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The Watsons Go To Birmingham. By Christopher Curtis

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The Watsons Go To Birmingham. By Christopher Curtis

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A story about a family coming together and going on a road trip.

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Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone is about a group of middle schoolers that face an unfair dress code at school. All year long girls are dress coded because their shorts are too short and they are wearing a tank top. These clothes apparently are inappropriate and interfere with learning but Molly Frost won't stand for it. Molly decides to start a podcast, Dress Coded, and interview other students about the times they had been dress coded.

Watch as Molly and her friends deal with drama in their lives while standing up for what they believe in.

- Stella

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Fifty-Four Things Wrong With Gwendolyn Rogers by Caela Carter

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Fifty-Four Things Wrong With Gwendolyn Rogers by Caela Carter

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Fifty-Four Things Wrong With Gwendolyn Rogers is a book about a kid who thinks she has a problem. Gwen makes a list of 54 things that are wrong about herself and uses it to try and become better student, daughter and friend. Throughout the book Gwen and her mom try many ways to solve Gwen's problem.

Can Gwen fix the 54 things wrong with her?

- Stella

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When Jack's foster brother comes to live with him, all he knows are that he almost killed a teacher, he was incarcerated at a place called Stone mountain, and he has a daughter. He has never met her, and at first, Jack doesn't know how desperate he is to meet her, and how, when he finds out, desperate he will be to help him.

- Victoria

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Becoming Muhammad Ail: by James Patterson and Kwane Alexander

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Becoming Muhammad Ail: by James Patterson and Kwane Alexander

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This book tells you how the best boxer of all time grew up. You learn how he fought and how he stood up for his town- Toby Stark

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good book. Extremely interesting. For war lovers.

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A Fence Away From Freedom by Ellen Levine

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A Fence Away From Freedom by Ellen Levine

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Good Book

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Crush Stuff is a book about three girls who are best friends. Fonda, Drew and Ruthie plus other kids in their class are doing a debate on which 7th grade place they should stay at. I really enjoyed this book! Read the other books in the series too!

-Olivia F

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Stargazing by Jen Wang is a graphic novel that really pulls you inside the book. Christine and Moon become best friends and have two different personalities.
-Olivia F

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The Okay Witch by Emma Steinkellner is a book about a person called Moth Hush. Moth Hush figures out they are a witch. Fulfilling  their dreams of being a witch, but is this really what they wanted?

- Jianjian Sun

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A Diamond in the Desert- Kathryn Fitzmaurice

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A Diamond in the Desert- Kathryn Fitzmaurice

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This book is really good and it is about a boy in a Japanese internment camp. In the camp they start playing baseball and he is rally good at it, then something happens  to his sister.........    This book is really good!
-Julia

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The Front Desk series is about a Chinese Immigrant, Mia Tang, who faces a lot of boundaries and stereotypes. While Mia works at the front desk after school her parents clean the rooms and stay up all night. But they can't quit. If they do they will have to go back to living in a car...

Can Mia help her family break free from these hard conditions? or will they be poor forever?
-Stella

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This amazing story is about an apocalypse of Tacos. This is a amazing story with a lot of twists and turns.

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This amazing story is about a kid named Jack trying to survive a monster and zombie apocalypse. He meets people on the way and learns how to live in the almost fully taken over world.

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There are three books Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay.

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The Hunger Games series by Susan Collins  is about a teenager named Katniss Everdeen who is forced to join a fight to the death battle made by the Capitol who she tries to overpower.
-Ko

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Percy Jackson is just a normal boy until BAM! His math teacher tries to kill him, three old ladies cut a string dramatically in front of him, he figures out his best friend is a satyr, a big animal that looks like a bull tries to kill him, his mom evaporates into golden dust right in front of his eyes, he figures out that he’s a demigod, half god and half mortal, and the only place that he’ll be safe is a camp for kids like him that’s ruled by the Greek god of wine, Dionysus. It changes his life. Then, Percy gets a quest. Being attacked by monsters every minute is just great.

Read to find out how being a demigod changes Percy’s life forever.

-Colette

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Gladys Gastby has always wanted to be a real baker. Her parents have never approved of her baking though. One day at school, the substitute teacher tells the class to write essays about what they want to be when they grow up for the famous newspaper to pick one from all over East Dumpsford and publish it in the newspaper. Gladys’ is about baking, of course, and the famous editor for the newspaper’s dining section gets the essay written like a letter and hires Gladys as a restaurant critic for the famous newspaper.

Can Gladys keep her big secret from everyone she knows?

-Colette

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Margaret Thursday arrived on the church steps on a Thursday (which is how she got her surname) with three of everything of the very best quality. Every year around Christmas a bag of gold coins is sent to the church for Margaret until one year the money stops coming…

Can Margaret survive being an orphan? Will she meet any friends at the orphanage? Will she ever have her very own home and family?

Read to find out how a young girl becomes a orphan and lives as one.

-Colette

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By Sara Pennypacker

Once, there was a boy that lived with his family  when all of a sudden a war hit, and his mother died unexpected. he is forced to live with his grandfather, but worst of all, he had leave behind his pet fox Pax, soon later, he can't take it anymore he packs up and ventures of to find Pax, hopefully he is were he left him...

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This is a story about Jack who is learning poetry writing in school but hates poetry. But then something amazing happens. The more he writes, the more he learns he does have something to say.

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Bravo!: Poems About Amazing Hispanics by Margarita Engel & Rafael López

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Bravo!: Poems About Amazing Hispanics by Margarita Engel & Rafael López

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A book of poems celebrating the accomplishments of Latinx musicians, botanists, baseball players, pilots, etc. from different countries and backgrounds.

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Martin Rising: Requiem For a King by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney

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Martin Rising: Requiem For a King by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney

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A coming together of two things we are studying right now, poetry and the civil rights movement!

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Poem Depot: Aisles of Smiles by Douglas Florian

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Poem Depot: Aisles of Smiles by Douglas Florian

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This illustrated book of humorous poems will guarantee giggles with 170 nonsense poems. Here's a little teaser:
Th s po m is mis ing le ters.
It’s mis ing q ite a f w.
Whre did th y go
I do n t kno.
I do n t kno.
Do y u?

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Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

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Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

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This story shares Amira’s life in Sudan before and after her village is attacked. After the attack, she must walk for days to get to the safety of a refugee camp. Despite her grief, she finds hope in the form of a special pencil as she sees the possibilities for education and self-expression.

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Written in poetry/prose, this book is about ten years old Hà who has to leave her home because of the Vietnam War. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food . . . and the strength of her very own family

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Inside Out and Back Again is a #1 New York Times bestseller, a Newbery Honor Book, and a winner of the National Book Award!
Inspired by the author's childhood experience as a refugee-fleeing Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon and immigrating to Alabama-this coming-of-age debut novel told in verse has been celebrated for its touching child's-eye view of family and immigration.

Hà has only ever known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, and the warmth of her friends close by. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope-toward America.

This moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing received four starred reviews, including one from Kirkus which proclaimed it "enlightening, poignant, and unexpectedly funny."

An author's note explains how and why Thanhha Lai translated her personal experiences into Hà's story. This updated digital edition also includes an interview with the author, an activity you can do with your family, tips on writing poetry, and discussion questions.

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Inside Out and Back Again is a #1 New York Times bestseller, a Newbery Honor Book, and a winner of the National Book Award! Inspired by the author's childhood experience as a refugee-fleeing Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon and immigrating to Alabama-this coming-of-age debut novel told

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This book is about a kid who seems like a bad guy but then they realise that someone else is a bad guy. THIS IS A TEST IT IS IMPORTANT READ THIS BOOK
🖐

This is a action packed book

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Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark by Ridley Pearson 

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Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark by Ridley Pearson 

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When you think of Walt Disney World,  you think about a happy and magical place where dreams come true. You also might imagine squadrons of  friendly park guides who give you directions when you're lost. Well,  Disney has five new park guides, Using a new strategy called DHI. They take ordinary kids and then turn them into Holograms to help people get around the park. The one catch?  Whenever the kids fall asleep,  they transport into the Disney parks as their DHI Holograms. An old guy named Wayne tells the kids that  a group of Disney villains,  or the overtakers,  want to destroy  the theme park, and the world outside its walls. Will this group of hologram teens  save Disney? - Hannah

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This book is about the future America, called Panem where there are 12 districts, most of which are poor have to sacrifice one girl and one boy from each one and fight to death on live TV. When Primrose Everdeen is picked to go to the Hunger Games her older sister Katniss Everdeen volunteers and has to survive for her family

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-Noah

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Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

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Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

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Illegal is about immigrants and how hard it is to immigrate. Also all the people they lose and the ones they find.

