P.S: For those of you that liked the Mickey Bolitar series by Harlan Coben, Mr. Coben has a new book coming out later this month called Home that, along with the Myron Bolitar team, is supposed to feature all of the main Mickey characters.  I'll definitely check it out & will report back.

Top row: A few of the Raiareads students that offered to present me with that excellent certificate and school sweatshirt (thanks, guys!); Bottom row: Philip's Academy Pricipal Mark Shultz on left and Executive Director Miguel J. Brito on right.

I have been a Malcolm Gladwell fan for a really long time.  So when he described the author Adam Grant as "one of my favorite thinkers," I knew I had to read Mr. Grant's new book Originals.  Originals is a completely amazing book about generating new ideas and being confident enough to go against the mainstream and pursue those ideas.  It's also about how parents can encourage creative kids to be original thinkers, how leaders like politicians or sports heroes get people to follow them and how challenging old or stale ideas is the only way to cultivate true innovation that is capable of changing the world.

My favorite chapter of Originals (and the one I chose to discuss with the Raiareads students) was Chapter 6: Rebel With A Cause.  This chapter just happened to combine a number of my favorite things: baseball statistics, sibling rivalry, stand-up comedy and finding mentors through characters in literature.  I felt at one point like he was talking to me in the chapter.  Grant gives the reader fascinating statistics about stealing bases in baseball and sibling order to show how peoples' ability to tolerate (or seek) risk can actually follow certain patterns.   This became even more interesting when he moved the discussion to stand-up comedians and how their birth order in their family can often foreshadow their need to stand out and "own" a room.  I have been doing some stand-up comedy in NYC lately and this section rang eerily true.

I also really liked the section where he experimented with the wording of public health signs in hospitals, proving that signs that encouraged workers to wash their hands for the benefit of others resulted in 10% more hand washing.  I plan to pose a similar question to the Raiareads students later this month about cheating and will be interested to see whether signs that discourage cheating because it prevents their classmates from learning and hurts the schools' reputation are more effective than those that just warn students about damage to themselves (see our Discussion Questions here).

The best part of the chapter, though, was the discussion about finding mentors.  Grant notes that sometimes it's hard for a kid to find mentors in his or her daily life, and that some of the best mentors can be found in literature.  He says that Mark Zuckerberg, for example, connected with Ender in Ender's Game (which we read last year).  I emailed Mr. Grant on behalf of Raiareads to ask about his most important mentors, both in real life and in fiction, and his answers -- which I won't divulge here because they were written only for the Raiareads students -- were fantastic.  I am seriously grateful that he took the time to answer us during the first week that the book was out!

Overall, Originals is right up there for me with Malcolm Gladwell's books, and I can't wait for more.  It is filled with cool anecdotes and statistics, and I really hope that the students (and their parents) like Chapter 6 as much as I liked the whole book.
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Hamilton is a play sweeping Manhattan into a frenzy, and a play to which I was originally dragged.  I'm normally not a Broadway guy, and a musical about the founding fathers was not a rousing endorsement for a 16 year old kid.  But as I sat watching, I was stunned at how much I loved it.  The speed, the rapping and the story itself - I needed to find out more about Alexander Hamilton.  I found the roughly 800 page biography by Ron Chernow that the show was based on in my parents' bookcase and set to reading.  I read well over 100 pages in the first sitting!  The story was incredible...a man who starts from nothing and writes his way to the top.  The book coincided nicely with my AP US History class and hopefully gave me an edge in there as well.  As I poured over the pages I became fascinated by this man who penned his way out of every situation, who put every fiber of his being into his writing and then used pages to secure his place in history.  The show, the book and the founding father - all phenomenal.
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I recently read Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot which was recommended to me by my Latin teacher.  He knows I love the idea of space travel and will read any book I can find on the subject.  When I first picked it up I assumed it would be a generic book about space and the mysteries it holds, but it turned out to be so much more.  Pale Blue Dot is one of the most - if not THE most - beautifully written books I have ever read.  The descriptions paint borderless paintings in the reader's mind that transport them into the vacuum of space.  The book stresses that our problems and pressures, while they can loom large in our lives, are actually incredibly insignificant and we must keep that in mind.  I also love the idea that everything that impacts us - large and small, positive and negative - exists on this one, tiny planet.  Sagan refocuses our perspective in such a meaningful way using nothing but his words.  Here is one of my favorite quotes in the book:

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

I urge every kid to read this - it's simply one of the most amazing books you'll ever hold.  

I have been reading John Flanagan's books since I was 10 years old.  I started with The Ranger's Apprentice series (there are now 13 books) and then moved on to The Brotherband Chronicles (there are 5), and I loved the fact that Mr. Flanagan just kept the books coming.  One of my favorite aspects of his books is the level of detail he includes - his plot lines are intricate and even the smaller passages (like the training sequences in Ranger's Apprentice) have a lot of layers.  There are epic battle scenes and tons of adventure, which hooks young readers right off the bat.  These are also great books for younger readers because they introduce the idea of fantasy worlds and mythical creatures, preparing them for longer series like Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien or Eragon by Christopher Paolini.  Mr. Flanagan's books are sold in 18 countries and he is currently (he told us) in discussions with a movie studio for a Ranger's Apprentice movie!  

