“My favorite book was probably ‘Nyxia’ because they kept introducing new plot twists, and it had good character development. The book had a good conflict-resolution, and there was a lot of action throughout the book,” Dhruv Bansal, freshman, said.

“The first Gateway book I read was ‘Nyxia’, and I liked it because all my friends recommended it. I like fantasy and sci-fi books because they give another perspective on our world, like what would it be like if we have more technology. It was also adventurous and there’s Hunger Games-ish type of stuff. It has a lot of relatableness because all the characters are our age group,” Pranesh Sundararajan, freshman, said.

“Of the three Gateway books I’ve read, ‘Nyxia’ was my favorite because I like science fiction and it takes place in space and it’s futuristic. The main character is really relatable, and I’ve had a lot of students who’ve been able to relate to the character, and there’s a lot of mystery and suspense. The protagonist is a teenager who is trying to better his situation because he’s grown up in kind of a poor area. I can’t relate to that personally, but I feel like I see that kind of drive in a lot of my students. And he wants to do it for his family and make them proud, so I liked that about it too,” Nicole Scherder, language arts teacher, said.

“My favorite book was ‘The Hate You Give’ and I liked it because it was a realistic depiction of what a lot of people go through today. It was something I wasn’t previously exposed to and it opened my eyes to a lot of that. I read it as part of a book club, and it was really nice discussing that with everyone and talking about it. I also thought the author’s writing was gritty and catchy. Even though it was a realistic fiction book, it always kept my attention, so I really enjoyed it,” Sriya Kosaraju, senior, said.

“My favorite book was ‘Dear Martin’ because of how the story reflects on things Martin Luther King Jr said. The character tries to live the way he thinks Martin Luther King Jr lived his life, and he tries to make sense of the world he lives in now,” Lee Mitchell, librarian, said.

“‘Far from the Tree’ because it’s about three biologicical siblings who are separated and some of them were adopted, and the book is about reuniting them. Sometimes the media portrays really happy stories about siblings being reunited, but this story was happy and sad at the same time. The book was kind of weird because they all have different home lives, like the oldest one wasn’t adopted and was in foster care. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it before, or even real stories on the news,” Eunice Heo, junior, said.