Adventure

The Wednesday Wars
Gary D. Schmidt
In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt offers an unforgettable antihero. THE WEDNESDAY WARS is a wonderfully witty and compelling story about a teenage boy’s mishaps and adventures over the course of the 1967–68 school year.Meet Holling Hoodhood, a seventh-grader at Camillo Junior High, who must spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, while the rest of the class has religious instruction. Mrs. Baker doesn’t like Holling—he’s sure of it. Why else would she make him read the plays of William Shakespeare outside class? But everyone has bigger things to worry about, like Vietnam. His father wants Holling and his sister to be on their best behavior: the success of his business depends on it. But how can Holling stay out of trouble when he has so much to contend with? A bully demanding cream puffs; angry rats; and a baseball hero signing autographs the very same night Holling has to appear in a play in yellow tights! As fate sneaks up on him again and again, Holling finds Motivation—the Big M—in the most unexpected places and musters up the courage to embrace his destiny, in spite of himself.
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Going Nowhere Faster
Sean Beaudoin
Stan Smith has the world's dullest name, and the world's dullest life to go with it. At 17, the former junior chess champion turned "Town's Laziest Register Monkey at the Town's Only Video Store" has no car, no college, and, of course, no girl. If that weren't pathetic enough, he's got an organic-food-freak vegan mother, an eccentric inventor father, a dead-end job, a dog with a flatulence problem, and a former classmate threatening to kill him. With a 165 IQ, Stan was expected to Be Something and Go Somewhere. But when all he has is a beat-up old bike that keeps getting vandalized, he's going nowhere, faster.
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This is What I Did
Ann Dee Ellis
Imagine if you had witnessed something horrific. Imagine if it had happened to your friend. And imagine if you hadn't done anything to help. That's what it's like to be Logan, an utterly frank, slightly awkward, and extremely loveable outcast enmeshed in a mysterious psychological drama. This story allows readers to piece together the sequence of events that has changed his life and changed his perspective on what it means to be a good friend and what it means to be a good person. This is What I Did: is a powerful read with clever touches, such as palindrome notes, strewn throughout the story and incorporated into the unique design of the book.
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Chloe Doe
Suzanne Phillips
Chloe Doe chronicles a 17-year-old girl's tumultuous path to becoming a prostitute and her ultimate transformation back into mainstream society. During her therapy at Madeline Parker Institute for Girls, Chloe slowly reveals aspects of her painful past--the stepfather who abused her sister, the mother who let it all happen, the need to love and be loved--and faces the future she finally decides to build for herself. Told in heart-wrenching language that's sometimes caustic, often ironic, and always authentic, Chloe Doe is certain to find a place among classics about teens that triumph over their loneliness and desperation to find hope.
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One Whole and Perfect Day
Judith Clarke
In this Michael L. Printz Honor Book, Lily wishes she could be like the other girls in her class. But how can she? As the only sensible person in her family, she never has time to hang out with friends. Someone has to stay home to look after her brother. Maybe she should fall in love! What could be less sensible that that? When her grandmother invites the whole family to a party, Lily cannot imagine how they will make it through the day. Her mother is always bringing home strange people. Lily doesn't even know her father . Her grandfather has disowned her brother. Her brother has a new girlfriend that no one has met. To top it all off, that day when her eye caught Daniel Steadman's just for a moment, she felt all woozy inside. If that was love, she isn't sure she likes the feeling. As the party approaches, all Lily can hope for is one whole and perfect day. Is it too much to ask?
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Booth's Daughter
Raymond Wemmlinger
The niece of Lincoln's assassin comes to terms with her family's genius and tragic history. In March 1880 at age eighteen, Edwina is experiencing many new things. For the first time she sees her actor father, Edwin Booth, in King Lear, a play he had considered "too harsh for a young lady." For the first time she finds herself squarely facing the burden carried by her family name for more than a decade: the assassination of President Lincoln by her uncle John Wilkes Booth. And for the first time she is in love, with Downing Vaux, an artist whose father, like Edwina's, is famous. Edwina leaves Downing behind when her father insists that she accompany him on a year-long theatrical tour abroad. Downing is loyal, however, and when she returns to New York, they become engaged. But when the assassination of President Garfield thrusts the Booth family back into the limelight, Edwina finds that she must travel abroad again with her father, and Downing's devotion is tested. Forced to reexamine her life, Edwina faces a difficult choice between duty and the pursuit of happiness.