-Nour

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Warriors : Into the wild. By Erin Hunter

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Warriors : Into the wild. By Erin Hunter

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Rusty, a cat that lives with humans goes to the forest and finds something that will change his life. -Anna

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A 12 year old girl named Catherine has a brother (named David) who has autism. Catherine spends her summer taking care of him.

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Can you imagine being a dragon? This is a story of a group called the dragonets of prophocies. Their destiny is to save the world from a war. They have to choose which of the three sisters should be queen, or else there might not be anything to rule...

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The Moon Base Alpha is series about a kid named Dash Gibson. The series is taking place in the future, in the future Dash, his family live on the moon but as they are just trying to survive and go about their daily live. Unfortunately for the members of Moon Base Alpha they  recruited a killer. Will they survive?

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His Dark Materials is about a girl named Lyra and her demon Pantalaimon. A Demon in this book is like a soul of your self but its a animal. Everyone has a Demon in their world. There are millions of worlds.

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This book is about a person who cannot talk. She struggles people not understanding her. She was in a class with other people who couldn't talk, or walk, but 5th grade was the year she could have class with the "normal" 5th graders.

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Imagine having your name known throughout the school-  for many reasons. then, forgetting everything. With his amnesia, Chase has to learn his life all over again. Starting with his own name.
-Hannah

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This action-packed novel is centered around a girl named Charlie Thorne. She is extremely smart and the CIA captures her to help with a mission. Before Albert Einstein died, he hid an equation that could either help humanity or destroy it. The CIA is trying to find this equation, called Pandora, so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. People are skeptical that twelve-year-old Charlie can tag along in this very important mission, but she turns out to be way smarter than she seems.

--Lily

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There is a community that lives in a world with no color, no love and no one knows what animals are. No one really knows their real family. Everything is chosen for them. This is a really really interesting book.

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In a world were no there are never  problems, but never any choice, the Elders chose everyones job, partner, and child. Jonas get chosen to be the receiver, he must take everyones problems and live with terrible pain so no one else has to.
-Sojo

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Keeper of the lost cities by Shannon Messenger 

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Keeper of the lost cities by Shannon Messenger 

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Sophie Foster learns that she is an elf and starts to go to school with her friends Fitz, Keefe, Dex, And Biana. They go on many dangerous adventures to try and save people they care about.

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This beautiful story brings to life the setting of a jungle in Nepal as we learn how Nandu, the young hero of the story, forms a family from the elephants he works with and the man who runs the elephant stable. This story has adventure, an emotional journey, and gives us a window into the intelligence and feelings of the magnificent creature (and my favorite animal): the elephant.
-Alessia

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Snow and Rose live in the woods with their mother and explore. There dad went missing and they losses their old house. They encounter new people and things and figure out what really happened to their father.

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How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell 

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How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell 

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This is an action packed book that has all the fantasy items, Vikings, Plot twists, and Dragons

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Cyclone is a book about a girl who blackmailed her cousin into doing something that made her get a stroke. Although this may seam like a heavy topic, it is amazing because it shows the cousin's perspective, and how she is so upset with herself. It eventually opens her up to learning many new things about herself, and the world. Over all this book teaches an amazing lesson that I will hold on to for the rest of my life. I would give this book a ten out of ten, and would recommend it to anyone who likes being led through books by a different perspective, not just the one we are used to hearing.

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The book Every Soul A Star by Wendy Mass is a tale told by 3 kids. Ally, a homeschooled girl who lives on a campground. She loves everything about astronomy.

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Ben Ripley has a gift with math. He can do any equation in his head and he can remember long strings of numbers. Will this be handy in the spy game where he has numerous evil organizations plotting his death?
*this is an 8 book series*

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The War That Saved My Life - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

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The War That Saved My Life - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

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Set in England in the 1940's, when World War II was at its peak, this book is about a ten-year-old girl named Ada. She sneaks out of her terrible mother's house to follow her younger brother so they can go to safety. They are moved to a guardian's house in a town not far away from London, where they came from. This story follows what happens with Ada's life when she moves, and how the war affects her life.

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Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone - J.K Rowling

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Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone - J.K Rowling

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A boy with a completely normal life is living with his aunt, uncle, and cousin because his parents died. One night Harry Potter learns about the magic world, studies at a wizard school in a mysterious world where magic is real. Harry Potter meets friends and faces his enemies while learning new things.

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Upside Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle and Emily Jenkins. 

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Upside Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle and Emily Jenkins. 

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can you imagine being. different and no one supports you. if your dad thought you were wonky. you have to go and live with your aunt who is near a school and meet the people who are like you. Nory has to go threw all of this and has to learn how to Control l her magic.      -Noah

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Pax by Sara Pennypacker is about the journey of a boy and his fox. Sara Pennypacker perfectly describes the ups and downs threw their relationship. Make sure to read the sequel "PAX Journey Home"

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Becoming Naomi León joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!

A Pura Belpré Honor Book"Engrossing." —New York TimesNaomi Soledad León Outlaw has had a lot to contend with in her young life, her name for one. Then there are her clothes (sewn in polyester by Gram), her difficulty speaking up, and her status at school as "nobody special." But according to Gram's self-prophecies, most problems can be overcome with positive thinking. Luckily, Naomi also has her carving to strengthen her spirit. And life with Gram and her little brother, Owen, is happy and peaceful. That is, until their mother reappears for the first time in seven years, stirring up all sorts of questions and challenging Naomi to discover who she really is.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780439269971

Publisher:

Scholastic, Inc.

Publication date:

10/01/2005

Edition description:

Reprint

Pages:

272

Sales rank:

37,235

Product dimensions:

5.25(w) x 7.63(h) x (d)

Lexile:

830L ( what's this?)

Age Range:

8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Pam Muñoz Ryan is the recipient of the Newbery Honor Medal and the Kirkus Prize for her New York Times bestselling novel, Echo, as well as the NEA's Human and Civil Rights Award and the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for multicultural literature for her body of work. Her celebrated novels, Echo, Esperanza Rising, The Dreamer, Riding Freedom, Becoming Naomi Léon, and Paint the Wind, have received countless accolades, among them two Pura Belpré Awards, a NAPPA Gold Award, a Jane Addams Children's Book Award, and two Américas Awards. Her acclaimed picture books include Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride and When Marian Sang, both illustrated by Brian Selznick, and Tony Baloney, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, as well as a beginning reader series featuring Tony Baloney. Ryan lives near San Diego, California, with her family.

Editorial Reviews

Awards and Praise for Becoming Naomi León:A Pura Belpré Honor BookAmericas Award, CommendedSchneider Family Book Award WinnerTomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award WinnerBook Sense Book of the Year Award Honor Book"Engrossing." — The New York Times"Ryan's sure-handed storytelling and affection for her characters convey a clear sense of Naomi's triumph, as she becomes "who I was meant to be." Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Once again, Ryan crystallizes the essence of settings and characters through potent, economic prose... a tender tale about family love and loyalty." Publishers Weekly, starred review"Exciting...heartbreaking." — Booklist"[Becoming Naomi León] has its own uniquely affecting emotional core." — The Horn Book "Ryan has written a moving book about family dynamics. While she explores the youngsters' Mexican heritage and gives a vivid picture of life in and the art of Oaxaca, her story is universal, showing the strong bonds and love that make up an extended family. All of the characters are well drawn, and readers will share Naomi's fear until the judge makes the final decision about her future." — School Library Journal "Symbols abound, and readers of all ages will enjoy reading of Naomi's transformation and triumph." — VOYA

From the Publisher

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Becoming Naomi León joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content! A Pura Belpré Honor Book" Engrossing." -New York Times Naomi Soledad León Outlaw has had a lot to contend with in her young life, her name for one.

