All eleven-year old Pip wanted was a best friend. When Pip gets a horse for her birthday she is delighted. She thinks that the horse she names Buck will be her best friend from the moment that they meet. But she finds out that friendship does not come that easily. Her father gently guides her so that Pip can discover for herself how to make Buck a true friend. Pip's new friend, Buck, has a story of his own. After leaving his own herd, to move to Pip's house, he is looking for a relationship that will help him feel safe. He, too, learns that making a friend takes patience and understanding.

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

In this stunning debut novel, two very different characters—a black boy who loses his home in Hurricane Katrina and a white boy in Vermont who loses his best friend in a tragic accident—come together to find healing.   A hurricane, a tragic death, two boys, one marble. How they intertwine is at the heart of this beautiful, poignant book. When ten-year-old Zavion loses his home in Hurricane Katrina, he and his father are forced to flee to Baton Rouge. And when Henry, a ten-year-old boy in northern Vermont, tragically loses his best friend, Wayne, he flees to ravaged New Orleans to help with hurricane relief efforts—and to search for a marble that was in the pocket of a pair of jeans donated to the Red Cross.   Rich with imagery and crackling with hope, this is the unforgettable story of how lives connect in unexpected, even magical, ways.   “In Smith’s poetic hands, this poignant story barrels across the pages and into the reader’s heart, reminding us that magic can arise from the deepest tragedy.” —Kathi Appelt, Newbery Honor Award winner and two-time National Book Award Finalist

Set in Korea, this multicultural, middle-reader novel is the riveting story of a magical realm, a little girl, her brother and a daring rescue. So annoying…In Young-hee's life everything feels wrong. It seemed like only yesterday that her world was just as it should be. But now her dad is gone, her mom is overextended, and Young-hee is forced to move back to Seoul—and not a nice part of Seoul, either. To make matters worse, the girls at her new school are nasty, and her little brother Bum is an insufferable, attention-hogging pain.Then Young-hee stumbles into a magical world, where the fairy stories of her childhood are real and all the frustrations of her everyday life fade away—until Bum is kidnapped, and the only way Young-hee can save him is by finding the magical pullocho plant. Soon, she is plunged into an epic quest, encountering dragons and fairies and facing decisions that affect not only Bum, but the fate of an entire world.In Young-hee and the Pullocho, debut novelist Mark James Russell puts a Korean spin on an evergreen fantasy trope, interweaving Korean folktales with the story of a young girl who, without realizing it, is in search of herself. Readers of all ages will want to join Young-hee as she journeys from the dingiest part of Seoul to enchanted lands that prove more beautiful—and more dangerous—than she ever could have imagined.