Print
How To Write A Novel (a novel)
Melanie Sumner
Aristotle "Aris" Thibodeau is 12.5 years old and destined for greatness. Ever since her father’s death, however, she’s been stuck in the small town of Kanuga, Georgia, where she has to manage her mother Diane’s floundering love life and dubious commitment to her job as an English professor. Not to mention co-parenting a little brother who hogs all the therapy money. Luckily, Aris has a plan. Following the advice laid out in Write a Novel in Thirty Days! she sets out to pen a bestseller using her charmingly dysfunctional family as material. If the Mom-character, Diane, would ditch online dating and accept that the perfect man is clearly the handyman/nanny-character, Penn MacGuffin, Aris would have the essential romance for her plot (and a father in her real life). But when a random accident uncovers a dark part of Thibodeau family history, Aris is forced to confront the fact that sometimes in life—as in great literature—things might not work out exactly as planned.
Book Details
Recommended Books
Chasing Secrets
Gennifer Choldenko
Newbery Honor–winning author Gennifer Choldenko deftly combines humor, tragedy, fascinating historical detail, and a medical mystery in this exuberant new novel.San Francisco, 1900. The Gilded Age. A fantastic time to be alive for lots of people . . . but not thirteen-year-old Lizzie Kennedy, stuck at Miss Barstow’s snobby school for girls. Lizzie’s secret passion is science, an unsuitable subject for finishing-school girls. Lizzie lives to go on house calls with her physician father. On those visits to his patients, she discovers a hidden dark side of the city—a side that’s full of secrets, rats, and rumors of the plague.The newspapers, her powerful uncle, and her beloved papa all deny that the plague has reached San Francisco. So why is the heart of the city under quarantine? Why are angry mobs trying to burn Chinatown to the ground? Why is Noah, the Chinese cook’s son, suddenly making Lizzie question everything she has known to be true? Ignoring the rules of race and class, Lizzie and Noah must put the pieces together in a heart-stopping race to save the people they love.Winner of a Los Angeles Public Library FOCAL (Friends of Children and Literature) AwardNominated for:Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice AwardsTennessee Volunteer State Book Award (Middle School division)Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL) Readers AwardCalifornia Library Association’s Beatty Award, Eureka List
Book Details
Recommended Books
Wabanaki Blues
Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel
“Some days you appreciate the dead; others, you don’t dare think about them.”These are the words of Mona Lisa LaPierre, teen blues musician, also known as the girl who never smiles. When her out-of-touch parents send her to the New Hampshire boondocks to stay with Grumps, her reclusive grandfather, Mona is not exactly thrilled. She nevertheless slings her beloved guitar, Rosalita, over her shoulder, says goodbye to Beetle, the oblivious boy she adores and sets out to meet her destiny. Destiny pops up in various forms: a blonde bear name Marilynn with a fondness for bananas, a fellow musician named Del, and a green-flamed motorcycle that was last seen racing away from her high school the day a girl from her school named Mia Delaney disappeared eighteen years ago.Mona’s search for Mia’s murderer becomes a quest for identity, love, and meaning. She is guided along the way by Grumps and her dead Grandmother, Bilki, whose spirit speaks to her in moments of need. Mona’s amazing journey is enriched by Native American traditions, a passion for music and art, and her growing realization that to achieve what is most important in her life, she must sacrifice what she most loves. This is the first book in the Wabanaki Trilogy. Each of these books contains a terrestrial and a celestial mystery that helps Mona find her place in the universe.
Book Details
Recommended Books
The Way Back From Broken
Amber J. Keyser
Rakmen Cannon's life is turning out to be one sucker punch after another. His baby sister died in his arms, his parents are on the verge of divorce, and he's flunking out of high school. The only place he fits in is with the other art therapy kids stuck in the basement of Promise House, otherwise known as support group central. Not that he wants to be there. Talking doesn't bring back the dead. When he's shipped off to the Canadian wilderness with ten-year-old Jacey, another member of the support group, and her mom, his summer goes from bad to worse. He can't imagine how eight weeks of canoeing and camping could be anything but awful. Yet despite his expectations, the vast and unforgiving backcountry just might give Rakmen a chance to find the way back from broken . . . if he's brave enough to grab it. Amber J. Keyser's debut novel is a wrenching and brutally honest story of adversity and hope.