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Jefferson's Sons: A Founding Father's Secret Children - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

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Jefferson's Sons: A Founding Father's Secret Children - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

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* "A big, serious work of historical investigation and imagination; the tale has never before been told this well." - Kirkus, starred review

* "[an] eye-opening and powerful novel." - The Horn Book, starred review

* "Bradley's fine characterization and cinematic prose breathe life into this tragic story." - School Library Journal, starred review

* "Bradley's sensitive and richly imagined vision pays respect to those who struggled for lives of stability and dignity, even as the whims and fortunes of the Jeffersons shifted beneath them." - Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books, starred review

"This well-researched and moving novel provides insight into their lives as it raises important and difficult questions." - American Library Association

"The young innocents' elemental questions raise fundamental issues for the reader. How could founding father Jefferson sell off Maddy's best friend? What does it mean, 'all people are created equal?'" - Booklist

ALSC Notable Children's Recordings SELECTION 2012

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Jefferson's Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: 9780142421840 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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"A big, serious work of historical investigation and imagination; the tale has never before been told this well." - Kirkus, starred review * "[an] eye-opening and powerful novel." - The Horn Book, starred review * "Bradley's fine characterization and cinematic prose breathe life into this tragic story."

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Neil Gaiman's perennial favorite, The Graveyard Book, has sold more than one million copies and is the only novel to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal. This middle grade novel is an excellent choice for tween readers in grades 5 to 6, especially during homeschooling. It's a fun way to keep your child entertained and engaged while not in the classroom.
Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their ghostly teachings-such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.

Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead?

The Graveyard Book is the winner of the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, the Hugo Award for best novel, the Locus Award for Young Adult novel, the American Bookseller Association's "Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book," a Horn Book Honor, and Audio Book of the Year.

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Neil Gaiman's perennial favorite, The Graveyard Book, has sold more than one million copies and is the only novel to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal. This middle grade novel is an excellent choice for tween readers in grades 5 to 6, especially during homeschooling. It&#82

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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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A special movie tie-in edition of R.J. Palacio's #1 New York Times bestseller.

Over 8 million people have fallen in love with Wonder and Auggie Pullman, the ordinary boy with the extraordinary face, who inspired a movement to Choose Kind and an upcoming graphic novel White Bird - on sale 10/1/2019!

This special movie tie-in edition features an eight-page full-color insert with photos from the film, a foreword by the director Stephen Chbosky, an afterword by R.J. Palacio, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie with anecdotes from the cast and crew, and a family discussion guide.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid-but his new classmates can't get past Auggie's extraordinary face. WONDER, now a #1 New York Times bestseller and included on the Texas Bluebonnet Award master list, begins from Auggie's point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. These perspectives converge in a portrait of one community's struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.

"Wonder is the best kids' book of the year," said Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate.com and author of Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. In a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope. R.J. Palacio has called her debut novel "a meditation on kindness" -indeed, every reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the simple courage of friendship. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can't blend in when you were born to stand out.

Join the conversation: #thewonderofwonder, #choosekind

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A special movie tie-in edition of R.J. Palacio's #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 8 million people have fallen in love with Wonder and Auggie Pullman, the ordinary boy with the extraordinary face, who inspired a movement to Choose Kind...

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Amina has never been comfortable in the spotlight. She is happy just hanging out with her best friend, Soojin. Except now that she’s in middle school everything feels different. Soojin is suddenly hanging out with Emily, one of the “cool” girls in the class, and even talking about changing her name to something more “American.” Does Amina need to start changing too? Or hiding who she is to fit in? While Amina grapples with these questions, she is devastated when her local mosque is vandalized.

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It Ain't So Awful, Falafel! by Firoozeh Dumas

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It Ain't So Awful, Falafel! by Firoozeh Dumas

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them—everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780525515142

Publisher:

Penguin Young Readers Group

Publication date:

04/21/2020

Pages:

192

Sales rank:

13,911

Product dimensions:

5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

Lexile:

630L ( what's this?)

Age Range:

10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Jacqueline Woodson (www.jacquelinewoodson.com) is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children's Literature Legacy Award. She was the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and in 2015, she was named the Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. She received the 2014 National Book Award for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award, and a Sibert Honor. She wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller, and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jacqueline grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from college with a B.A. in English. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include Coretta Scott King Award winner Before the Ever After; New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me; The Other Side, Each Kindness, Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle's Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and a two-time winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Copyright © 2018 Jacqueline Woodson

4

If there's one thing I do remember as clear as if it happened an hour ago, it's the afternoon when Ms. Laverne said to us, Put down your pencils and come with me. It was the end of September and we had been taking a spelling test. Esteban had been absent for days, and when he finally returned, Ms. Laverne asked him if he was up to doing some work and he nodded.

It helps me forget for a little while, he said.

Forget what? Amari asked.

That nobody knows where they took him. And now we're packing up everything, Esteban said. Because if they took him, maybe they're going to take us too.

I turned back to my test. I didn't want to think about fathers. Mine had been in prison for eight years by then. In the last letter we'd gotten, he said he wasn't sure what would happen with his parole. If he got it, he didn't know exactly when he'd be coming home. I remember zero about living with him. Every good thing that happened had happened with my uncle. I couldn't imagine a different life. Didn't want to imagine it. Not for me. Not for anyone.

I was stuck on the word holiday. Did it have one l or two? My spelling had always been bad, but in Ms. Laverne's class it didn't matter so much because we were all at different levels in one thing or another. The words you miss just tell me what you don't yet know, Ms. Laverne always said. It says nothing about who you are. For some reason that made me feel better. I was eleven years old. What eleven-year-old didn't know how to spell holliday?

Put down your pencils and come with me.

The six of us stood up. Our school uniforms were white shirts and dark blue pants or skirts. We could wear any jackets, shoes and tights we wanted. I had worn blue-and-white-striped tights that day. Holly's tights had red stars on them. When we stood next to each other in the school yard that morning, our stars and stripes echoed the flag waving from the pole above us. We had spent the minutes before the bell rang dancing around it while Holly sang that old song about having a hammer, I'd hammer out danger, I'd hammer out a warning . . .

We stood next to our desks and waited for Ms. Laverne to tell us what to do next. Amari pulled his hoodie over his head, then quickly pulled it off again, the way he sometimes did when he was nervous. Amari was beautiful. His skin was so dark, you could almost see the color blue running beneath it. His eyes were dark too. Dark like there was smoke behind his pupils. Dark and serious and . . . infinite. In that fifth/sixth grade class, I didn't know how to say any of this. I wanted only to look at him. And look at him.

Take a picture, it lasts longer, Amari said to me in such a cranky way, it almost brought me to tears. Ashton smirked, then pushed his hair away from his forehead and held his hand there.

She doesn't want a picture of you, Holly said. Bad enough we have to look at you five days a week. She had left her desk and was heading over to the classroom library.

Holly, back to your desk, Ms. Laverne said. I want you all to take your books. You won't be coming back here today.

We all gathered our stuff and followed her into the hallway.

Ms. Laverne took out her phone and said, Smile, people. In the photo, Holly and I have our fingers linked together, our tights looking crazier than anything. Amari has his hood halfway on and halfway off, and Tiago, Esteban and Ashton are all looking away from the camera. The picture is taped to my refrigerator now. We all look so young in it, our cheeks puffing out with baby fat, our uniform shirts untucked, Tiago's sneakers untied.

We walked down the hall behind Ms. Laverne, her heels softly clicking. I thought about how maybe one day I'd grow up to wear black shoes with small heels that clicked as I walked down a hall. And have students following behind who were a little bit in love with me.

Two small kids came running down the hall, but when they saw Ms. Laverne, they stopped and started walking so slowly, I almost laughed.

Esteban pulled his knapsack onto his shoulder and held it with both hands.

You okay, bro? Amari put his hand on Esteban's arm.

Nah, Esteban said. Not really.

Amari moved his arm over Esteban's shoulder. And kept it there.

