#gary schmidt

“The sky was trying to decide it if wanted to be a deep gold or blush into something redder when Sanborn finally asked what they were all thinking… The sky had decided on the deep gold. It gilded all the sharp edges of the red pines, and the straight granite rock faces cut out along the road, and the wispy clouds still being pulled in long streamers after the storm front. The air itself was dashed with flecks of gold, and they drove through a shining haze— though they could hardly see it. The shining seemed always just off to the side, almost invisible, but there. And it was while trying to catch hold of it somehow—to fix it in focus—that Henry first saw the lake that lay between two dark green hills. The golden sky had coalesced in its water and its flat surface shone dully, like the gold of a medieval illumination. Down the center of the lake was a long incandescent streak, streaming like a path for the Resurrected to march hand in hand to Glory... Henry turned to look out over the lake—which no longer shimmered with gold, but glowed to match a sky that had finally decided to blush into red after all. Still, the red didn’t really look like a blush, Henry thought; it was deeper, more ominous than that. Henry could imagine that sky appearing somewhere in a folktale, just before a huge battle or the death of a king or the sinking of a ship. Or before the end of a great and noble people. [emphasis mine]”

-- “Trouble”, by Gary D. Schmidt

1. A book recommended by a librarian - The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

2. A book that's been on your TBR list for way too long - Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

3. A book of letters - The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

4. An audiobook - Coraline by Neil Gaiman

5. A book by a person of color - Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai

6. A book with one of the four seasons in the title - A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare

7. A book that is a story within a story - Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones

8. A book with multiple authors - Troll’s Eye View by Ellen Datlow

9. An espionage thriller - Angelmass by Timothy Zahn

10. A book with a cat on the cover - The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold

11. A book by an author who uses a pseudonym - Who Could That Be At This Hour? by Lemony Snicket

12. A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read - Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

13. A book by or about a person who has a disability - Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison

14. A book involving travel - Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

15. A book with a subtitle - Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

16. A book that's published in 2017 - By Your Side by Kasie West

17. A book involving a mythical creature - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

18. A book you've read before that never fails to make you smile - I Will Surprise My Friend! by Mo Williems

19. A book about food - Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

20. A book with career advice - Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute

21. A book from a nonhuman perspective - White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

22. A steampunk novel - Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

23. A book with a red spine - Shade’s Children by Garth Nix

24. A book set in the wilderness - Breaking Trail by Arlene Blum

25. A book you loved as a child - Holes by Louis Sachar

26. A book by an author from a country you've never visited - What is Chemistry? by Peter Atkins

27. A book with a title that's a character's name - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

28. A novel set during wartime - A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

29. A book with an unreliable narrator - Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

30. A book with pictures - Tales of Mystery and Madness by Edgar Allen Poe

31. A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you - The Color Purple by Alice Walker

32. A book about an interesting woman - Florence Nightingale by Catherine Reef

33. A book set in two different time periods - Kindred by Octavia Butler

34. A book with a month or day of the week in the title - The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

35. A book set in a hotel - At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

36. A book written by someone you admire - I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

37. A book that's becoming a movie in 2017 - Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

38. A book set around a holiday other than Christmas - Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmell

39. The first book in a series you haven't read before - Gone by Michael Grant

40. A book you bought on a trip - Shadow on the Mountain by Margi Preus

Advanced

1. A book recommended by an author you love - Sunshine by Robin McKinley

2. A bestseller from 2016 - When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

3. A book with a family member term in the title - The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride

4. A book that takes place over a character's life span - The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines

5. A book about an immigrant or refugee - Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

6. A book from a genre/subgenre you've never heard of - The Number Devil by Hans Enzenberger

7. A book with an eccentric character - The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky

8. A book that's more than 800 pages - The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

9. A book you got from a used book sale - Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks

10. A book that's been mentioned in another book - A Separate Peace by John Knowles

11. A book about a difficult topic - Orbiting Jupiter by Gary Schmidt