Book Details
Recommended Books
The Anatomy of Curiosity
Brenna Yovanoff, Tessa Gratton, Maggie Stiefvater
The follow-up to the acclaimed novel The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff. In an unassuming corner of Brooklyn, a young woman learns to be ladylike, to love context, and to speak her mind from a very curious sort of tutor. In a faraway land convulsed by war, a young soldier hears the desert's curious hum as he disarms bombs with the person he doesn't know how to love. In a place so shriveled by drought that any drowning is a curiosity, a young writer tries again and again to tread water beneath the surface of a vast and unusual sea. Three new stories complete with commentary on the creative process from three acclaimed young adult authors working at the height of their powers.
Book Details
Recommended Books
Over the Tracks
Heather Duffy-Stone
For most of Lucy's life, it's just been her and her mom, and Lucy's been okay with that. But when a serious illness strikes Lucy's mother, Lucy has to grow up faster than she expected. As the illness gets worse and money gets tighter, even a school trip?which Lucy hoped would give her a break from home?seems out of reach. Out of frustration and desperation, Lucy starts selling her mom's medical marijuana. But she's not exactly an experienced dealer. And when Lucy gets busted, she has some serious explaining to do?to school authorities, to the police, and to her mom.
Book Details
Recommended Books
A Cut Too Far
Herman Brown
School has never been fun for Chace. Because of his huge jaw and crooked teeth, he rarely gets through a day of classes without bullies like Ivan taunting him. Things worsen when Chace's mom starts dating an Iranian man and Ivan's harassment takes a racist turn. Chace has had enough and decides to retaliate. But when Chace's Internet threats backfire, the result is a suspension from school. Now Chace will have to explain to his mom how his attempt to defend her made him look like the bad guy. And he'll have to figure out how to deal with a struggle that he can't seem to win.
Book Details
Recommended Books
Testing the Truth
Shannon Knudsen
"I may be in trouble…but there's more to my story. When Kai Tamura sneaks into Ms. Opal's classroom for a look at an upcoming exam, he discovers that he's not the only one breaking rules. Ms. Opal is changing answers on her students' standardized tests and Kai snaps some photos to prove it. Kai doesn't decide to bust Ms. Opal right away. He was trying to cheat too, after all. But a classroom conflict forces Kai to put Ms. Opal's actions out in the open. Soon Kai has a new problem: people don't believe him. Forget about a lousy exam score Kai's suspension from school will really hurt his record, unless he can prove his photos are legit. [List of series titles] "
Book Details
Recommended Books
Out of Darkness
Ashley Hope Pérez
A 2016 Michael L. Printz Honor Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year2016 Tomás Rivera Book Award Winner "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine." The New York Times Book Review "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion the worst school disaster in American history as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people.
Book Details
Recommended Books
Beyond Suspicion
Catherine Winn
Her mom’s remarriage has been hard on fifteen year old Shelby. Roger is strict and treats her like a child. At least they’re letting her go to her first boy-girl party. That is until she gets home from school and finds that Roger has changed his mind―he wants Shelby to babysit her year-old brother Josh. It’s so unfair! Fuming, Shelby takes Josh in his stroller to the park. After all, it’s not his fault. Someone sets off fireworks, distracting Shelby. When she turns around―Josh is gone.Shelby tells the police she’s seen a white van cruising the neighborhood lately, and she thinks she saw it at the park as well. But to her horror, the police are not interested: Pointing to angry texts to her girlfriends about getting back at Roger, they accuse her of causing Josh’s disappearance! The police focus on the woods around the park, driving Shelby wild with fear and anger that the kidnappers will get away. With TV reporters all over the front yard, Shelby sneaks out the back to find her brother, any way she can.So begins Shelby’s race against time―and against a world that has turned on her. And yet she finds help along the way. There’s mysterious Matt, who says he wants to help, but doesn’t seem to want anyone to know it. And there’s Jess, who watches out for Shelby as, against the odds, she tracks down the kidnappers down just as they are leaving town.
Book Details
Recommended Books