5

When we got to Room 501, Ms. Laverne opened the door and held it for us. Nobody knew what to do, so we just stood there. The room was bright and smelled like it had just been cleaned with the same oil soap my uncle used on our floors. Back when me and Holly were in third grade, it had been the art room, but then someone gave our school enough money to open up a whole art studio in the basement, so now this was just a room we passed by sometimes and said to each other, Remember when that used to be the art room?

Welcome to Room 501, Ms. Laverne said.

Holly ran in ahead and the rest of us followed and looked around.

In the old art room, there were just a few of those chairs with swing-up desks in a circle, a teacher's desk with no chair, a big clock on the wall and some little kid's ancient painting of a bright yellow sun thumbtacked to the closet door.

Esteban asked, Are we getting transferred to a new class? He put his knapsack down between his ankles and hugged himself.

Amari had taken his arm off Esteban's shoulder but was still standing close to him. When Esteban shivered, Amari put his arm back. I heard him whisper, It's all good, bro. It's all good. Ms. Laverne's not taking us somewhere we don't want to be.

Ms. Laverne sat on the edge of the teacher's desk and folded her arms. Every Friday, from now until the end of the school year, the six of you will leave my classroom at two p.m. and come into Room 501. You'll sit in this circle and you'll talk. When the bell rings at three, you're free to go home.

Why can't we just talk in our regular classroom? Holly asked, hopping up onto the teacher's desk. I mean, in your classroom.

Our regular classroom wasn't regular. We knew that. But still.

Down from there, please, Holly. Ms. Laverne waited for Holly to jump off again before she continued. I don't want to hear what you have to say to each other. This is your time. Your world. Your room.

Sounds like you're trying to get an early break from us, Holly said. Give yourself your own kind of half day.

Ms. Laverne laughed. One day, Holly, your brain will be very useful to you.

Holly looked like she wasn't sure if our teacher was complimenting her.

What I'm trying to do is give you the space to talk about the things kids talk about when no grown-ups are around. Don't you all have a world you want to be in that doesn't have people who look like me in it?

Nope, Amari said.

Yeah, Ashton said. Not really.

We like being with you, I added. In the other room.

You like what you know, Ms. Laverne said. You like what's familiar.

None of us said anything. She was right. What was wrong with liking familiar things?

Nothing's wrong with that, Ms. Laverne said, being a teacher/mind reader. But what's unfamiliar shouldn't be scary. And it shouldn't be avoided either.

But I don't know what we're even supposed to talk about, Tiago said. Like, schoolwork and stuff? And to who?

Schoolwork, toys, TV shows, me, yourselves-anything you want to talk about. To each other. And it's to whom, Tiago.

To whom, Tiago said to himself like he was practicing it. To whom.

I think any other bunch of kids would have started happy-dancing and acting crazy because there weren't going to be any grown-ups around. But we weren't any other kids.

I heard Amari say that's stupid so quietly that I wondered if I was hearing things. Then he said, We could be talking in class if we wanted to be talking. You trying to change the art room into the A-R-T-T room-A Room To Talk.

That's tight, Ashton said. He and Amari pounded fists. I like that.

Ms. Laverne clapped once and pointed at Amari. You. Are. Brilliant.

I could have come up with that. Holly rolled her eyes. I could have added an R and thrown an acronym out there. She said acronym loudly, making sure Ms. Laverne heard.

Nice use of the word, Holly, Ms. Laverne said. Okay, so because the art room is now the A-R-T-T room, no one gets in trouble for talking here. You get in trouble for taking out your phone. You get in trouble for being disrespectful-

How're you gonna know if you're not in here with us? Amari asked her.

I'll know.

And we all knew she was telling the truth. Teachers knew things. That's all there was to it.

Well, what if I don't have anything to say to anybody? Amari asked.

Ms. Laverne laughed again. Since when do you not have anything to say, Amari? She shook her head and waved her hand to include all of us. I can't believe you all are so resistant. I'm giving you an hour. To chat! You get in trouble for this every single day. How many times do I have to say 'No talking'? Now I'm saying, 'Talk!'

Amari tried to hide his smile but he didn't do a great job of it. Okay . . . I'm vibing it. The old art room is the new A-R-T-T room, y'all.

And I bet you can draw in here too, if you want, Ashton said to him.

Ms. Laverne nodded. Draw, talk. And yes, Amari-the A-R-T-T room is beyond clever.

Like I said, anybody could have thought of that, Holly said.

Yeah-but I see YOU didn't, Amari said.

And like I said, Ms. Laverne told us, in this room we won't be unkind.

She started it-

Doesn't matter, Amari.

I just want to get it straight, Ashton said. So, school now ends at two o'clock on Fridays?

He had pale white skin like my uncle, and hair that always fell into his eyes. Even as he asked, he was holding it back with his hand. Once Holly had said to him, Just cut it already, and his ears turned bright red. My own hair had always been bright red, but lately it had started getting darker and kinkier. If Holly's mother didn't braid it for me, I just pulled it back into a sloppy ponytail that frizzed all around my face.

Jeez, Ashton! Holly said. That's not what she's saying. This is so not deep, people.

I just don't really understand why we're going into another room, Ashton said, by ourselves.

I think, looking back on that day now, that's the line that will always stay with me- another room, by ourselves. How many other rooms by ourselves have we walked into since that day-even if they weren't real rooms and we didn't know that's what we were doing?

I stood there thinking about my father. In six months or a year-I didn't know exactly when-I'd be walking into another room, the one where my father lived with me. And as I stood there, Esteban was inside the room where he didn't know where his dad was. He glanced at me. That day, no one but Holly knew that my dad was in prison. I felt like I was betraying Esteban. Like I should have been standing next to him, saying, Hey, it's gonna be okay. But I couldn't. I couldn't tell the truth about my dad to help him. So I looked down at my skirt and thought about rooms. I wondered about Tiago, Holly, Amari and Ashton-what were the rooms for them? What did they hide inside those rooms? Another room, I thought. We are always entering another room.

That day, Ms. Laverne pushed us out-from the Familiar to the Unfamiliar.

It felt like an hour passed as she waited for us to say something. I looked at the clock. The second hand made an echoing sound when it ticked. It was five minutes past two. Fifty-five minutes left.

You can do this, Ashton. You all can do this, Ms. Laverne finally said. And with that, she walked away. With that, she let us go.

Editorial Reviews

* "Woodson celebrates all that is essential and good for humanity-compassion, understanding, security, and freedom-in this touching novel. . . . Woodson's skills as poet and master storyteller shine brightly here as she economically uses language to express emotion and delve into the hearts of her characters. Showing how America's political and social issues affect children on a daily basis, this novel will leave an indelible mark on readers' minds." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

* "Woodson delivers a powerful tale of community and mutual growth. The bond they develop is palpable. . . . The characters ring true as they discuss issues both personal and global. This story, told with exquisite language and clarity of narrative, is both heartbreaking and hopeful. An extraordinary and timely piece of writing." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review

* "The magic is in the writing. Woodson tells stories torn from headlines but personalizes them with poetry and memories, blunting their trauma with understanding and love. Haley's history weaves in and out, drawing readers close. These children become each other's safe harbors and Woodson brilliantly shows readers how to find the connections we all need." -Booklist, starred review

* "Woodson's spare, lyrical, and evocative prose carries the story seamlessly, weaving in themes of justice and family, friendship and courage. This is a timely and beautifully written story that should be on library shelves everywhere."-School Library Journal, starred review

* "In her first middle-grade novel since her 2014 National Book Award winner, Brown Girl Dreaming, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jacqueline Woodson deftly alchemizes a sixth-grade classroom into an affecting metaphor for racial, political and socioeconomic challenges-enhanced by the transformative power of storytelling: 'what matter[ed] most is that we were heard.' . . . A powerful love letter to effective teachers, unexpected friendship and the healing magic of hearing, recording and sharing words."-"Explore[s] deep issues of identity, community, family, change, and forgiveness. The power of remembrance is also an important theme. . . . Will speak to young people's insecurities and fears while recognizing their courage in facing them, and [Woodson's] craft as a weaver of words and imagery is evident on every page. A timely tribute to the resilience of young people and to the power of human connection that often overrides our differences."-
"Takes readers on a journey during which young urban teenagers discover the satisfaction of a well-wrought conversation. Woodson's easygoing lyrical voice is the highlight. . . . Each likable young person tells an engaging story, and the others are quick to listen. . . . Many urban readers will hear their story in one of these six's narratives. . . . With alternatingly simple, realistic language and flashes of lyrical romanticism . . . will please teachers trying to coax personal revelations from their students."-Voice of Youth Advocates

"Leaves readers of all ages asking, 'would I let myself be a harbor for someone who needs it?'"-School Library Connection

From the Publisher

The first line of Jacqueline Woodson's Harbor Me jolts the reader into the news cycle through the eyes of a child. As this captivating novel moves forward we will hear, see and feel more through this lens. It's a powerful vantage point, and one that holds both the practical realities and the lyrical poignancy of 11-year-old voices in equal tension...There is no escape from the outside world in this book, from the political tempest swirling around us. But sometimes a closer look, a deeper understanding, a different point of view, is better than an escape—especially for kids trying to make sense of the time they were born into.

