Doors seem to close at every turn in this exciting basketball-based book. The Wasps' community center is closing. The team is disbanding. Money is gone. All these happen in the midst of a local championship tournament. Young sports fans will enjoy the play-by-play descriptions of the critical games while experiencing a story that illustrates that sometimes character overcomes resources.

Little Charlie is but a 12-year-old sharecropper’s son. When his father dies, Charlie is bribed to join a cruel slave catcher on a mission to Dee-troit for two runaways. The journey is bitter, and the Cap’n he accompanies is evil, lying to everyone along the way. Charlie desperately needs the money but does not trust the Cap’n. On his journey Charlie learns of the brutal punishments for slav ...

When father and son have different perspectives on what is worth pursuing, both have an opportunity to grow. That's what happens in this story of sports, music, family, and discovery. Great for young soccer fans, but will appeal to a wider audience, too.

"Who can Merci trust when all the relationships wobble? Succeeding as a sixth-grader is challenging for any preteen but especially hard for Merci Suarez. Her tight-knit Hispanic family is being torn by a secret no one will share. Her upscale, private school is rife with adolescent angst, flimsy friendships and “girl drama”. How can she excel in school when she does not fill academic expectatio ...

This character-driven plot focuses on the emotions the daughter of mixed-race parents goes through when she receives a racist note at her new middle school. Anger, confusion, fear, frustration fog her steps to justice. Streamlined writing walks readers through Yasmin's difficult choices that ultimately lead to maturity and restoration within her community of friends, teammates, parents, and school ...

Anton loves playing football until Malik, the talented quarterback, starts acting strange. Instead of working with the team, Malik is just showing off. Anton has to fix the problem fast, before the quarterback ruins everything!

Homeless immigrant Mia goes with her Mom and Dad to run the Calivista, a low-budget motel in southern California. Although they now have a roof over their heads, it takes “all hands on deck” to run the motel, and ten-year-old Mia becomes the front-desk manager. Mr. Yao, the owner, is a cruel skin-flint making the family’s life miserable, and Mia cannot escape him even at school because his s ...

Time travel enables an intergenerational friendship (and interesting family relationship) that will ultimately change both boys beyond their on-stage experiences. A beautiful story that celebrates family and grit! Note: “fart|farting” is used in describing a dog

Chattana is a fantasy city entirely sustained by the Governor who brought peace long ago. But the price was crippling loss of personal freedoms. Three unlikely preteens begin to question his “law and order” message. Pong is an observant boy who escapes from Namwon prison where he was born and hides in a Buddhist monastery where he learns patience and compassion. Perfectionist Nok is the warden ...

Told in free verse, this is a tale of survival and the human spirit. The African land of Darfur is the home of Amira, a young girl with hopes and dreams of going to school. But her village is very poor, and her mother believes she must forgo learning and focus on her family. When neighboring Sudanese tribes attack and her father is killed, Amira, her mother, and sister must leave and make the peri ...

Bell Kirby is an expert at systems, whether he’s designing the world’s most elaborate habitat for his pet chinchilla, re-creating Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest inventions in his garage, or avoiding Parker Hellickson, the most diabolical bully Village Green Elementary has ever seen. Since third grade, Parker has tormented Bell, who’s spent two long years devising a finely tuned system that k ...

After eleven-year-old June Ball’s dad disappears without so much as a goodbye note, June’s mother sends him on the road with his adult cousins, mechanics Thomas and Cornell Ball. The Balls are “Ford Men”; their calling in life is to restore old Ford cars?and only Ford cars?that no longer run. And so begins a summer traveling the highways and byways of America, encountering busted-up Fairla ...

On August 6 each year the people of Hiroshima, Japan, set paper lanterns afloat in the river as a remembrance to those killed by the bomb dropped there in 1945. Three school children, Kozo, Shun, and Nozomi are budding artists challenged by their teachers to create a display the children choose to call Hiroshima: Then and Now for their families and classmates. Over the summer they ask friends and ...

In 1910 West Texas, the last camel of the US Army roams the desert. Zada has lived a long and adventurous life from Turkey to America. She’s made friends with fellow camel racers for the Pasha and with many more camels on a rocky sailing ship. She has lately befriended two kestrels and their hatchlings. But the real adventure begins with a huge sandstorm when the parent birds are blown away. Zad ...

What is Marvel to do? She fears literally everything: school, classmates, being out alone, teachers, global warming, earthquakes, and even that pile of refuse plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean! And now her overwhelming anxieties and accompanying absences are causing her to fail 7th grade. Enter a precious, little fainting goat being abused by a group of jr. high boys. Without hesitation Marvel ...

Two young girls, Lulu and Serena, find themselves alone parked in Dad’s SUV at a campground in Montana. Their mother has recently died of cancer, and their dad is now missing. Lulu is twelve with a strong sense of “stepping up” to problems, but the problem to care for herself and her sister is enormous. Money is limited to $67 and winter is coming. Being new to the area, they don’t have an ...

Snow Hill, Alabama 1937 sets the stage for conveying important complexities Brother, a privileged white boy experiences when befriending Champion Always Luckey, a black boy from Detroit. While the plot isn't necessarily compelling, the power of healing a racial divide is as portrayed here. An excellent springboard for timelining events of that period.

Fantasy, yes. But somehow this imaginative novel has feet firmly planted on a solid foundation of Truth. A follower of Christ, L'Engle saw no divide but only connection between the earthly and heavenly realm and was able to articulate biblical truths with complete relevance. Wrinkle in Time readers become fully immersed in fantastical travel, characters who appear to shift based on the demand of t ...