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Deep and Dark and Dangerous
Mary Downing Hahn
Just before summer begins, 13-year-old Ali finds an odd photograph in the attic. She knows the two children in it are her mother, Claire, and her aunt Dulcie. But who’s the third person, the one who’s been torn out of the picture? Ali figures she’ll find out while she’s vacationing in Maine with Dulcie and her four-year-old daughter, Emma, in the house where Ali’s mother’s family used to spend summers. All hopes for relaxation are quashed shortly after their arrival, though, when the girls meet Sissy, a kid who’s mean and spiteful and a bad influence on Emma. Strangest of all, Sissy keeps talking about a girl named Teresa who drowned under mysterious circumstances back when Claire and Dulcie were kids, and whose body was never found. At first Ali thinks Sissy’s just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry. . . . Mary Downing Hahn is at her chilling best in this new supernatural tale that’s certain to send shivers down her readers’ spines.
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Not Like You
Deborah Davis
"Starting a new chapter" is how Kayla’s mother, Marilyn, has always referred to their abrupt movesfive in the past two years. But what 15-year-old Kayla hates even more than moving is Marilyn’s drinking. It once landed Kayla in foster care, and she’ll do anything to keep that from happening again, even if it means making sacrifices in her own life to keep her mother from falling apart.Now Marilyn has moved them to New Mexico and promised, yet again, to quit booze for good. Kayla knows better than to believe her, but something about this move does feel different. Kayla is putting down roots, earning money as a dog walker, and spending time with Remy, a 24-year-old musician. And after years of taking care of her mother, Kayla is starting to think of herself and who she wants to be. She knows for sure who she doesn’t want to be. But is she willing to do whatever it takes to create a different life for herselfeven if it means leaving her mother behind?Sharply honest and beautifully written, this powerful novel is about loving someone else enough to stay with her through anythingand loving yourself enough to let her go.
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Lorenzo and the Turncoat
Rick Guzman, Lila Guzman
In Lorenzo Bannister’s latest adventure, he is living in New Orleans and working as a medical doctor. Between his promising medical practice and his love for his fiancée Eugenie, Lorenzo is finally happy and at peace after working for the Continental Army. But his happiness is short lived. A hurricane sweeps through New Orleans two days before Lorenzo and Eugenie’s wedding, leaving the town severely damaged and Eugenie missing. Frantic with fear and worry, Lorenzo searches the flooded, demolished city for his fiancée. It is Lorenzo’s friend and mentor, Colonel De Gálvez, who must tell Lorenzo the shocking news: Eugenie has been seen in Baton Rouge in the company of a British man. Lorenzo is determined to find answers to the puzzling questions about Eugenie’s departure from New Orleans. Facing the possibility that she may be a traitor to the Spanish cause, Lorenzo joins the Spanish Army and makes his way to Baton Rouge along with the troops Colonel De Gálvez has assembled to attack the British. Once again, Lorenzo finds himself on a dangerous mission, this time in desperate pursuit of his fiancée while waging war on the Redcoats.
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What Happened
Peter Johnson
A hit-and-run accident threatens the happiness of two teenage borthers and exposes deeper mysteries. An unnamed sixteen-year-old's account of events begins on a snowy evening after his brother Kyle brawls with a classmate, Duane, over Duane's tsister, the beautiful Emily. The two basketball stars make apparent amends, and Duane offers the brothers a ride home from a party. Drunk and still fuming at Kyle, Duane drives recklessly to scare his passengers. Duane hits someone on the road and then leaves Kyle, the narrator, and the victim's body to freeze while he speeds away. The next day, the narrator and Kyle must face Duane's powerful father. The man hated the boys' father when the two adults were in high school, and he hates Kyle for dating Emily. The brothers learn that the abandonment by their father after their mother's drath is only the tip of their father's mysterious history and only a sliver of What Happened.