After a brief winter hiatus, please join NYCSLA’s book club with our February pick for the 2010-11 school year: Moon Over Manifest by Claire Vanderpool. The NYCSLA book club is dedicated to reading engaging new literature for children and young adults. Moon Over Manifest is Vanderpool’s first book AND our newest Newbery Award winner. Here’s a portion of the starred review in Booklist:

After a life of riding the rails with her father, 12-year-old Abilene can’t understand why he has sent her away to stay with Pastor Shady Howard in Manifest, Missouri, a town he left years earlier; but over the summer she pieces together his story…. Vanderpool weaves humor and sorrow into a complex tale involving murders, orphans, bootlegging, and a mother in hiding. With believable dialogue, vocabulary and imagery appropriate to time and place, and well-developed characters, this rich and rewarding first novel is “like sucking on a butterscotch. Smooth and sweet.”

Please add your comments about February’s pick here! Also, we need your recommendations for future book club selections. Please fill out this simple form to let us know the best new books you’ve read this year, especially titles you have a hunch will show up on Newbery, Printz, or other major award shortlists… it’s early, but never too early to start guessing!