This display was all about making yourself better through new year’s resolutions..  Improving on what was already great about you or investing time to change something you didn’t particularly like.  I placed the book summaries and images and then scribbled over the background paper.  Many of these book titles are non-fiction, while some are fictional inspiration for possible resolutions.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens – Sean Covey

Imagine you had a roadmap—a step-by-step guide to help you get from where you are now, to where you want to be in the future. Your goals, your dreams, your plans…they are all within reach. You just need the tools to help you get there. In an entertaining style, Covey provides a simple approach to help teens improve self-image, build friendships, resist peer pressure, achieve their goals, and get along with their parents, as well as tackle the new challenges of our time, like cyberbullying and social media.

A Girl’s Guide to Fitting in Fitness –Erin Whitehead & Jennipher Walters

Whether you’re the MVP of your basketball team, an occasional jogger, or a self-acknowledged couch potato, The Girl’s Guide to Fitting in Fitness has practical advice that you can really use. The book is organized just like a typical teenager’s school week, and shows how easy it is to wake up earlier and sharper (using yoga and relaxation techniques), eat healthier foods, and use the little in-between moments of your day—like the commute to school, or the time between classes—to incorporate a little bit of physical activity that will make a big difference.

Generation Green – Linda & Tosh Sivertsen

This book lays out the inside scoop on the biggest issues affecting our planet, such as global warming and overflowing landfills Offers dozens of tips on how to shop, dress, eat, and travel the green way Includes interviews with teens like you who are involved with fun, innovative green causes Shows that being environmentally conscious can be a natural part of your life — and your generation’s contribution to turning things around.

Bibliotherapy – Nancy Peske & Beverly West

Every woman knows … books are more than a way to kill time on the bus — they’re therapy that fits in our bag. Whether we’re wallowing in a sullen perennial adolescence or our biological clock is ringing and we can’t find the snooze button, books are the dog-eared friends that help us deal with our baggage as we navigate life’s journey.

Be a Changemaker– Laurie Ann Thompson

Gone are the days when kids were supposed to be “seen and not heard.” Today, youth everywhere are rising up, building new organizations, and creating the changes they want to see in their communities and around the world. Be a Changemaker gives readers the tools and confidence they need to affect real change.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University – Kevin Roose

As a sophomore at Brown University, Kevin Roose didn’t have much contact with the Religious Right. Raised in a secular home by staunchly liberal parents, he fit right in with Brown’s sweatshop-protesting, fair-trade coffee-drinking, God-ambivalent student body. So when he had a chance encounter with a group of students from Liberty University, a conservative Baptist university in Lynchburg, Virginia, he found himself staring across a massive culture gap. But rather than brush the Liberty students off, Roose decided to do something much bolder: he became one of them; armed with an open mind and a reporter’s notebook. Roose dives into life at Bible Boot Camp with the goal of connecting with his evangelical peers by experiencing their world first-hand.

How Rude!: The Teen Guide to Good Manners… — Alex J. Packer

Explaining etiquette from A (“Applause”) to Z (“Zits”), Alex J. Packer blends outrageous humor with sound advice as he guides readers and explains why manners and etiquette are important—because people who know how to handle themselves in social situations come out on top, get what they want, feel good about themselves, and enjoy life to the fullest.

How to Not Be a Dick – Meghan Doherty

“How Not to Be a Dick” is packed with honest and straightforward advice, but it also includes playful illustrations showing two well-meaning (but not always well behaved) young people as they confront moments of potential dickishness in their everyday lives. Sometimes they falter, sometimes they triumph, but they always seek to find a better way. And with their help, you can too.

Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek – Maya Van Wagenen

Stuck at the bottom of the social ladder at pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren’t paid to be here,” Maya Van Wagenen decided to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell. Can curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help Maya on her quest to be popular?

Do Your Laundry or You’ll Die Alone – Becky Blades

When her firstborn daughter graduated high school, Becky Blades knew her daughter was not ready for the world. She knew even the best college would not be covering the most important material: How to be kind, happy, and appropriate in public…how to protect oneself from sock monsters, boring conversations, and scary dates…why to keep the clothes clean.

