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Unique, beautifully grotesque, and cataclysmic. This book takes some very interesting turns, pitching the reader between being grossed out and engrossed. The subject alone- teacher sleeping with student- is one that makes the majority of people cringe and turn their nose up in disgust. But McDaniel writes Ryan in such a way that immediate discredit doesn't exist, even during his first time in bed with this teacher.

This book will make you think. Ryan's homelife isn't ideal- a mother who died when he was 2 and a father who loves him but travels often for work, leaving him alone the majority of the time- but by the end of the book, I found myself wondering how much, in this scenario, that homelife really mattered. How drastically different would Ryan's decisions have been if he had two loving parents who were there? Granted, sneaking around would have been more difficult but even with his father being gone, it didn't go unnoticed. I think this is a very prime example of a teen knowing what he wants and going for it, all legalities aside. Ryan is a cocky yet sweet guy but becomes his own sort of obsessive, falling quickly for a women double his age. He falls into the trap she sets easily, going through the gauntlet of emotions from lust and love to jealousy and betrayal. He puts Lori first for a long while, at least until her unsettling mental state begins to become apparent. It seems like Ryan gains some insight and maybe even grows a pair, turning back towards his schoolwork and the friends he ditched for her, but still masterfully played both sides.

ri is an incredibly unique character and despite being the sexual predator, she was written in a brilliant way to thrust sympathy and understanding towards her. She could easily have been the victim in this case which added an entirely new element, taking the story as a whole to a different level. This, coupled with Ryan's home life and several other twists- particularly towards the end- all tie together to make this book shocking and memorable. She uses her beauty and body to get what she wants, tossing the reader back and forth between appreciating her for it and despising her.

"I write the kind of books I write because I want to help kids understand that nobody gets to pick what life dishes out to them. What you do get to choose is how you respond to what life gives you. No matter what happens, life is a gift. And always worth living." —Lurlene McDaniel

Stine was born in Columbus, Ohio[5] to Anne Stine, a homemaker and Lewis Stine, a shipping clerk.[6] He began writing at age 9 when he found a typewriter in his attic, subsequently beginning to type stories and joke books.

In 1989, Stine teamed up with Parachute Press to create Fear Street.

Meggin Cabot was born on 1st February 1967, in Bloomington, Indiana. The intervening years of Meggin's childhood were spent in pursuit of air conditioning, of which there was little at the time in Southern Indiana. A primary source proved to be the Monroe County Public Library, where Meggin whiled away many hours, reading the complete works of Jane Austen, Judy Blume and Barbara Cartland. It was around this time that Meggin's desire to be a writer bloomed, a goal that was not forgotten, even when she fell in with a theatre crowd in high school and went on to star in productions such as The Good Doctor and Li'l Abner.After earning a Fine Arts degree at Indiana University, Meggin moved to New York City in 1989, intent in pursuing a career in freelance illustration. Assignments by MTV and Planned Parenthood soon followed. In September, 1994, however, spurred by the sudden death of her father, Meggin dusted off one of the many manuscripts she had penned in her spare time and began to look for representation. Where Roses Grow Wild, her first historical romance was published by St. Martin's Press under the name Patricia Cabot. Two other romances followed, and then prompted by her mother moving in with one of her former a

Harry Mazer's The Last Mission is drawn closely from his experiences as a seventeen-year-old in the Army Air Corps. Like Jack, he was a Jewish boy from the Bronx full of fantasies about heroism, and like Jack, he became a waist gunner and never fired his guns. He remembers, "I was scared every time we flew....On our 26th mission we flew over Pilzen, Czechoslovakia, to bomb the Skoda Munitions Works. We missed our target, turned over the target again, and were hit. I saw Mike, who was our radio operator, frozen in the door of the radio room. He never made it out of the plane. Only three of us parachuted....No one in the plane lived." ( ALAN Review, Fall 1980) Harry Mazer is the editor of Twelve Shots: Outstanding Short Stories About Guns, where twelve authors explore the extreme emotions that guns provoke in all of us. Walter Dean Myers, Rita Williams-Garcia, Richard Peck and other well-known authors create a riveting collection of short fiction that explores the emotion-driven world of guns.

Gordon Korman is a Canadian author of novels, primarily for children and young adults. In the seventh grade, his language arts teacher was a track and field coach. At a loss on what to do, the teacher simply allowed them to work on whatever they wanted for the rest of the year. For Gordon, this resulted in This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall, the first book in his "Bruno and Boots" series, arguably his most famous. It was published a year and a half later by the Scholastic Press, when Gordon was 14 years old. He currently resides in New York City, with his wife and three children.

Winner of the 2003 Young Reader's Choice Award, Intermediate Division