IN Catwalk, DEBORAH GREGORY creates a new YA series that takes her famously upbeat urban voice and combines it with the appeal of Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model. Catwalk follows Pashmina, Felinez, Angora, and Aphro, four best friends at Manhattan’s Fashion International High School who are about to enter the contest of their lives. Each year, students split up into Fashion Houses and compete to design, produce, and show fully original fashion lines. The winner gets a scholarship, a professional show, and a real shot at a career in fashion. Bouncy, smart, and nearly irresistible, Catwalk is a fierce introduction to a fashion world where fabulosity trumps waist size, and there truly is room for everyone.

From a backseat kiss to passing the driving test, this collection of thirty-six poems capture the diverse joys and dramas of owning and operating a car.

One important thing a teenage girl can do for herself is learn about moneyhow to make it, save it, invest it, and spend it wisely. Through engaging and practical exercises, this guide teaches young girls valuable lessons to help themlead financially secure and independent lives.

A Thousand Never Evers, a debut novel by Shana Burg, creates a convincing portrait of the South during the Civil Rights Movement. The book follows a year in the life of Addie Ann Pickett, a girl on the verge of her early teens in Kuckapoo, Mississippi in 1963. Addie Ann goes through some of the biggest changes of her young life just as the whole world around her is changing. On the one hand, she's an ordinary girl: she babysits, she enjoys school, and has crushes. On the other hand, everything Addie Ann knows about her world is crashing down as she begins to understand more about what is really going on (in her family and in her town), her place in history as she forms her own opinions and takes personal action. Addie Ann's voice is convincing and compelling, and her story provides an important perspective on the impact of tremendous social changes occurring in the South during the early 1960s. Author Shana Burg's father was a civil rights attorney, and she grew up hearing stories about Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, and the March on Washington. Mining those stories, as well as conducting a fair amount of research and drawing upon her experiences as a teacher, paid off. Addie Ann is a courageous and memorable character--one with whom younger readers should be able identify. Her experiences can truly give readers a sense of what it might have felt like to live in those historic times. (Ages 9-12) --Heidi Broadhead