Elena is lost in the shuffle between her three overachieving siblings. But now that she’s on her own for a whole semester, she intends to keep the spotlight on herself—and Spain is just the place to do it. Once she starts living it up in tapas bars, lying out on the beach (even though it’s November), and having a nice, long siesta smack-dab in the middle of every day, Elena finds that Spain is everything she hoped it would be. She’s even met a to-fawn-over Spaniard, Miguel. But Elena has always been more comfortable writing plays than starring in them, and she’s beginning to realize that keeping out of the spotlight has its perks too. . . .

Meet the best friends who call themselves The Bubblebum Babes: Emily – the sweet, shy girl, Megan – cool and sassy, Sara - the smart tomboy, and Kelly –all-American girl. The stories of four twelve year old girls’ first year in middle school are told by Kelly, who plays a part in each of the girl’s life struggles -- from boy problems to report card issues, jealousy, and the trouble with parents. The girls share it all at “Bubblegum Babe Meets” -- weekend sleepovers that include eating pizza, girl talk, and much laughing and crying. Sixth grade isn’t easy. But the Bubblegum Babes survive it because, well, very simply – they have each other. The Bubblegum Babes’ Guide to Sixth Grade is the first in a series of books about friendship and growing up. Written in vignette style by Novelist, Doreen Lewis, the Babe characters are inspired by the real lives of Lewis’s children and their friends.

A vivid portrait of an uncommon friendship that spans generations, uniting the wisdom of youth with the spark of old ageThey met under the least auspicious circumstances. He was a teenage volunteer at a nursing home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was a wheelchair-bound resident in her nineties. He was poor, Hispanic, living in a rented room in the barrio, separated from his family. Her life, at least before arthritis hobbled her, was comfortable, and her daughters and grandchildren visited as often as they could. But when Margaret Oliver’s daughter hired Elvis Checo to look in on her mother a few afternoons each week, nobody realized that this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.In His Oldest Friend, Sonny Kleinfield of The New York Times takes us inside the lives of these two unlikely friends to explore the world of the very young and the very old, showing how underappreciated these groups often are—a mystery to one another and to so many of us in the middle-class adult population. Too often we tend to group together “youth” and “the elderly,” submerging individuals into a group identity. But Elvis and Margaret offer each other that rarest of gifts: recognition and affirmation as a unique human being. Kleinfield opens their lives to us, and shows how their bond of friendship rescued each of them from the bleakness that defeats so many of the youngest and oldest among us.

THE NOBODIES Fern Drudger's quirky adventures continue in this delightful sequel to The Anybodies. She goes to Camp Happy Sunshine Good Times and is bombarded by desperate messages from people who call themselves the Nobodies. But who are the Nobodies, and what do they want from Fern?