"God, if you have made a way for us to be together," he whispered, "then let me awaken her with this kiss of true love."

*cue bluebirds and Disney music*

Just kidding.

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Time to vote in our new poll, on the left side of the page!

Here are the results for our previous poll, which was taken by 190 voters:

When your child wants to read a controversial book, what do you do?

Read it with him or her
106 -- 55.8%

Other
34 -- 17.9%

Say no
23 -- 12.1%

Say, "When you're older"
14 -- 7.4%

Say yes
13 --6.8%

Ever dreamed of morphing into a bird to escape a tough situation, or becoming invisible and rescuing someone in distress, or banding with friends in an effort to stop nefarious activities? Three teens get to do all these things and more in Maile Meloy’s fast-paced drama The Apothecary, which is set in London, 1952.

In a “note to the reader,” Meloy sets the tone for the book. It’s a “magical time,” she writes, in 14-year-old Jane Scott’s life. It’s also a frightening time.

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A war between the United States and China began five years before 15-year-old Stephen Quinn was born. After the U.S. launched a nuclear weapon against China, the latter unleashed a deadly biological weapon, P11H3, also known as the Eleventh Plague. Two thirds of the planet's population perished from the flu-like virus and its aftermath. Factories, hospitals, the government, the military—the world—collapsed.

In this desolate setting, Stephen, his father, and his stern grandfather, a Marine, have been roaming a gutted landscape salvaging items to trade for food, clothing, and other goods. The teenager has known only running, hiding, and surviving.

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The recent DVD release of the 2011 film Jane Eyre makes this a good time to revisit the book on which the movie was based. Written by Charlotte Brönte in 1847, Jane Eyre is the story of a plain-faced orphan who experiences much suffering but eventually finds love.

At the beginning of the novel, Jane is a ten-year-old orphan who lives with her aunt Sarah Reed. Constantly mistreated by her relatives, Jane has a thoroughly unhappy childhood. When she is sent off to a supposedly Christian boarding school, her situation improves only slightly. Self-righteous and hypocritical Mr. Brocklehurst runs the school, keeping the students cold and hungry. Harsh teachers such as Miss Scatcherd punish the students for even the slightest infraction.

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Australian author Morris Gleitzman is known for wacky, laugh-out-loud offerings such as the Toad Rage series, recounting the misadventures of Limpy, an Australian cane toad who travels the continent to discover why human drivers deliberately squash his family members. In his luminous Holocaust trilogy, made up of the books Once, Then, and Now, Gleitzman has tempered but not totally abandoned his sense of humor, in taking on a far more serious form of discrimination: the systematic persecution and extermination of Jews during World War II. Read More >

Twins Elisha and Elijah Springfield are members of The Veritas Project, a top-secret investigation team that seeks not only the facts behind strange mysteries and crimes, but also the truth behind the facts. Commissioned by the president himself, The Veritas Project consists of the twins along with their highly trained parents, Nate and Sarah.

In Frank Peretti's Hangman’s Curse, The Veritas Project has received a new assignment: to investigate the strange events taking place at Baker High School.

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The faces gaze out at us from the walls of Wal-Mart and from milk cartons. Some are smiling, caught in a happy moment in time. Others simply look at the camera in bemusement as the snapshot captures them in the middle of some long-forgotten activity. Yet whether they contain grins or grimaces, all of these photos have something in common. They show us the faces of our lost children.

In Blink & Caution, award-winning Canadian author Tim Wynne-Jones takes the reader on a journey into the world of two of these lost ones, a young boy and girl whose shattered home lives drive them to run away. What they escape to, however, may be just as bad as or worse than what they’ve come from.

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The young adult novel Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25 debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and it's easy to see why. The story is the stuff of kid fantasies: A bullied boy with weird blinking tics (Tourette's syndrome) defends himself by generating enough electricity in his body to shock his enemies into backing off. Readers of young adult fiction who need a break from fairies, fallen angels, ghosts, shapeshifters, vampires, and werewolves should give this novel a try.

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(Note: This review contains some major spoilers.)

Clary is at a club one night with her best friend, Simon, when she discovers three demon-hunters, Jace, Alec, and Isabelle, in the act of killing a monster. That moment is Clary’s entry into a hidden world full of frightening creatures and those who hunt them, known as the Shadowhunters. It turns out that her mother escaped from this world before Clary was even born, and that there are powerful forces seeking to drag them both back into it.

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In 2011, Lisa T. Bergren's publisher released all three books in her River of Time series (Waterfall, Cascade, and Torrent) -- a speed appreciated by fans who were impatient to see the fate of Bergren's time-traveling sisters, Gabriella and Evangelia Bentarrini.

Bergren said that she was inspired to write the novels after reading the Twilight and Hunger Games series, an inspiration fueled by her desire to write something that her tween daughters and their friends could read. Thankfully, there are no vampires in Bergren's novels -- just good, old-fashioned (literally) heroes and heroines caught up in the political intrigues and dangers of 14^th-century Italy. Bergren keeps the love and adventure elements found in Twilight and Hunger Games, but with a Christian backdrop that makes them far more noble and fitting than most of the dark fantasy-themed novels marketed to young adults. Read More >

Ten years ago, Christopher Paolini, a 15-year old homeschool graduate from Paradise Valley, Montana, self-published his debut novel, Eragon. He couldn’t have predicted that a major publisher would stumble upon his work, or that it would soar to the top of the New York Times bestseller list within months.

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