During this time, many of our students are being overwhelmed with boredom and are running out of ideas of things to do. Because of this, people are turning to electronics and binge-watching shows on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and other entertainment centers. Since our generation today has the ability to have unlimited access to electronics and movies, we have almost lost the ability to be able to sit down and read a good book. However, The Gator’s Eye has decided to collaborate with Green Level’s Media Center and create a list of book recommendations for students that are looking for an interesting read or something other than electronics to entertain them. This will be a recurring feature, in which every week we will share books from specific genres. This week we will be featuring the genres Sports, Historical Fiction, Nonfiction. 

For Sports, we have many different selections connected to the link on Follett on the WakeId Portal, available to all students. Some of the books in our library include Coming Up For Air by Miranda Kenneally, Slam! by Walter Dean Myers, and Ball Don’t Lie Matt de la Peña. Coming Up For Air is all about a young teenage girl who has to decide between her training for the Olympics or having a normal high school experience with her crush, Levi. Slam! is about “Slam” Harris, a sixteen-year-old boy who is trying to rely on his basketball skills to get out of the inner city to have more of a chance to succeed in life, but his coach thinks differently. Ball Don’t Lie tells the story of seventeen-year-old Sticky who plays basketball as much as he can, but as he’s heading to pros he suddenly realizes the dangers of that path, including his past, that are getting in his way. If you click the link above, you can see more stories similar to these, and others about athlete injuries and such. 

For Historical Fiction, we have a large selection of books that have stories with fictional characters and storylines, but that also focuses on real historical events. These books bring life to characters like nothing else. Some books in the historical fiction library are Out of the Dragons Mouth by Joyce Burns Zeiss, Annexed by Sharon Dogar, and Loving VS. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case by Patricia Hruby Powell. Out of the Dragons Mouth follows the story of a fourteen-year-old girl named Mai who is forced to flee to a refugee camp on a small island off the coast of Malaysia after the fall of South Vietnam. There Mai has to go through a lot of hardships while waiting to be sponsored for entry into America. Annexed tells us the familiar story of Anne Frank and the life she lived while in the Secret Annex, except told now from the point of view of Peter Van Daan, a young boy who also shared the sanctuary of the Annex. Loving VS. Virginia tells us the journey of Mildred Loving, an African American girl, and Richard Loving, a Caucasian boy, who challenge the Virginia law system that forbade interracial marriage in the 1950s. 

For Nonfiction we can see a large range of books, from nutrition guides to real-life stories of influential people. Some books that I wanted to highlight were The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown, She Takes a Stand: 16 Fearless Activists Who Have Changed the World by Michael Elsohn Ross, and Strategic Inventions of the Napoleonic Wars by Jeri Freedman. The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees tells us the stories of real refugees immigrating from Syria. This book shows us the horrors that these people have had to go through, but also shows the hope that they hold through it all. She Takes a Stand tells us about female activists that have made a difference in the world we know. Strategic Inventions of the Napoleonic Wars examines the key inventions that were created or improved during the Napoleonic Wars.

I hope you enjoyed our book reviews! Come back next week for more genres and more exciting books! If you want to follow what our own Green Level librarians are reading right now, click this link (https://www.instagram.com/glhs_media/). Happy reading!