The New York Times Book Review - Melissa Walker

★ 05/21/2018
Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming) celebrates all that is essential and good for humanity-compassion, understanding, security, and freedom-in this touching novel about six children with special needs. Sixth-grader Haley and her best friend, Holly, don't know much about their four male classmates when they are placed in a self-contained classroom. They soon discover the things that they do and do not have in common when, on Friday afternoons, their teacher takes them to ARTT (a room to talk). Here, without adult supervision, the class can have conversations about anything. Usually the students use the time to unburden themselves of problems ranging from a parent's deportation to bullying in the schoolyard. Haley is the last to spill her secrets, about her mother's death and why her father is in prison, and afterwards she is rewarded with a feeling of lightness, "like so many bricks had been lifted off me," she says. Woodson's skills as poet and master storyteller shine brightly here as she economically uses language to express emotion and delve into the hearts of her characters. Showing how America's political and social issues affect children on a daily basis, this novel will leave an indelible mark on readers' minds. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/01/2018
Gr 4-6-In sixth grade, Haley is part of a special class of six kids that include Holly, Esteban, Amari, Tiago, and Ashton. On the first Friday of the school year, Ms. Laverne tells them to grab their books and follow her. She leads them to what used to be the art room and gives them some simple directions. They are supposed to sit in a circle and talk. The students are confused at first. What are they supposed to talk about? Ms. Laverne assures them they can talk about whatever they want to and need to. The next Friday, Haley comes in with a recorder, telling her friends it's so that they won't forget each other. Through the "recordings," readers get to know each of the six classmates through their own words. Each character reveals the difficult things they're balancing in their lives, whether it's an incarcerated parent, a dead parent, a family split apart by immigration policies, a father who lost his job, or their daily struggles with racism and microaggressions. Woodson's spare, lyrical, and evocative prose carries the story seamlessly, weaving in themes of justice and family, friendship and courage. VERDICT This is a timely and beautifully written story that should be on library shelves everywhere.-Stacy Dillon, LREI, New York

School Library Journal

★ 2018-06-11
Just before she begins seventh grade, Haley tells the story of the previous school year, when she and five other students from an experimental classroom were brought together.Each has been bullied or teased about their difficulties in school, and several face real challenges at home. Haley is biracial and cared for by her white uncle due to the death of her African-American mother and her white father's incarceration. Esteban, of Dominican heritage, is coping with his father's detention by ICE and the possible fracturing of his family. It is also a time when Amari learns from his dad that he can no longer play with toy guns because he is a boy of color. This reveals the divide between them and their white classmate, Ashton. "It's not fair that you're a boy and Ashton's a boy and he can do something you can't do anymore. That's not freedom," Haley says. They support one another, something Haley needs as she prepares for her father's return from prison and her uncle's decision to move away. Woodson delivers a powerful tale of community and mutual growth. The bond they develop is palpable. Haley's recorder is both an important plot element and a metaphor for the power of voice and story. The characters ring true as they discuss issues both personal and global. This story, told with exquisite language and clarity of narrative, is both heartbreaking and hopeful. An extraordinary and timely piece of writing. (Fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories. It all starts when six kids have to...

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Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team by Steve Sheinkin

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Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team by Steve Sheinkin

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Undefeated

Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

By Steve Sheinkin

Roaring Brook Press

Copyright © 2017 Steve Sheinkin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59643-955-9

CHAPTER 1
THE STAR
Yes, Jim Thorpe made the team.

And for a brief and magical span of years, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School had the best football team in the country. Carlisle was the fastest team anyone had ever seen, the most creative, the most fun to watch. They traveled anywhere and took on anyone, playing all their toughest games on the road. The team drew crowds in train stations, hotel lobbies, and especially football stadiums - Carlisle's 1911 showdown with powerhouse Harvard University drew more fans than the opening game of that year's World Series. Carlisle had the game's most innovative coach in Pop Warner, and, in Jim Thorpe, the greatest star the sport had ever seen.

None of it was easy.

After a lifetime in the sport, Warner would say, "No college player I ever saw had the natural aptitude for football possessed by Jim Thorpe." But what the coach called "natural aptitude" was really something richer, a mix of outrageous athletic talent and a force of will hard-earned from a childhood that would have broken most boys.

The challenges began early. Jim's father, an enormous man named Hiram, saw to that.

As a toddler, Jim liked to splash around in the shallow water near the bank of the North Canadian River, which ran behind his family's cabin in Oklahoma. One day Hiram strode into the river in his boots, grabbed the kid, hauled him out to the deep water, and dropped him into the current. Hiram then waded back to the bank and watched.

Jim raised his head above the water. It was forty yards to the riverbank. It looked like a mile.

He managed to dog-paddle to shore and collapsed on dry land.

Hiram stood over his three-year-old boy and said, "Don't be afraid of the water, son, and it won't be afraid of you."

* * *

And Jim really didn't seem to fear anything, or anyone. Not even his father.

Hiram Thorpe, son of a Sac and Fox Indian mother and an Irish father, stood six foot three, 235 pounds. He walked around armed with a pistol, bullets in his belt, wearing a black cowboy hat. No one messed with Jim's mother, either. Charlotte Vieux, daughter of a Potawatomi Indian woman who'd married a French-Canadian trader, was described by friends as pretty, tall, and big-boned, about two hundred pounds, with exceptionally strong hands.

Hiram had already had two marriages and fathered five children when he and Charlotte married in 1882. They settled on Sac and Fox land in what was called "Indian Territory," which covered most of what is now Oklahoma.

The shameful history behind Indian Territory is not the subject of this story, but it's important to know - it shaped the world Jim Thorpe and the other Carlisle School students would grow up in. In 1830, with the passage of the Indian Removal Act, the US government made it official policy to force Native Americans off their lands in order to open the land to white settlers. President Andrew Jackson explained the objective in bluntly racist language. Native Americans were surrounded by what Jackson called "a superior race" and needed to get out of the way. "They must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances," he said, "and ere long disappear."

The government set aside Indian Territory as a place to send the displaced nations, whether they agreed to go or not. In what became known as the Trail of Tears, to cite the most infamous example, US soldiers marched more than fifteen thousand Cherokee men, women, and children 1,200 miles from Georgia to Indian Territory. An estimated four thousand people died of disease, cold, and starvation before the nightmare journey ended.

Over the following decades, the US government forced the people of more than sixty different American Indian nations - including the Sac and Fox, originally from the western Great Lakes region - to leave their traditional land and resettle in Indian Territory. Different nations were assigned different areas of land, or reservations. By treaty, the reservation land belonged permanently to the Indians. Then the government changed the rules again.

Pressured by land-hungry settlers, Congress passed the General Allotment Act in 1887, stating that Native American families would be "given" 160-acre plots. The remaining land in Indian Territory would be stripped from Indian control and opened up to new settlers.

