Last but hopefully not least, I want to share one of my all time favorite teen books, House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer! As you can see from the cover it won a TON of prizes when it first came out.
In this book a young boy named Matt is raised in an isolated house in the middle of a poppy field. The only person he ever gets to see is the woman who stays with him at night. He is very lonely. Then one day a group of children come laughing and skipping across the field. Matt knows he should hide, but he is so tired of being alone, that he breaks out the window and calls after them. He cuts his foot on the broken glass, and the worried children rush him to their home...a huge mansion just over the horizon. There, the children's maid goes to clean off his foot, and discovers a tattoo. Seeing this, she has him thrown out of the house, for she has discovered Matt is a clone, and is considered unworthy of setting foot in the fine house. But Matt soon learns he isn't just any clone. He is the clone of El Patrón, a powerful druglord who had bought all the boarderlands between Mexico and the US and is now ruler of his own lawless land.
I love this book because it brings up so many interesting issues (poverty, drug wars, cloning, etc...), but blends them into an exciting story with characters you really care about. I never get tired of talking about this great book!
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Describe the book: Crank is about a girl named Kristina who is taken over by a 'monster' that controls her life. This monster is the drug meth. As Kristina develops her relationship with the monster, she turns more and more to her alternate self "Bree". This story is told in poem from and is spectacular!
