It's time for holiday horror as we revisit the 80's glory of the Gremlins franchise with Jack Cullen, Amy Kaplan, and host James P. Nettles III! You can watch it HERE!

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl I was surprised to learn this book has been challenged. Yes, it has scarry things, but so does life. In the end, James finally finds the home he deserves. I read it years ago. James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags. Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L’Engle I read this book in collage as an assignment. It was a lot of fun. My daughter really liked it as well. While not banned, it has been challenged several times. It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books The Call of the Wild Jack London This is a fantastic book that depicts the brutality of life during the Alaskan gold rush. At its heart, it is a story of survival. I read all the sequels as well. First published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, …

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemmingway War sucks and this book shows it well. I read this in HS. A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books The Golden Compass Philip Pullman Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal--including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors?

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books The Complete Perseposil Marjane Satrapi My daughter recommended this one to me. It is a graphic novel, but not for kids. Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming…

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck Another story I read in HS. They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books Brave New World Aldous Huxley Hard to believe, but this was another HS read. I really appreciate my school more now than ever before. Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. Banned and challenged because of sexual content and promiscuity, anti-religious/atheistic beliefs, anti-family, drug use, profanity, and suicide

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books Lord of the Flies William Golding I read this one is HS and it was an eyeopener into human nature. We had some great discussions in class. At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins My daughter suggested I read this one and I loved it. It does have a lot of violence in it, but so do most dystopian stories. It’s a great opening for discussion with your readers. The movie, however, was even more intense and I wouldn’t recommend that for young people.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books Water for Elephants Sara Gruen When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee This was another book that I read in HS. I’m beginning to wonder what they are using now. I really enjoyed this one. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood Here is another very relevant book. I didn’t read this one until earlier this year. Margaret Atwood is a visionary. In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books Animal Farm George Orwell George Orwell has the distinction of having two great books on this list. And yes, I read this one in HS. A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned-a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books 1984 George Orwell Another HS classic read. 2+2 does not =5 This one really stuck with me and feels even more relevant today. A masterpiece of rebellion and imprisonment where war is peace freedom is slavery and Big Brother is watching. Thought Police, Big Brother, Orwellian - these words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984.

Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury I remember reading this on in H.S. and thought it would be a good book to start with. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. This book was banned and challenged because of sexual content, profanity, violence, alcohol/smoking/drug usage, blasphemy/religious viewpoints, suicide, and abortion.

Gold Dust, by Catherine Assaro, is the second Dust Knights novel. This is an exciting standalone story with a large cast of characters that centers around the Undercity kids who have joined the Raylicon Olympic team and their teammates. There is Bahaaj, a retired and decorated military officer turned private investigator and track and field coach. Mason, the city of Cries coach who discovers that the Undercity people are athletic prodigies.

Animal Companions in Middle Grade/YA Young Adult FictionRoom 320, Sun. 4:30–5:30 p.m. It’s dangerous to go alone! The loyal animal (or monster) companion is a common feature of kids’ stories. These companions do more than tag along—they reveal character, deepen world-building, offer emotional support (or challenge), and sometimes even steal the show. Let’s discuss our favorites and find out what makes these furry (or scaly) friends so great. Deva Fagan (M), A. L. Kaplan, Jenna Lee-Yun, Kathryn Sullivan, Maya Prasad

Who Would Win? TeenRoom 347-348, Sat. 3–4 p.m. Decide who will win each contest from our bracket of various characters and determine who will take home the crown! A. L. Kaplan (M)