So the day before classes started, Blades e-mailed a good-bye letter with motherly advice she had kept to herself for a year.

…With warmth, wit, and a hint of sass, Blades blended bite-sized morsels of coming-of-age common sense with tiny essays on topics like forgiveness and creativity. 

Speechless – Hannah Harrington

Everyone knows that Chelsea Knot can’t keep a secret
Until now. Because the last secret she shared turned her into a social outcast—and nearly got someone killed.
Now Chelsea has taken a vow of silence—to learn to keep her mouth shut, and to stop hurting anyone else. And if she thinks keeping secrets is hard, not speaking up when she’s ignored, ridiculed and even attacked is worse.
But there’s strength in silence, and in the new friends who are, shockingly, coming her way—people she never noticed before; a boy she might even fall for. If only her new friends can forgive what she’s done. If only she can forgive herself.

Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a story about what it’s like to travel that strange course through the uncharted territory of high school. The world of first dates, family dramas, and new friends. Of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

Looking for Alaska – John Green

Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .Nothing is ever the same

That Was Then, This is Now – S.E. Hinton

Since childhood, Bryon and Mark have been as close as brothers. Now things are changing. Bryon’s growing up, spending a lot of time with girls, and thinking seriously about who he wants to be. Mark still just lives for the thrill of the moment. The two are growing apart – until Bryon makes a shocking discovery about Mark. Then Bryon faces a terrible decision – one that will change both of their lives forever.

A Separate Peace – John Knowles

Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

Monster – Walter Dean Myers

16-year-old Steve Harmon was convicted of being an accomplice in a murder and robbery. Terrified he’s going to end up in prison for life or get sentenced to death row, Steve tries to distract himself by keeping track of the events in jail as the case plays out. Written in a movie-script format with prose interjections by Steve.

Boys Don’t Knit – T.S. Easton

To avoid the Young Offenders unit, Ben is ordered to give something back to the community and develop his sense of social alignment. Take up a hobby and keep on the straight and narrow. The hot teacher he likes runs a knitting group so Ben, reluctantly at first, gets ‘stuck in’. Not easy when your dad is a sports fan and thinks Jeremy Clarkson is God. To his surprise, Ben finds that he likes knitting and that he has a mean competitive streak. If he can just keep it all a secret from his mates…and notice that the girl of his dreams, girl-next-door Megan Hooper has a bit of a thing for him..

I’ll Give You The Sun – Jandy Nelson

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah’s story to tell. The later years are Jude’s. What the twins don’t realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

Fat Boy Vs. The Cheerleaders – Geoff Herbach

The war is ON! Never have the stakes been so high. Never have the trenches been so deep. Never has one soda vending machine been so vital. When the high school cheerleading team takes over the machine’s funds previously collected by the pep band, Gabe will not stand for it. Something must be done.

Tales of the Madman Underground – John Barnes

Wednesday, September 5, 1973: The first day of Karl Shoemaker’s senior year in stifling Lightsburg, Ohio. For years, Karl’s been part of what he calls “the Madman Underground” – a group of kids forced (for no apparent reason) to attend group therapy during school hours. Karl has decided that senior year is going to be different. He is going to get out of the Madman Underground for good. He is going to act – and be – Normal. But Normal, of course, is relative. Karl has five after-school jobs, one dead father, one seriously unhinged drunk mother . . . and a huge attitude. Welcome to a gritty, uncensored rollercoaster ride, narrated by the singular Karl Shoemaker.

Girl Against the Universe – Paula Stokes

Maguire is bad luck.
No matter how many charms she buys off the internet or good luck rituals she performs each morning, horrible things happen when Maguire is around. Like that time the rollercoaster jumped off its tracks. Or the time the house next door caught on fire. Or that time her brother, father, and uncle were all killed in a car crash—and Maguire walked away with barely a scratch.
It’s safest for Maguire to hide out in her room, where she can cause less damage and avoid meeting new people who she could hurt. But then she meets Jordy, an aspiring tennis star. Jordy is confident, talented, and lucky, and he’s convinced he can help Maguire break her unlucky streak. Maguire knows that the best thing she can do for Jordy is to stay away. But it turns out staying away is harder than she thought.