Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge

 

This book is the sequel to Shakespeare Bats Clean-Up and is a nominee for the Maine Student Book Award.  Again, in this book Kevin experiments with different types of poems as he journals about his life.  He is dating a girl named Mira from the last book, but in this book he meets another girl named Amy.  While I liked this book it the concept wasn't as fresh as the first one.  If you haven't read the first one I encourage you to do so.  If you like it, read this one.

Oceans: Dolphins, Sharkes, Penguins, and More by Johnna Rizzo

 

This is one of the shorter Maine Student Book Award nominees and one of the few non-fiction selections.  I am not much of a non-fiction reader but I found this one to be quite good.  The photographs were beautiful.  There was a good amount of information about the different animals, some cool facts (laid out in a cool way in the corner of the page), weird but true facts which were fun to read, and ways that students can help protect the ocean.  A very informative book.