​Even though he doesn't come to the U.S. often (he lives and works in Australia), I got the chance to meet him yesterday in Princeton, NJ and hear him speak about his newest book - a prequel to the RA series (see below).  It looks fantastic, although I would still advise readers new to Flanagan to read the original series before starting the prequel...I think the revelations in the new book will be more fun if you have the series history behind you.  He was awesome to meet and graciously offered to answer a question posed by the Raiareads students.  I'll keep you posted on that since we'll be reading the first RA book later this fall.  Mr. Flanagan even signed the book we will be reading to the Raiareads students - check out the picture below.  It's always amazing to hear an author speak in person about the writing process (he starts each book with a 4 page outline mapping out the entire plot and then writes no more than a chapter a day), but it's even more gratifying when the author takes a real interest in Raiareads.  I can't wait to tell the kids about this meeting and to start them on the books in both series.

As Raiareads enters it's second year in the classrooms of our partner schools, I keep getting asked why encouraging enthusiastic young readers is so important to me.  The infographic below does a great job of explaining how middle school and high school students are reading less and less for pleasure (to read the full study by Common Sense click here).  My goal with the Raiareads program continues to be to try and reverse these trends...one school, one classroom and one book at a time.

In June, as the 2014-2015 school year ended, I suggested several books to the students at Mt. Carmel-Holy Rosary and at Philip's Academy in case they were interested in some summer reading.  I tried to pick books that related to books we had read earlier in the year.  Sometimes I tried to further their interest in a particular plot style ("If you liked Enders' Game or Relic, then try Insignia by S.J. Kincaid") or a certain author ("If you liked The Accused, try the rest of the Theodore Boone series by John Grisham"). Some of the suggestions were to encourage an interest in the classics ("If you liked Lord of the Flies, try To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee"..."If you liked True Grit then try Shane by Jack Schaefer").  For my own summer reading, however, I usually like to try something entirely new.

My own summer reading assignments for school included The Crucible, Birth of a Nation and Albert Camus' The Stranger.  All definitely classics, but after that I have to say I wanted to read something current -- even forward-looking.  I picked up Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and loved it.  It tells the story of a great man who created one of the most influential companies of the modern age.  His rags to riches story tells us that we can all change the world if we try hard enough and force ourselves to think way outside the box.  The book is simultaneously a cautionary tale about treating others well and not forgetting those who are truly important to us.

As great and innovative as Jobs was he was equally as flawed, and towards the height of his career he began losing his humanity.  A once caring person he neglected his daughter, belittled his employees and lost touch with his friends.  Aside from this personal transition, the most interesting thing to me about this book was the origin of Apple and how the company evolved over the years.  From a few guys in a garage to a multi-billion dollar corporation, Apple has certainly changed the world.  The book does an excellent job of telling that story and the stories about the people who remained behind the scenes.  This was possibly the best thing about Jobs - he surrounded himself with people smarter than him to help him.  This story reminds all of us that we can achieve great things, but also that we must remember who we are and we got here first.

One other thing...I'm thinking about introducing a young adult biography of Steve Jobs to the Raiareads students this fall.  The author Karen Blumenthal has written a great one called Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different - I think teens of all ages would love this story before embarking on the longer Isaacson version! 

OK, I'll admit it - I didn't know what to expect when I registered to attend the 2015 BookExpo America (BEA) Conference in NYC.  An amazing YA author named Heather Terrell (who writes both YA and historical suspense novels) told me about BEA and encouraged me to go as a teen book blogger.  I signed up, received my cool looking pass and promptly put it out of my head.  When I got to the Javits Center this morning, I was blown away.  The conference was HUGE and there were authors and publishers everywhere!  I heard amazing panels talking about book blogging & social media, met new and established authors and got psyched for new releases I didn't even know were coming out!  Hint: Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase and The Gods of Asgard comes out on October 6th and John Grisham's Rogue Lawyer comes out on October 20th!  Of course, Harper Lee's To Set a Watchman comes out on July 14th...but we knew that.  The best part about BEA was the sheer scope of the conference: every publisher I had ever heard of was there, along with so many new e-publishers and digital publishing companies.  The authors were totally great - signing books and taking pictures.  One even offered to answer questions for our Raiareads program if we come up with some author questions next fall!  Overall, an amazing day and I will definitely sign up for all three days next year.  Very cool to tell people in the literary world about this program and have them be so enthusiastic - seriously a fantastic experience.

I have been a huge fan of John Grisham for a long time now – from The Firm to The Associate, I have loved his quick-paced thrillers and the legal twists & turns that he throws at the reader.  About 5 years ago Grisham introduced a new YA series called “Theodore Boone,” starring a 13 year old amateur lawyer.  There are now 5 books in the series (the new one is being released next month…see below) and they are terrific.  My favorite so far is the third book: Theodore Boone – The Accused. In this book Theodore is accused of stealing several high-end tablets from an electronics store and, while solving a number of other cases, has to prove his innocence. Theodore faces all sorts of adversities and must survive and discover who framed him. His character is questioned and overwhelming evidence is mounted against him, forcing him to clear his name using only his wits and his family.  What I love about this YA series is that Grisham’s hallmark legal themes, quick dialogue and plot twists are used just as effectively for younger readers as they are in his older novels.  His characters – whether they are 13 or 30 – love and respect the law, and his readers therefore find themselves doing the same.

One more thing:  The 5th book in the series, Theodore Boone: The Fugitive, comes out on May 15, 2015!  Theodore spots an old adversary (Pete Duffy) while on a field trip in Washington, DC, and brings Duffy back to Strattenburg to stand trial.  Looks SO good…definitely worth it to preorder!