Klass, David. 
FIRESTORM
New York : Frances Foster Books, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 0374323070

(2 booktalks)

Firestorm is the first novel in the Caretaker Trilogy.  In it high school senior Jack Danielson promises if: "You want pace? I'll give you pace. You want weird? Stick around, my friend." His parents have always taught him to keep a low profile.  But that isn’t easy for a star running back on the football team.  He barely has time to savor a Friday Night football victory before his father whisks him away; telling him that everything the teen believes up to this day has been a lie. Because Jack hasn’t taken his father’s advice, the high profile interview on the evening sportscast has brought him to the attention of sinister forces. His father calls Jack "our beacon of hope." After the game he sends him off in a flurry of laser blasts, and with mysterious warnings about who to trust, to a boat to cross the Hudson River. In New York City, an attractive girl, Niko, finds Jack and defeats him after a combination kung fu and kickboxing fight. She becomes his personal trainer. Gisco, a telekinetic dog, ends up Jack's only friend on his sudden, surreal journey. A visionary from the far future has sent Jack back in time to stem the tides brought by global warming. Meanwhile, trailing him is the Dark Army, which thrives in the deteriorated Earth of the future. In this sci-fi thriller, Jack is on a mission to find Firestorm and save the earth.  (Mary M. Silgals, Trident Academy, for South Carolina Young Adult Book Awards, 2008-2009)

Booktalk #2

When Jack, who has always been told to blend in, sets the school rushing record, he puts into motion a course of events including finding out his parents aren’t really his parents, running for his life from a shape-shifting wolf girl, communicating telepathically with a dog named Gisco, being trained by a ninja babe named Eko, and finding out he is the only one who can save the world from ecological disaster if he can find “firestorm.” (Florida Teen Read, 2009)