For the past few summers, at Glendale Libraries we have had teen book reviews filled out for raffle prizes as part of our Summer Reading Program. At Foothills, I have teen volunteers input those completed reviews onto the website: Reads4Teens. This year, I thought I'd give you a glimpse of some of those reviews! One of the winners of one of the raffle prizes, wrote reviews of manga. And since I love manga, I thought I'd share two of Allison's reviews!

Black Cat by Kentaro Yabuki is about Train, a former assasin for the organication Choronos. Now he works as a sweeper with his partner, Sven. They've currently been employed to bring down a mafia leader who is researching nano-machanics on human clones. Train has a great personality, Sven seems to be the more adult of the two but he definitely has a soft side. I got into this manga because of the anime t.v. show. The books are actually a lot different...and better. (by the way, Kristin totally agrees with this statement. The TV show seems to mess with the chronology of the storytelling which can feel jarring to the viewer when familiar with the manga storyline.) --reviewed by Allison W., 14

A completely different manga series that Allison also reviewed was Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi. This manga is about trying to find all the sailor scouts, a group of warriors sent to Earth with no recollection of their former lives. All they know is they must find and protect both their princess and the Silver Imperium Crystal. I practically grew up on the television series which first got me into the manga. And although these aren't five stars, they're still fun to read. --reviewed by Allison W., 14

I have to say that I have a particular fondness of Sailor Moon. It was the first manga that I picked up for myself. The anime got me through many hours of homework in college. I still love it all these years later. It's really unfortunate that the series is out of print. So if you check these out of the library, please don't cringe too badly at the sight of these books! I suspect we'll only have them for another year or less, so if you ever thought about reading them, now is the time to do it!