Charlotte and Hiram Thorpe were granted a piece of decent grazing land on the banks of the North Canadian River. They built a cabin of cottonwood and hickory, and it was there, in 1888, that Charlotte gave birth to twin boys, James and Charles - Jim and Charlie, as they came to be known. Jim would later explain that his mother, following Potawatomi custom, also gave her sons names inspired by something experienced right after childbirth. Through the window near her bed, Charlotte watched the early-morning sun light the path to their cabin. She named Jim Wathohuck, translated as "Bright Path." Charlie's Potawatomi name has been lost to history.

Three years later, twenty thousand settlers lined the edge of what had been Sac and Fox land. A government agent fired a gun, the signal for the land rush to begin, and everyone raced in on horseback or in wagons, claiming open sections of land by driving stakes into the soil.

By nightfall, the plains around the Thorpes' farm were dotted with settlers' tents and campfires. In just a few hours, the Sac and Fox had lost nearly 80 percent of their land.

The newcomers built towns, including one called Keokuk Falls, ten miles from the Thorpe family farm. Keokuk Falls was a wild and violent place, home of the "seven deadly saloons," as locals called them. It was a place where even the pigs got drunk - a whiskey distillery near town dumped used corn mash behind the building, and hogs gorged on it and staggered down the dirt streets.

"Keokuk Falls," a stagecoach driver announced to riders as he pulled into town. "Stay for half an hour and see a man killed."

* * *

"Our lives were lived out in the open, winter and summer," Jim later recalled of his childhood. "We were never in the house when we could be out of it."

It was a no-nonsense, hardworking way of life. Charlotte sewed their clothes, mixing Potawatomi designs with modern patterns she saw in town. She raised chickens and planted corn, pumpkins, and beans. Hiram tended the livestock and hunted turkey and deer. The family bathed in the river, which in winter meant hacking through the ice and dunking bare bodies through the hole.

Jim's first hero was Black Hawk, the famous Sac leader who had led his people in a desperate fight to hold on to their ancestral land in the 1830s. Thousands of well-armed US soldiers and volunteers - including militia member Abraham Lincoln - overwhelmed Black Hawk's much smaller force.

Jim grew up hearing stories of Black Hawk, of his legendary feats of running and swimming and wrestling, of his pride and defiance, even in the face of defeat. Jim grew up hearing that his own father, Hiram, resembled Black Hawk not only in looks, but in athletic skill and pure strength.

And Jim knew it was true. On warm evenings, when the chores were done, Sac and Fox families gathered near the Thorpe cabin, and the men competed in jumping contests and swimming and running races. Hiram always dominated. And then, near sunset, the families formed a circle for the main event: wrestling.

For the rest of his life, Jim would tell tales of these epic tests of strength and will. Night after night, he sat in the fading light, bursting with pride as his father conquered one opponent after another.

CHAPTER 2
THE COACH
Pop Warner did not grow up playing football. And "Pop" was not his first nickname - before "Pop" came "Butter."

It was not a compliment.

Today Pop Warner is remembered as one of the greatest football coaches of all time, and kids all over the country play in leagues named in his honor. But as a boy in the small town of Springville, New York, Glenn Warner did not inspire visions of athletic glory.

Born in 1871, seventeen years before Jim Thorpe, Glenn was a shy kid, awkward and chubby, a boy who lived in fear of his classmates. They pelted his broad backside with beans shot through straws, and pebbles launched from slingshots. Day after day, they surrounded him as he walked home from school, chanting:

"Butter! Butter!"

One winter afternoon, when Glenn was ten, he was trudging home when one of the class bullies grabbed his hat, tossed it into a slushy puddle, and stomped on it. The other boys stood around, laughing.

In a burst of rage, Glenn pounced on the bully, knocked him down, and started pummeling him. The other kids looked on in shock.

"This battle," Warner would later recall, "showed me a new way of looking at life."

Glenn grew tall in his teen years, and started to show some interest in sports. During school recess, the boys played a game loosely based on English football, or soccer. The streets on either side of the field were goal lines, and the basic idea was to kick the ball past the other team's goal. "We used anything that we could for a football," Warner remembered. "Most of the time we ended up playing with a blown-up cow's bladder."

Bladders make crummy sporting goods. They're never truly round, tend to deflate - and quickly start to stink. That could be why Glenn preferred baseball. His mother cut and sewed his overalls into something like baseball pants, and he was good enough to pitch for the Springville team.

After graduating from high school, he took the entrance exam for West Point, the prestigious US Military Academy. Forty teens took the test with Warner. Four were admitted. Warner was not one of them.

At eighteen, with nothing better to do, he moved with his family to a ranch in Wichita Falls, Texas. He and his younger brother, Bill, busted their backs in the blazing sun, clearing brush, planting wheat, herding cattle. The layer of flab that had inspired Glenn's first nickname melted away.

In the summer of 1892, Warner returned to Springville to see friends. He spent a few days at the horse track in Buffalo, where he bet all the money he'd earned in Texas. He won fifty dollars. That convinced him he was a brilliant gambler, so his new career plan was to travel from track to track, living the good life on his winnings.

It lasted a week. At the next track he went to, in Rochester, he lost nearly everything. Glenn had barely enough cash left for a one-way train ticket back to Wichita Falls.

"I soon became depressed and was forced to do some serious thinking," Warner later recalled. He didn't really want to be a rancher; he didn't know what he wanted to do. "I began to review my options, which were limited. I dared not write to my father and tell him that I was broke, because I would have had to explain what had happened to the money."

Glenn's father had been urging him to become a lawyer. That didn't sound very fun. But now, he realized, it presented an opportunity to escape his financial hole. He wrote to his dad, saying he'd decided to go to law school after all and asking for money to cover tuition.

A few weeks later an envelope arrived from Texas. Inside was a check for a hundred dollars.

Warner figured he had to at least give school a shot. He applied to Cornell University and was accepted.

"At the time, I considered this event to be a great misfortune," Warner would later say. "But, instead, it turned out to be about the luckiest thing that ever happened to me."

* * *

Now twenty-one, Glenn was a burly six foot two, with curly brown hair. He rode the train from Buffalo to Ithaca, in central New York, and walked around the Cornell campus, strolling pathways between grassy lawns and gray stone buildings. He wandered out to the sports field, where the football team was practicing.

Curious how the American version of this sport was played, he stood for a while and watched. He was startled to see the team captain, Carl Johanson, striding toward him.

Johanson looked Warner up and down and asked what he weighed.

"Two hundred and fifteen pounds," Warner said.

"Fine. Get on a suit right away. We need a left guard."

Warner was stunned.

"Wait a minute," he managed to say. "I don't know anything about the game at all."

"Never mind," Johanson told him. "All you've got to do is keep them from going through you and spoiling the play when we've got the ball. And when they've got the ball, knock the tar out of your man and tackle the runner. Perfectly simple."

CHAPTER 3
THE GAME
There was more to the sport of football than Carl Johanson's brief instructions suggested.

But not that much more.

The first American football game between college teams was played on November 6, 1869, on the campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey. A group of twenty-five students came from nearby Princeton University to challenge the Rutgers team. The players took off their hats, jackets, and vests, and, to minimize confusion on the crowded field, the Rutgers students tied scarlet bandannas, pirate-style, over their heads.

Princeton kicked off, and the first football game was under way. It would be unrecognizable to fans today.

Basically, it was a chaotic mash-up of soccer and rugby, with all fifty athletes on the field at once. Rutgers won, 6-4. The most memorable moment was when a clump of players chasing a loose ball crashed into a fence spectators were leaning on, and the players and fans tumbled to the ground in a heap. One of the Rutgers men, George Large, took a blow to the head and came up woozy. He stayed in the game.

For the rest of his life, Large would boast that he was the first man ever injured playing American football.

* * *

The day after meeting Carl Johanson, Glenn Warner walked onto the Cornell football field for his first day of practice. The game had changed somewhat in the twenty-three years since Princeton had traveled to Rutgers - there were now eleven men per team on the field at once, for instance.

But the sport was still just loosely organized combat.

"Early-day football was anything but a parlor sport," Warner recalled, "many games being little more than free-for-all fights."

After only one practice, Warner was named starting left guard on the Cornell football team. Like everyone, he'd be on the field for every play, offense and defense. He learned on the fly.

