Personal Response: This book is very similar to the book "Jumped", which follows kids throughout a school day. This book follows the lives of three kids through an inner-city teenage life. The three kids all each from different backgrounds and cultures and still they form an unusual friendship, connecting both "artistically and emotionally".

Curricular or Programming Connections: The differences of life in a different setting. ( )

This is an incredible story about a hearing impares girl, her friends, an immigrant, and a young war veteran. Mika is just making it through life with clunky awful hearing aids that are all the government will buy for her. Turning them on allows her to her sound, but the static isn't really worth it. It is her relationship with her friends that make this story such a charmer. It is amazing. ( )

Kearsten says: This is a pretty rough story, revolving around three lost teens: Mika, a 15-year-old hearing-impaired girl, 18-yr-old Jimmi, a mentally disabled veteran, and Fatima, a 16-yr-old African illegal. Their paths cross and recross in Bronx, and they each struggle with what it means for him/her to be free.

These teens are all living rough, fighting bullies, fear and mental illness, but are brought together in the way that each longs for something better, through art, freedom, kindness.

The chapters alternate between the three teens' points of view, and tension mounts as each chapter counts down to a violence predicted at the beginning of the book AND as the reader becomes more and more invested in the characters - why will someone be hanged? Will Mika stop stutting the world out by turning off her hearing aids when life becomes overwhelming? Will Fatima survive?

Haunting and disturbing yet still hopeful, this would make an excellent book discussion choice. Recommended. ( )

This is a pretty rough story, revolving around three lost teens: Mika, a 15-year-old hearing-impaired girl, 18-yr-old Jimmi, a mentally disabled veteran, and Fatima, a 16-yr-old African illegal. Their paths cross and recross in Bronx, and they each struggle with what it means for him/her to be free.

These teens are all living rough, fighting bullies, fear and mental illness, but are brought together in the way that each longs for something better, through art, freedom, kindness.

The chapters alternate between the three teens' points of view, and tension mounts as each chapter counts down to a violence predicted at the beginning of the book AND as the reader becomes more and more invested in the characters - why will someone be hanged? Will Mika stop shutting the world out by turning off her hearing aids when life becomes overwhelming? Will Fatima survive?

Haunting and disturbing yet still hopeful, this would make an excellent book discussion choice. Recommended. ( )

The Orange Houses was definitely worth the read. At times the writing seemed a little raw, but the author made up for it was a very interesting plot and characters you wanted to meet. The setting was also great - it was very easy to picture the different places as the scenes played out.