Ok, here are some books I've read recently.
Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke. She's a great author, although this is a pretty light book. Igraine is the only daughter of the most famous magicians around. Her one brother wants to be a magician too, but Igraine wants to be a night. When the Spikey Knight (no joke) threatens their castle, Igraine gets her chance to see what knighthood is really like and what magic can really do.

I am the Ice Worm can also be found titled Alone in the Ice World, by Maryann Easley. It was a short read set in the late 70s about a teenage girl who goes to live with her mother in a remote Alaskan village. While traveling to meet her mother, Allison's plane crashes and she is stranded when the pilot is killed. Rescued by a native, she sees an entirely new world she doesn't understand or like.
The only problem I had with this book was Allison. She was so completely petty that is was REALLY annoying and I had a hard time reading some of the book. It would be good for a younger audience to introduce them to Julie of the Wolves or some other survival story. This one is about 100 pages long.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (who I always imagined to be a woman but is actually a man) was a really interesting book. It was highly recommended to me, but I'm not really sure what to think about it. Artemis Fowl is a 12 year old crime lord (part of a crime lord family) and since his father's disappearance, Artemis needs to score some major points (and gold) for his family. He decides to kidnap a leprechaun (which in this book is what the fairies, elves, dwarves, sprites, etc. call their police force) for ransom. Due to the fantastic nature of the book and that fact that the crime lord is in fact a 12 year old boy, it was a bit of an odd story. It's often hard to determine which side to root for (since Artemis, although the main character, is also doing something that is wrong). If anyone else has read it let me know.

I posted a while back on Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. Here now is the sequel, Love, Stargirl. It picks up 1 year after the original novel ends, but this time is told entirely through Stargirl's eyes in a monster letter to Leo (the boyfriend of the first book). It's kind of fun to see Stargirl through her eyes, and I really loved seeing when she doubted herself, since she is such a nonconformist and a strong character, it was nice to see her moments of weakness too. All in all, a good book, just not as great as the first one.