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Here Lies the Librarian
Synopsis: Peewee idolizes Jake, a big brother whose dreams of auto mechanic glory are fueled by the hard road coming to link their Indiana town and futures with the twentieth century. And motoring down the road comes Irene Ridpath, a young librarian with plans to astonish them all and turn Peewee’s life upside down.

This novel, with its quirky characters, folksy setting, classic cars, and hilariously larger-than-life moments, is vintage Richard Peck – an offbeat, deliciously wicked comedy that is also unexpectedly moving.

Publication Date: 04/20/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs
Synopsis: On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named
Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh
pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with
her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the
eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh,
known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town
simply as the Twins. It seems that Ab and Dolph have been
compelled by a powerful mutual love for their deceased mother
to do something extraordinary, something that in its own
twisted way bridges the gap between the living and the dead.
Immediately, Ivy's discovery provokes the revelation of a
Rumbaugh family curse, a curse that, as Ivy will learn over the
coming years, holds a strange power over herself and her own
mother.

In his third book for young adults, Jack Gantos has scripted a
completely original drama. With gothic flavor and black humor,
he depicts a group of people bound together by love,
compulsion . . . and a passion for taxidermy.

Publication Date: 04/18/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
I Is Someone Else
PATRICK COOPER
Synopsis: It is 1966, and the times, they are a-changin’. Fifteen-year-old Stephen is on his way to a summer program in France when he meets two glamorous new friends of his older brother, Rob, who has been missing for 18 months. They persuade Stephen to travel to Istanbul with them, to find his brother. And what a world opens up to him: a world of beautiful girls, drug busts, fascinating cultures, fast-moving friendships, and betrayals. As he travels further into Asia, the nature of Stephen’s journey changes: The search for his brother is replaced by an inner exploration, in which he must confront his own past, and his own dark secret.
Publication Date: 04/11/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies)
Synopsis: Half Asian and half white, Patty Ho has never felt completely home in her skin. When a Chinese fortuneteller foresees a white guy on Patty's horizon, things go from bad to worse in this debut novel by a bright new talent.
Publication Date: 04/05/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Vandal
Michael Simmons
Synopsis: Will is pretty much your average 16-year-old. He does well enough in school, plays in a rock band, chases girls with little success, and has a typical collection of oddball friends...with one significant exception. For as long as he can remember, he has been systematically beaten up--physically, mentally, and emotionally--by his older brother. Taut, gripping and at times mordantly funny, Vandal amply fulfills the promise of Michael Simmons's justly praised first novel, Pool Boy.
Publication Date: 04/04/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
La Linea
Ann Jaramillo
Synopsis:

Miguel's life is just beginning. Or so he thinks. Fifteen-year-old Miguel leaves his rancho deep in Mexico to migrate to California across la linea, the border, in a debut novel from Ann Jaramillo of life-changing, cliff-hanging moments.
But Miguel's carefully laid plans change suddenly when his younger sister Elena stows away and follows him. Together, Miguel and Elena endure hardships and danger on their journey of desperation and desire, loyalty and betrayal. An epilogue, set ten years after the events of the story, shows that you can't always count on dreams--even the ones that come true.
Latino Interest.

Publication Date: 04/04/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Rules
Cynthia Lord
Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the rules-from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"-in order to stop his embarrassing behaviors. But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a paraplegic boy, and Kristi, the next-door friend she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?
Publication Date: 04/01/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Follow the Blue
Brigid Lowry
Synopsis:

Life isn't neat and tidy. It's like a whole lot of balls of brightly colored wool thrown in a basket, with stray beginnings and endings and possibilities everywhere. Let's follow the blue.

Fifteen-year-old Bec has always been the good girl. Growing up with an eccentric celebrity chef mother and a father who suffers from depression, Bec is used to taking care of her two younger siblings and being labeled "the sensible one." But when Bec's parents decide to take a six-week tour of the U.S., she decides that she is sick of being responsible and is ready for some adventures of her own. She meets a new friend named Jaz, dyes her hair, wins money, throws her first party, and then there's the boy thing...
In this intoxicating novel by award-winning author and poet Brigid Lowry, Bec realizes that maybe she isn't so ordinary after all―and that sometimes it doesn't hurt to, as her mother would say, "lighten up and enjoy the ride."

Publication Date: 03/21/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Poison Ivy
Amy Goldman Koss
Synopsis:

"IwithVY: I told Ms. Gold about how The Evil Three have been after me, feeding off me since fourth grade.


MARCO: It isn't a very pretty story, so if you're looking for 'nice,' you better ask someone else.


ANN: We just have to come up wiht some witnesses for our side. Think! Does anyone owe you any favors?


BRYCE: I figure, Dude, why not make a little spare change on the side? A buck a bet. All's I has to do was explain that liable was civil for guilty, and they swarmed like flies."



