy loses his battle against the disease, Kit is devastated. Suddenly her family no longer functions as a whole. Instead they are like "-islands/too distant to matter." The teen must find a way to own her grief in order to mourn Buddy while at the same time joyfully celebrate the characteristics and quirks that constituted his presence in her life.

Accidents of Nature

It is 1970 and Jean, a cerebral palsy-stricken, wheelchair bound teenage girl is excited about attending summer camp for the first time. Camp Courage is designed for children with physical and mental disabilities. Jean loves swim time because she can escape the binds of gravity by floating blissfully in the lake, but is amazed that her new friend Sara refuses to swim because she hates getting out of the water and feeling the weight of gravity pulling her down again. She also learns how others have become cynical and jaded after years of being treated as "special," and how easily good intentioned counselors and administrators can patronize the campers.

Book of the Week - RX by Tracy Lynn

Thyme Gilchrest is an honors student.
Thyme Gilchrest is popular.
Thyme Gilchrest is on student council.
Thyme Gilchrest is a drug dealer.
Like piecing together a logic puzzle, Thyme has organized a complex trading system that enables her to obtain the meds her friends need. They all come to her to diagnose their problems and provide the "cure" -- be it Prozac, Ritalin, Vicodin...She's therapist, doctor, and pharmacist all in one. She helps people. And that makes her feel a little more in control -- a little more capable of dealing with her own frantic high school life. Because Thyme Gilchrest is nothing if not good at dealing.

Welcome Back!!

We, at Knowles Library, would like to welcome all of you back to school! We had Sophomore orientation and the library is filling up with classes each period. There are new, exciting titles for you to browse during your lunch period. Come by, get a book from the Tayshas list and read for rewards! If you need more information, just ask Mrs. Miller or one of the library clerks. Again, welcome back and we hope to see you in the library!!!!

24 Girls in 7 Days by Alex Bradley

Jack Grammar, average American senior, has no date to the prom. Or so he thinks. Percy and Natalie, Jack's so-called best friends, posted an ad in the classified section of the online version of the school newspaper. They figured it couldn't hurt-after all, there's not much in this world sadder than Jack's love life. Soon Percy and Natalie have assembled a list of girls eager to go to the prom with Jack, including one mysterious girl known only as FancyPants. He has just seven days to meet and date them before he will ask one special girl to the prom.

Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson

Ashley thinks of herself as a normal kid: best friend next door, hot, but unreliable dropout boyfriend, parents a bit spacey, and a household barely hanging in there. She's not into the prom the way her best friend Natalia is, so when it nearly gets cancelled because a teacher has absconded with all the money, Ashley is not prepared for Nat's approach. Nat figures they can still have a prom, if they beg for stuff and get teachers to help and bribe the custodial staff and so on. Rather against her will, Ashley gets sucked into the lists in Nat's pink notebook. It delights her very pregnant mom; it makes dealing with all those detentions and uncompleted assignments even more of a chore; it focuses Nat's slightly addled Russian grandmother on dressmaking; and calls Ashley's hilarious aunts to the fore. Modern teen life just outside Philadelphia is vividly drawn in Ashley's first-person tale, and it's both screamingly funny and surprisingly tender.