Each play started with the teams lined up, facing each other, the ball on the ground between them. Before the play began, opposing linemen grunted at one another, spat, picked up dirt and threw it in each other's eyes. A lineman on offense snapped the ball to the quarterback, who then tossed it backward to one of the running backs lined up behind him. The man with the ball started forward, and defenders tried to knock him down. Teams could score by carrying the ball across the opponent's goal line, or by kicking it through goalposts at the goal line. The ball itself was bigger and rounder than today's ball, made for tucking under an arm or kicking, not throwing.

There was no such thing as passing; the forward pass was illegal.

Modern players memorize binders full of intricately choreographed plays. This was not the sport Warner learned. Early-day football was simple, repetitive, and - believe it or not - much more violent than today's game. The typical play involved the ballcarrier plunging headfirst into a tightly packed wall of defenders, while his entire team pushed and pulled him - a "mass play," as it was called. Some teams even sewed suitcase handles onto the pants of their running backs so teammates could lift and drag ballcarriers through the pile. Defenders dove for the runner's legs or leaped onto his back until he fell to the ground.

But the play still wasn't over. It wasn't over until the man with the ball quit moving. So while he squirmed and wriggled forward, more defenders piled on, and plays ended in massive, writhing mounds, inside of which guys would throw elbows and knees, scratch and bite, spit and choke, until the refs could untangle the heap.

Excerpted from Undefeated by Steve Sheinkin. Copyright © 2017 Steve Sheinkin. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team|Paperback

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A great American sport and Native American history come together in this true story for middle grade readers about how Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner created the legendary Carlisle Indians football team, from New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Award recipient Steve...

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This book is about a teen named Alex who is recruited to be a spy. The series is about his adventures as a spy.-Julia

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

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Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

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Teddy is a kid that used to live in the Congo, but a war drew his family away from his country. This boy comes to America and finds Funjungle, an incredible zoo that his parents just both got a job at, his dad is a world famous animal photographer, and his mom is a gorilla specialist. Funjungle's beloved mascot Henry is murdered, and Teddy is on the case. Through his search he meets a girl called summer, together they are determined to find the murderer.

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I started reading this to my 7 year old (going into 2nd grade), and he was enjoying it until Roxy was in her accident. He isn't ready for this yet, but I bet he'll try again in a few years. I thought it was a really interesting story!

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I started reading this to my 7 year old (going into 2nd grade), and he was enjoying it until Roxy was in her accident. He isn't ready for this yet, but I bet he'll try again in a few years. I thought it was a really interesting story!

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This fantastic book is about a young Trevor Noah taking you through his troubled South African childhood.

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During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook gains new strengths. In a mixed atmosphere of mistrust, fear, and caring, Matilda learns to cope with the loss of business, friends, and family.

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Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson | Scholastic

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During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook gains new strengths. In a mixed atmosphere of mistrust, fear, and caring, Matilda learns to cope with the loss of business, friends, and family.

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As twelve-year-old Marlee starts middle school in 1958 Little Rock, it feels like her whole world is falling apart. Until she meets Liz, the new girl at school. Liz is everything Marlee wishes she could be: she's brave, brash and always knows the right thing to say. But when Liz leaves school without even a good-bye, the rumor is that Liz was caught passing for white. Marlee decides that doesn't matter. She just wants her friend back. And to stay friends, Marlee and Liz are even willing to take on segregation and the dangers their friendship could bring to both their families.

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g

BUY THE BOOK

$5.36

Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

Holt Books for Young Readers

ISBN: 9781466801325
148 Pages, Ages 10-14

From Newbery media winner Karen Hesse comes an unforgettable story of an immigrant family's journey to America.

"America," the girl repeated. "What will you do there?"
I was silent for a little time.
"I will do everything there," I answered.

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind.

Strong-hearted and determined, Rifka must endure a great deal: humiliating examinations by doctors and soldiers, deadly typhus, separation from all she has ever known and loved, murderous storms at sea, detainment on Ellis Island--and is if this is not enough, the loss of her glorious golden hair.

Based on a true story from the author's family, Letters from Rifka presents a real-life heroine with an uncommon courage and unsinkable spirit.

Utah Children's Book Award, Christopher Award for Books for YR, Sydney Taylor Award, IRA Children's Book Award, ALA Notable Children's Books, Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List, National Jewish Book Award - Finalist, School Library Best Books of the Year, IRA Children's and Young Adults Book Award, National Jewish Book Award, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Christopher Awards - Winner

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Letters from Rifka

... and from The gloomy land of lonely exile To a new country bade me come ... .
-- Pushkin

September 2, 1919 Russia

My Dear Cousin Tovah,
We made it! If it...

READ THE FULL EXCERPT →

Reviews

Praise for Letters from Rifka

"Hesse's vivacious tale colorfully and convincingly refreshes the immigrant experience." -Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Told with unusual grace and simplicity, an unforgettable picture of immigrant courage, ingenuity, and perseverance." -Pointer, Kirkus Reviews

"What especially raises it above docu-novel is the emerging sense of Rifka's personality. Bald from the ringworm, poor and needy, she proves she's no greenhorn; she has a gift for languages, she's brave and clever, and if she talks too much, so be it." -Booklist

"Based largely on the memories of the author's great-aunt, this historical novel has a plot, characters, and style that will make it an often-requested choice from young readers. A vivid, memorable, and involving reading experience." -School Library Journal, Starred Review

-

Reviews from Goodreads

Karen Hesse

Karen Hesse calls Letters from Rifka "a gift to my grandparents and to my heritage, and to people like Rifka who have made the passage between two worlds." Ms Hesse is also the author of Wish on a Unicorn, Lester's Dog and Lavender.

Karen Hesse lives in Williamsville, Vermont, with her husband, Randy, and her daughters, Kate and Rachel.

Karen Hesse

From the Publisher

Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

g

$5.36

Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

Holt Books for Young Readers

ISBN: 9781466801325
148 Pages, Ages 10-14

Letters from Rifka

... and from The gloomy land of lonely exile To a new country bade me come ... .
-- Pushkin

September 2, 1919 Russia

My Dear Cousin Tovah,
We made it! If it...

READ THE FULL EXCERPT →

Reviews

Praise for Letters from Rifka

"Hesse's vivacious tale colorfully and convincingly refreshes the immigrant experience." -Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Told with unusual grace and simplicity, an unforgettable picture of immigrant courage, ingenuity, and perseverance." -Pointer, Kirkus Reviews

"What especially raises it above docu-novel is the emerging sense of Rifka's personality. Bald from the ringworm, poor and needy, she proves she's no greenhorn; she has a gift for languages, she's brave and clever, and if she talks too much, so be it." -Booklist

"Based largely on the memories of the author's great-aunt, this historical novel has a plot, characters, and style that will make it an often-requested choice from young readers. A vivid, memorable, and involving reading experience." -School Library Journal, Starred Review

-

Reviews from Goodreads

Karen Hesse

Karen Hesse calls Letters from Rifka "a gift to my grandparents and to my heritage, and to people like Rifka who have made the passage between two worlds." Ms Hesse is also the author of Wish on a Unicorn, Lester's Dog and Lavender.

Karen Hesse lives in Williamsville, Vermont, with her husband, Randy, and her daughters, Kate and Rachel.

From the Publisher

Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

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Letters from Rifka | Karen Hesse | Macmillan

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g $5.36 Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Holt Books for Young Readers ISBN: 9781466801325 148 Pages, Ages 10-14 From Newbery media winner Karen Hesse comes an unforgettable story of an immigrant family's journey to America. "America," the girl repeated. "What will you do there?" I was silent for a little time.

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One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

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One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

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One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia | Scholastic

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In 1968, Delphine and her sisters travel from Brooklyn to Oakland to spend a month with the mother they barely know, who sends them to a Black Panther summer ca

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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julia Andrews Edwards

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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julia Andrews Edwards

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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles was the second children’s novel ever written by Julie Andrews, the beloved star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Perfect for young readers who love whimsical stories about magic! The Whangdoodle was once the wisest, the kindest, and the

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Mo & Dale Mysteries Series by Sheila Turnage

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Mo & Dale Mysteries Series by Sheila Turnage

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Buy books online and find book series such as Mo & Dale Mysteries written by Sheila Turnage from PenguinRandomHouse.com

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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

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Read an Excerpt

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe AER

Chapter One Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe
Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.

