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Although the Tiger’s Choice, the PaperTigers’ online reading group, selects books that are written for children but can be enjoyed by adults as well, National Reading Group Month has brought to mind those books written for adults that younger readers might adopt as their own favorites, and that could launch impassioned discussions between parents and children, teachers and students, or older and younger siblings.

The books on this week’s list are books recommended for teenagers, with content that may be beyond the emotional grasp of pre-adolescents. All of them are available in paperback and in libraries.

1) Ricochet River by Robin Cody (Stuck in a small Oregon town, two teenagers find their world becomes larger and more complex when they become friends with Jesse, a Native American high school sports star.)

2) The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (Alice is twelve, growing up on a modern-day Wyoming ranch with a mother who rarely leaves her bed, a father who is haunted by the memory of Alice’s rebellious and gifted older sister who ran off with a rodeo rider, and an overly active imagination.)

3) Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen (The author of Hatchet tells the true story of how he raced a team of huskies across more than 1000 miles of Arctic Alaska in what Alaskans call The Last Great Race.)

4) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (This autobiography of a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran and told in the form of a graphic novel is rich, original, and unforgettable.)

5) From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe (An amazing odyssey of a boy from the jungles of Burma who became a political exile and a Cambridge scholar, this Kiriyama Prize winner is a novelistic account of a life filled with adventures and extraordinary accomplishments.)

6) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (The Mirabal sisters were beautiful, gifted, and valiant women who were murdered by the Dominican Republic government that they were committed to overthrow. Their true story is given gripping and moving life by their compatriot, Julia Alvarez.)

As the weather becomes colder and the days grow shorter, find your favorite teenager, choose a book, and plunge into the grand adventure of reading and sharing!

We had plans to ski last Sunday, but high winds kept the chairlifts  at Whiteface Mountain grounded for the first part of the morning.  Instead of waiting it out, we headed into Lake Placid for some pancakes and a dogsled ride.



I've always been fascinated by the Iditarod, the 1150-mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.  A few years ago, my husband and I visited Iditarod headquarters and got to meet some of the amazing dogs that make that journey.  But it was summer, so we couldn't  actually ride on a dogsled.

That's why we jumped at the chance to take a ride with these gorgeous dogs on Lake Placid's Mirror Lake.

The dogs were excited to find out they had some business.




The ride around a frozen Mirror Lake was brisk but spectacular!




This is our musher, whose name has escaped me, but he was very, very cool and friendly.  Interestingly enough, he never actually hollered "Mush!"  He hollered "Hike!" instead.  We were slightly disappointed but got over it.




While we circled the lake, other winter weather lovers were skating or riding toboggans down an icy chute set  up along the shore.




This is Lightning.  He likes to run in the back of the pack and was the friendliest of the sled dogs -- the only one the kids could pet after our ride.  The rest of them couldn't wait to pull us around on the sled but wanted nothing to do with us when the ride was over.  You can see in their eyes that these dogs still have a lot of the wild left in them -- one of the reasons they do so well in the actual race in Alaska.

The ad says it all:

To kick-off our discussion of The Secret Agent John Lyon, editor of the OUP volume, and Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol, has reflected on what it was like to introduce this book right after the events of September 11, 2001. (more…)

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