My Selection for Waiting on Wednesday: MAGISTERIUM by Jeff Hirsch

Waiting on Wednesday is the great meme started by Jill over at Breaking the Spine. It's a wonderful way to learn about new books coming out and what folks are looking forward to reading. This week I've chosen Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch. Honestly, I didn't have a clue about what this book was about from the title, but the cover totally drew me in. I interviewed Jeff on this blog last year and totally loved his debut novel, The Eleventh Plague. It's a great dystopian book that both boys and girls would enjoy. I was really looking forward to what he was going to write next and Magisterium is it! Check out the description...

On one side of the Rift is a technological paradise without famine or want. On the other side is a mystery.


Sixteen-year-old Glenn Morgan has lived next to the Rift her entire life and has no idea what might be on the other side. Glenn’s only friend, Kevin Kapoor, insists there’s monsters and witchcraft, but magic isn’t for Glenn. She has enough problems with reality. Ever since her mother abandoned them years earlier she and her scientist father have led nearly separate lives. He obsessively pursues “The Project,” a patched-together heap of technology whose importance only he seems to grasp, while Glenn dreams of the day she can escape.

But when her father’s work leads to his arrest, he gives Glenn a simple metal bracelet that sends her and Kevin on the run—with only one place to go.

On the other side of the Rift, Glenn and Kevin find the Magisterium, a fundamentally different reality that’s both more wondrous and more terrifying than they could have imagined. They also find themselves in the middle a hundred-year-old conflict that will force Glenn to reassess everything she thinks she knows about the world, her family, and even herself.


I've got quite a wait. Magisterium releases October 1, 2012 by Scholastic.

Toodles!

Release Day! Book Review: THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE by Jeff Hirsch

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Pages: 304

ISBN-10: 0545290147

ISBN-13: 978-0545290142

Genre: young adult

Subgenre: dystopian

Release date: 09/01/11

 

The Eleventh Plague is the debut novel of Jeff Hirsh. It’s a dystopian story that follows the saga of fifteen-year-old Stephen Quinn. He’s growing up in a new America—what the country has become after a devastating war with China. A virulent stain of the flu—the eleventh plague, wipes out two thirds of the country. Now, the survivors have to forge a new path and make their way in the new world, a world that can be desolate, cold and brutal. Stephen, his father and grandfather scrap by as salvagers, but when the grandfather dies, Stephen’s dad decides to free himself from granddad’s iron-clad influence. It’s a risk he’s willing to take and the consequences change his life and Stephens’s beyond anything they could have imagined.

We’ve all heard the old cliché “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but the cover of The Eleventh Plague immediately captures one’s attention. It’s atmospheric and connotes a world gone wrong, bad. It begs to be opened and the contents within, explored. In the opening pages, the writing is stark and direct, sparse. There is a blunt sensibility to the characters that made me question if they were likable. Would these be characters one could relate to? The answer is a resounding yes.

The author draws one in to take the journey along side Stephen. You are there sharing the emptiness, fear, dread, surprise, the new discoveries and yes, the hope.  It is a fact that many boys are reluctant readers. The Eleventh Plague may be one of the answers to that problem. It’s a young adult novel, but it also has a middle grade sensibility that is sure to captivate younger readers as well.

This is a stand-alone novel, but the premise and ending certainly leave room for a continuation if the author wished to pursue it. His next work—whatever that may be—is eagerly awaited.

Toodles!

Who is Jeff Hirsch? The author, Suzanne Collins recommends so highly? An author interview.

Two things drew me to The Eleventh Plague, the debut novel of Jeff Hirsch. One: the atmospheric cover. I was completely taken with it. I had to learn about the world it conveyed. Two: Suzanne Collin's endorsement. I'm sure she gets asked to blurb novels ad nauseum. I've never seen her endorse a novel--until now. Of course if you guys know of another, let me know! Anyway, I'm sure she wouldn't waste her influence on something she though was ho-hum, so I definitely wanted to read what she describes as "An excellent, taut debut novel." I did and I'll post that review on Thursday, the day of the novel's release.

I also wanted to know who's the guy behind this book. Who was able to score such a coup and capture Collin's enthusiasm? That's the motive behind this interview. I contacted Jeff Hirsch, author of The Eleventh Plague to find out.

My Selection for Waiting on Wednesday: The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

Ah...how time flies. We're back to Wednesday again and you know what that means: the day to learn what folks are anxiously awaiting to read. Waiting on Wednesday is the terrific meme started by Jill at Breaking the Spine. I just love it. This week I'm going for the dystopian tome. The world-really-sucks-and-the-US-is-a-wasteland is a big trend these days. I've only read The Hunger Games so far and I'm about to sink my teeth into Divergent. A debut novel that has caught my eye is The Eleventh Plague. It's written by Jeff Hircsh, a fellow native of Queens, New York. Lets' check out the blurb...

In an America devastated by war and plague, the only way to survive is to keep moving.
 
In the aftermath of a war, America’s landscape has been ravaged and two thirds of the population left dead from a vicious strain of influenza. Fifteen-year-old Stephen Quinn and his family were among the few that survived and became salvagers, roaming the country in search of material to trade for food and other items essential for survival.
But when Stephen’s grandfather dies and his father falls into a coma after an accident, Stephen finds his way to Settler’s Landing, a community that seems too good to be true, where there are real houses, barbecues, a school, and even baseball games. Then Stephen meets strong, defiant, mischievous Jenny, who refuses to accept things as they are. And when they play a prank that goes horribly wrong, chaos erupts, and they find themselves in the midst of a battle that will change Settler’s Landing forever.

This big "hunger" (get it?!) for disaster in our reading must mean something. What do you think that is? Hirsch has jumped on the bandwagon and written a new version of the United States, self-destructing. I'm got my own views about that. I think I should write a book about it too; see what you all think about my version of disaster, American style. Well, until that day comes, we'll have to satisfy ourselves with the stories of others that have beaten me to the publishing punch! LOL...Until the next time, my lovelies....


The Eleventh Plague releases September 1, 2011 by Scholastic.

Toodles!