Don't You Wish by Roxanne St. Claire

Don't You Wish, by Roxanne St. Claire is a science fiction book for the realistic fiction loving "it" girl. Annie is a "nobody". A non-popular girl who is teased and tortured by the popular students at her high school. Her inventor father has pushed her mother to the limit, and her family is on the verge of deteriorating over money, broken inventions and the possibility of a different life. Annie gets a little too close to her father's latest invention and finds herself transported to another universe. A universe where she is popular, pretty, rich and 100% A-list.

On the outside, she's Ayla, rich and popular girl. But on the inside, she's still Annie, who knows what it's like to be the nobody, and long for acceptance. Can she change Ayla's life, will she be able to return to her own life? Even if she can return, will she want to?

This book is a great find for the realistic fiction loving girl (or boy) who reads and loves books like The Clique, Alphas, and Gossip Girl. I can see it being almost a "gateway" book to get students moving around in genres, activating their brains in new ways.

3 out of 5 stars.

*I was provided with a free e-copy of this book for review purposes from the publisher via www.netgalley.com

One of the cool kids.

I always wanted to be one of the cool kids. Being a transient child I was always shuffled from school to school, and never really had time to attempt coolness. Though I'm sure I wouldn't have made the cut.

I've been on Twitter for quite some time, though I never really thought about how or why I wanted to use it.

Then I discovered that my version of Justin Beiber, Donalyn Miller, was on Twitter. I immediately clicked "follow".

And my world opened up. Suddenly, there were language arts/English/reading/writing teachers everywhere. There was a magical convention called NCTE/ALAN. Teachers with things to share were all over my Twitter feed, and I was learning.

And thinking how cool they were, and how cool would it be to hang out with them.

Then, I started following @colbysharp. I clicked through his profile to his blog where I ran across this post. In particular, this bit jumped out at me:

Nowhere in me, is there a desire to publish a book, but I do feel that writing more will help me to become a better teacher.

Since I gravitated to teaching reading exclusively, I haven't been writing as much. At all, really. I've never been a great writer, in fact, which makes it even more important that I start writing on a regular basis.

So I finally acted on my long-pondered idea of starting a reading, teaching, professional(ish) blog.

Which is right here.

Away we go!