Blue
Joyce Moyer Hostetter has researched a fascinating look at the polio epidemics during WWII in this young adult fiction story. Ann Fay is thirteen years old when her father goes off to fight Hitler and leaves her to run the farm until he returns. She works exhausting hours and makes her younger siblings work too. When her four year old brother contracts polio and dies, she blames herself for working him too hard. Her bout with polio highlights the real ife "Miracle of Hickory" polio hospital in Hickory, North Carolina in 1944. I learned a lot about how polio was percieved and how doctors and nurses worked to save children from being crippled. Four stars!

Dead Connection
I have a theory that "first books" are always best...maybe everyone has one good novel in them? Charlie Price's first novel, Dead Connection, is a case in point. Just like the boy in Sixth Sense, Murray hear's dead people talk. Because of a horrible home life with an alcoholic mother, Murray spends much of his time in the local cemetery where he imagines himself to be a kind of "comforter" to the dead. He has special people he listens to and talks with...and one day hears a young girl calling for help. He can't quite locate her grave, but hears her moans. With the help of the cemetery keeper's daughter, Murray realizes that the girl is the missing cheerleader, Nikki, who local detectives can't find. It is an engaging book, easy to read, told by many voices as each has his or her own chapter. Five stars.