A book suggestion for every school day of Advent. Thanks to Sarah Masters of the Thomas Deacon Academy for sharing this.

1. Advent Calendar
A book suggestion for every
school day of advent

2. 9
15
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12
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14
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7
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6

3. The Rest of Us Just Live Here
by Patrick Ness
What if you aren’t the Chosen One?
The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies,
or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck
this new thing is, with the blue lights and the
death?
What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to
graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work
up the courage to ask Henna out before
someone goes and blows up the high school.
Again.
Because sometimes there are problems bigger
than this week’s end of the world, and
sometimes you just have to find the
extraordinary in your ordinary life.
Even if your best friend is worshipped by
mountain lions.
Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and
irreverent novel powerfully reminds us that there
are many different types of remarkable.
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4. There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake
In four hours, Shelby Jane Cooper will
be struck by a car.
Shortly after, she and her mother will
leave the hospital and set out on a
winding journey toward the Grand
Canyon.
All Shelby knows is that they’re running
from dangers only her mother
understands. And the further they
travel, the more Shelby questions
everything about her past—and her
current reality. Forced to take advantage
of the kindness of unsuspecting
travelers, Shelby grapples with what’s
real, what isn’t, and who she can trust .
. . if anybody.
Award-winning author Nick Lake proves
his skills as a master storyteller in this
heart-pounding new novel. This
emotionally charged thrill ride leads to a
shocking ending that will have readers
flipping back to the beginning.
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5. Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on
opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will
be changed forever.
Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black
students to attend the previously all-white
Jefferson High School. An honors student at
her old school, she is put into remedial
classes, spit on and tormented daily.
Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the
town's most vocal opponents of school
integration. She has been taught all her life
that the races should be kept separate but
equal.
Forced to work together on a school project,
Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths
about race, power and how they really feel
about one another.
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6. The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedwick
A bold, genre-bending epic that chronicles madness,
obsession, and creation, from the Paleolithic era
through the Witch Hunts and into the space-bound
future.
Four linked stories boldly chronicle madness,
obsession, and creation through the ages.
Beginning with the cave-drawings of a young girl on
the brink of creating the earliest form of writing,
Sedgwick traverses history, plunging into the
seventeenth century witch hunts and a 1920s
insane asylum where a mad poet's obsession with
spirals seems to be about to unhinge the world of
the doctor trying to save him. Sedgwick moves
beyond the boundaries of historical fiction and into
the future in the book's final section, set upon a
spaceship voyaging to settle another world for the
first time. Merging Sedgwick's gift for suspense with
science- and historical-fiction, Ghosts of Heaven is a
tale is worthy of intense obsession.
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7. More Than This by Patrick Ness
A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final
moments. He dies.
Then he wakes, naked and bruised and thirsty,
but alive.
How can this be? And what is this strange
deserted place?
As he struggles to understand what is
happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not
be the end? Might there be more to this life, or
perhaps this afterlife?
From multi-award-winning Patrick Ness comes
one of the most provocative and moving novels
of our time.
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8. Arrowhead by Ruth Eastham
When thirteen-year-old Jack moves to
Norway, he's sure there's no truth in the local
myths and legends. But then he comes face to
face with one: the body of a Norse warrior boy,
frozen in the ice, and carrying with him an
ancient arrowhead - that contains a terrible
curse.
If Jack's going to survive, he has to overcome
both an ancient wrong and a newly-risen
enemy in this thrilling adventure from an
award-winning author.
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9. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in
Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai
refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an
education.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen,
she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in
the head at point-blank range while riding the bus
home from school, and few expected her to survive.
Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her
on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in
northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations
in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global
symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever
Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family
uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls'
education, of a father who, himself a school owner,
championed and encouraged his daughter to write
and attend school, and of brave parents who have a
fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes
sons.
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10. An Eagle in the Snow by Michael Morpurgo
The powerful new novel from the master
storyteller - inspired by the true story of one
man who might have stopped World War II.
1940. The train is under attacks from German
fighters. In the darkness, sheltering in a
railway tunnel, the stranger in the carriage with
Barney and his mother tells them a story to
pass the time.
And what a story. The story of a young man, a
young soldier in the trenches of World War I
who, on the spur of the moment, had done
what he thought was the right thing.
It turned out to have been the worst mistake
he ever could have made – a mistake he must
put right before it is too late…
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11. River of Ink by Helen Dennis
When a mystery teenage boy emerges from
the River Thames drenched, distressed and
unable to remember anything about himself,
he becomes the focus of worldwide media
speculation. Unable to communicate, the
River Boy is given paper and a pencil and
begins to scribble. Soon a symbol emerges,
but the boy has no idea why he has drawn it
even thought it's the only clue to the mystery
of his identity...
As the boy begins to build a new life under a
new name, the hunt for his real identity
begins.
A hunt which will lead him on a dangerous
QUEST that he has only one year to
complete ...
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12. Ghosts of Shanghai by Julian Sedwick
Obsessed with martial arts and ghost
stories, Ruby is part of a gang of Chinese
and ex-pat children who hide out in ruined
White Cloud Temple. But the world of
Shanghai in the late 1920s is driven with
danger: disease, crime, espionage and
revolution are sweeping the streets. And
since the death of her younger brother
Thomas, Ruby is stalked by another anxiety
and fear. Faced with a series of local
hauntings, and armed with a lucky
bookshop find - The Almanac of Distant
Realms - Ruby forms the Shanghai Ghost
Club to hunt down restless spirits. When
best friend Faye is kidnapped by the Green
Hand, Ruby must trust a mysterious
stranger - and face her worst fears - in
order to save her friends, and her own life.
And in the ensuing fight she will catch a
glimpse of the one spirit she has longed to
see ...The secrets that Ruby's father and
friends have kept from her are coming back
to haunt them all.
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13. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he
constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself.
But each time, something good, no matter how
small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the
days until graduation, when she can escape her
Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of
her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the
bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves
whom. And when they pair up on a project to
discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both
Finch and Violet make more important
discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be
himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s
not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch
that Violet can forget to count away the days and
start living them. But as Violet’s world grows,
Finch’s begins to shrink.
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14. The Accident Season
by Moira Fowley-Doyle
It's the accident season, the same time every
year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom.
The accident season has been part of
seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as
she can remember. Towards the end of
October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many
relatives before them, Cara's family becomes
inexplicably accident-prone. They banish
knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table
edges with padding, switch off electrical items
- but injuries follow wherever they go, and the
accident season becomes an ever-growing
obsession and fear.
But why are they so cursed? And how can
they break free?
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15. The smell of other people’s houses
bonnie-sue hitchcock
In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager
here isn’t like being a teenager
anywhere else. Ruth has a secret
that she can’t hide forever. Dora
wonders if she can ever truly escape
where she comes from, even when
good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to
reconcile her desire to dance, with
the life she’s always known on her
family’s fishing boat. Hank and his
brothers decide it’s safer to run
away than to stay home—until one
of them ends up in terrible danger.
Four very different lives are about to
become entangled.
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16. Happy Christmas!
Curl up with a book over the holidays