A Mutiny in Time (Infinity Ring #1) by James Dashner

"When best friends Dak Smyth and Sera Froste stumble upon the secret of time travel -- a hand-held device known as the Infinity Ring -- they're swept up in a centuries-long secret war for the fate of mankind. Recruited by the Hystorians, a secret society that dates back to Aristotle, the kids learn that history has gone disastrously off course.Now it's up to Dak, Sera, and teenage Hystorian-in-training Riq to travel back in time to fix the Great Breaks . . . and to save Dak's missing parents while they're at it. First stop: Spain, 1492, where a sailor named Christopher Columbus is about to be thrown overboard in a deadly mutiny!"

Wow! I love Dashner,  he just makes things so universal.  Of course, you never can go wrong with time travel…at least for me. Time travel books can go seriously wrong, and yet, they’ve always been my favorite. This isn’t my absolute favorite time travel story (um, for the older crowd, Tempest by Julie cross, and for a universal adventure, The Missing by Margaret Peterson Haddix) but I still fell into companionship with this story.

I love the characters (I can relate to them on some level, which I rarely do with characters), it’s witty, and it’s one of my favorite events in time! It just really couldn’t go wrong for me. I love the rivalry between Dax and Riq (it’s pretty electric.) Overall, it’s just real; and really well written!  This book will be integrated into a multiplatform story, much like 39 clues series! If you are a fan of 39 Clues, or Patrick Carman’s multimedia platforms, you’ll enjoy this book. (I received this ARC from the Dashner Dude himself at BEA12! Thanks James!

Goosebumps by R.L. Stine

Just when you thought it was safe....the 25 top-selling titles in the series that revolutionized horror for kids are back w/ a fresh new look. The updated design will make you scream. The original artwork will give you nightmares. And the classic bone-chilling stories from the master of horror will just kill you. This spine-tingling series sparked a licensing phenomenon & made R.L. the #1 author in the U.S.--and it's STILL the "must have" collection for true horror fans. Now a whole new generation will discover the thrill of reading ...and they'll never be the same again.

When I saw it in the bookstore, I couldn’'t resist. These are classics for this time of year. Ironically, the most traumatic (that’s right, TRAUmatic, not DRAmatic) teacher of my middleschool introduced my class to these books. It was either read one of those books, or do '‘fun'’ math with our free time. What kind of joke is that? Homework, for fun? Entering her class was like a psychological war-zone. In retrospect, it was a total plot (of evil) to get us to read, or do math practice. We were so scared of the books (…a book on her shelf? There is no way it could be a good one!) Not a lot of us touched those shelves….we'’d rather suffer math. It stayed that way until the series was banned from the school (I heard this secondhand, they were banned a year after I left) for some reason while standing in the bookstore, I had a little flashback. You know, one of those really bad days in school, and remember about 30 or so spines staring down as I left the classroom with my class bucket and backpack full of books. All of them were Goosebumps. Now, seven years later, I couldn'’t resist. I hated books back then and now I love them. I was intrigued to say the least. They are just classics. Nothing bad to say about them! I hear he has a teen series now…, I'’ll definitely be looking into those! I think it would creep out the 4th grade to 6th grade the most… although I’'m not entirely sure, depends on the maturity etc. I recommend the series.