Eight first-person narrators give different versions of the same event. Lessons about the inner workings of the judicial system pale beside the insights into human nature. With pathos and a great deal of humor, Amy Goldman Koss keeps you turning pages.



Publication Date: 03/07/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Corydon and the Island of Monsters
Synopsis: A young shepherd, Corydon, is driven out of his village because of his unusual appearance and then captured and put on display as a monster. Alongside him in the traveling freak show are Medusa, the Minotaur, the Sphinx, and other classical beasts. When Corydon helps these monsters to escape their cages, they scatter to seek peace and solitude away from prying eyes. But then an army of “heroes” arrives hoping to win glory by killing the monsters, and Corydon must unite these unloved and unlikely allies to fight for their survival and for their island home.
Publication Date: 02/28/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Clair de-Lune
Sophie Blackall, Cassandra Golds
Synopsis: Clair-de-Lune lives with her grandmother in the tippy-top of a peculiar old building. Every day she practices ballet, just like her mother before her—the famous ballerina who died when Clair-de-Lune was just a baby. Since that day, Clair-de-Lune hasn’t uttered a word.
Then one day the girl who cannot speak meets a remarkable mouse who can. Bonaventure dreams of founding a dancing school just for mice—but he dreams of helping his new friend, too. Soon the brave little mouse introduces Clair-de-Lune to a hidden world inside, and yet somehow beyond, her building—a world that slowly begins to open her heart. Maybe one day her dreams will come true, too.
Publication Date: 02/14/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
Synopsis: Simone’s starting her junior year in high school. Her mom’s a lawyer for the ACLU, her dad’s a political cartoonist, so she’s grown up standing outside the organic food coop asking people to sign petitions for worthy causes. She’s got a terrific younger brother and amazing friends. And she’s got a secret crush on a really smart and funny guy–who spends all of his time with another girl.

Then her birth mother contacts her. Simone’s always known she was adopted, but she never wanted to know anything about it. She’s happy with her family just as it is, thank you.

She learns who her birth mother was–a 16-year-old girl named Rivka. Who is Rivka? Why has she contacted Simone? Why now? The answers lead Simone to deeper feelings of anguish and love than she has ever known, and to question everything she once took for granted about faith, life, the afterlife, and what it means to be a daughter.
Publication Date: 02/14/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Jack's Knife
Chris Wood, Beverley Wood
Synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Jackson has big dreams fueled by long talks with his elderly next-door neighbor, Al McMann. At 91, McMann has many stories about policing the northwest as a young man. But their friendship worries Jackson's single mom, who finds it "unhealthy." When she insists that Jack break off the friendship and sign up for community baseball instead, he is hurt and angry. When a stray dog turns up, his mother demands they call animal control, and Jack ends up dodging the dogcatcher with his new friend. Ducking through a fence, he stumbles into an unfamiliar place — Juneau, Alaska in the mid-1930s, where he’s soon involved with a fledgling law-enforcement team that just might need his help. This new young adult novel from the husband-and-wife team of Chris and Beverley Wood blends a compelling story of a troubled teen and his canine best friend with an exciting time-travel adventure.
Publication Date: 02/07/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Grand and Humble
Brent Hartinger
Synopsis: Alternating chapters follow the lives of two very different high school boys, popular Harlan and geeky Manny, whose recent nightmares and premonitions of disaster are linked to mysterious past events. By the author of Last Chance Texaco.
Publication Date: 02/01/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love
Synopsis: Meet Felicia, 14-year-old student at the Manhattan Free Children’s School (also known as the Pound). In Felicia's world, she and her best friends, Jess and Kat, like to refer to themselves as the Sex Kittens, and the boys they know as the Horn Dawgs.
Felicia is getting tired of waiting for a Horn Dawg to notice her uniqueness, however. So she devises a project she and the object of her affection, Matthew the Science Brain, can work on together. Felicia is determined to discover the Secret of Love with Matthew while winning both Matthew’s heart and the science fair. But love has other plans.
(Doesn’t it always?)
Publication Date: 01/24/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
The Fruit Bowl Project
Sarah Durkee
Synopsis: Call it six degrees of separation. The kids in 8th Grade Writer’s Workshop are awestruck when their teacher announces that through her husband’s cousin, she’s met rock superstar Nick Thompson and has invited him to their class. He’s come to talk about writing and he’s even cooler than they imagined. Nick, known for his music as well as his lyrics, tells the kids his secret: A song is just a bowl of fruit–one must figure out how to paint it. Words are to a writer what paint is to a painter. How many ways can one arrange the fruit? An infinite number. There’s style, voice, genre, and much more to consider. Nick gives the kids two weeks to complete the assignment using seven seemingly ordinary elements. Each student must tell an interesting story, reflecting his or her style. And so The Fruit Bowl Project begins. Rap, poetry, monologue, screenplay, haiku, fairy tale–and more.
Publication Date: 01/24/06
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Juvenile Fiction

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