As soon as they had said goodnight to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.

"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."

"I think he's an old dear," said Susan.

"Oh, come off it!" said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that."

"Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were inbed."

"Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go to bed yourself."

"Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here."

"No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between."

"What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.

"It's only a bird, silly," said Edmund.

"It's an owl," said Peter. "This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let's go and explore tomorrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There'll be hawks."

"Badgers!" said Lucy.

"Foxes!" said Edmund.

"Rabbits!" said Susan.

But when the next morning came there was a steady rain falling, so thick that when you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in the garden.

"Of course it would be raining!" said Edmund. They had just finished their breakfast with the Professor and were upstairs in the room he had set apart for them — a long, low room with two windows looking out in one direction and two in another.

"Do stop grumbling, Ed," said Susan. "Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or so. And in the meantime we're pretty well off. There's a wireless and lots of books."

"Not for me," said Peter; "I'm going to explore in the house."

Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures, and there they found a suit of armour; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books — most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead bluebottle on the window-sill.

"Nothing there!" said Peter, and they all trooped out again — all except Lucy. She stayed behind because she thought it would be worthwhile trying the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise it opened quite easily, and two mothballs dropped out.

Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up — mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step further in — then two or three steps — always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe AER
. Copyright © by C. Lewis. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia Series #2)|Paperback

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When this adaptation of C. S. Lewis's classic children's story opened at the RSC Stratford in November 1998, it received rave reviews and broke box office records.Four children are evacuated from London during the Blitz. While exploring the Professor's house, they stumble across the...

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Read an Excerpt
A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Edition 1 MRS WHATSIT IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.

The house shook.

Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.

She wasn't usually afraid of weather.—It's not just the weather, she thought.—It's the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.

School. School was all wrong. She'd been dropped down to the lowest section in her grade. That morning one of her teachers had said crossly, "Really, Meg, I don't understand how a childwith parents as brilliant as yours are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don't manage to do a little better you'll have to stay back next year."

During lunch she'd roughhoused a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg, we aren't grade-school kids anymore. Why do you always act like such a baby?"

And on the way home from school, as she walked up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother." At this she'd thrown the books on the side of the road and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse torn and a big bruise under one eye.

Sandy and Dennys, her ten-year-old twin brothers, who got home from school an hour earlier than she did, were disgusted. "Let us do the fighting when it's necessary," they told her.

—A delinquent, that's what I am, she thought grimly. —That's what they'll be saying next. Not Mother. But Them. Everybody Else. I wish Father—

But it was still not possible to think about her father without the danger of tears. Only her mother could talk about him in a natural way, saying, "When your father gets back—"

Gets back from where? And when? Surely her mother must know what people were saying, must be aware of the smugly vicious gossip. Surely it must hurt her as it did Meg. But if it did she gave no outward sign. Nothing ruffled the serenity of her expression.

—Why can't I hide it, too? Meg thought. Why do I always have to show everything?

The window rattled madly in the wind, and she pulled the quilt close about her. Curled up on one of her pillows, a gray fluff of kitten yawned, showing its pink tongue, tucked its head under again, and went back to sleep.

Everybody was asleep. Everybody except Meg. Even Charles Wallace, the "dumb baby brother," who had an uncanny way of knowing when she was awake and unhappy, and who would come, so many nights, tiptoeing up the attic stairs to her—even Charles Wallace was asleep.

How could they sleep? All day on the radio there had been hurricane warnings. How could they leave her up in the attic in the rickety brass bed, knowing that the roof might be blown right off the house and she tossed out into the wild night sky to land who knows where?

Her shivering grew uncontrollable.

—You asked to have the attic bedroom, she told herself savagely.—Mother let you have it because you're the oldest. It's a privilege, not a punishment.

"Not during a hurricane, it isn't a privilege," she said aloud. She tossed the quilt down on the foot of the bed, and stood up. The kitten stretched luxuriously, and looked up at her with huge, innocent eyes.

"Go back to sleep," Meg said. "Just be glad you're a kitten and not a monster like me." She looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and made a horrible face, baring a mouthful of teethcovered with braces. Automatically she pushed her glasses into position, ran her fingers through her mouse-brown hair, so that it stood wildly on end, and let out a sigh almost as noisy as the wind.

The wide wooden floorboards were cold against her feet. Wind blew in the crevices about the window frame, in spite of the protection the storm sash was supposed to offer. She could hear wind howling in the chimneys. From all the way downstairs she could hear Fortinbras, the big black dog, starting to bark. He must be frightened, too. What was he barking at? Fortinbras never barked without reason.

Suddenly she remembered that when she had gone to the post office to pick up the mail she'd heard about a tramp who was supposed to have stolen twelve sheets from Mrs. Buncombe, the constable's wife. They hadn't caught him, and maybe he was heading for the Murrys' house right now, isolated on a back road as it was; and this time maybe he'd be after more than sheets. Meg hadn't paid much attention to the talk about the tramp at the time, because the postmistress, with a sugary smile, had asked if she'd heard from her father lately.

She left her little room and made her way through the shadows of the main attic, bumping against the ping-pong table. —Now I'll have a bruise on my hip on top of everything else, she thought.

Next she walked into her old dolls' house, Charles Wallace's rocking horse, the twins' electric trains. "Why must everything happen to me?" she demanded of a large teddy bear.

At the foot of the attic stairs she stood still and listened. Nota sound from Charles Wallace's room on the right. On the left, in her parents' room, not a rustle from her mother sleeping alone in the great double bed. She tiptoed down the hall and into the twins' room, pushing again at her glasses as though they could help her to see better in the dark. Dennys was snoring. Sandy murmured something about baseball and subsided. The twins didn't have any problems. They weren't great students, but they weren't bad ones, either. They were perfectly content with a succession of B's and an occasional A or C. They were strong and fast runners and good at games, and when cracks were made about anybody in the Murry family, they weren't made about Sandy and Dennys.

She left the twins' room and went on downstairs, avoiding the creaking seventh step. Fortinbras had stopped barking. It wasn't the tramp this time, then. Fort would go on barking if anybody was around.

—But suppose the tramp does come? Suppose he has a knife? Nobody lives near enough to hear if we screamed and screamed and screamed. Nobody'd care, anyhow.

—I'll make myself some cocoa, she decided.—That'll cheer me up, and if the roof blows off, at least I won't go off with it.

In the kitchen a light was already on, and Charles Wallace was sitting at the table drinking milk and eating bread and jam. He looked very small and vulnerable sitting there alone in the big old-fashioned kitchen, a blond little boy in faded blue Dr. Dentons, his feet swinging a good six inches above the floor.

"Hi," he said cheerfully. "I've been waiting for you."

From under the table where he was lying at Charles Wallace'sfeet, hoping for a crumb or two, Fortinbras raised his slender dark head in greeting to Meg, and his tail thumped against the floor. Fortinbras had arrived on their doorstep, a half-grown puppy, scrawny and abandoned, one winter night. He was, Meg's father had decided, part Llewellyn setter and part greyhound, and he had a slender, dark beauty that was all his own.

"Why didn't you come up to the attic?" Meg asked her brother, speaking as though he were at least her own age. "I've been scared stiff."

"Too windy up in that attic of yours," the little boy said. "I knew you'd be down. I put some milk on the stove for you. It ought to be hot by now."

How did Charles Wallace always know about her? How could he always tell? He never knew—or seemed to care—what Dennys or Sandy were thinking. It was his mother's mind, and Meg's, that he probed with frightening accuracy.

Was it because people were a little afraid of him that they whispered about the Murrys' youngest child, who was rumored to be not quite bright? "I've heard that clever people often have subnormal children," Meg had once overheard. "The two boys seem to be nice, regular children, but that unattractive girl and the baby boy certainly aren't all there."

It was true that Charles Wallace seldom spoke when anybody was around, so that many people thought he'd never learned to talk. And it was true that he hadn't talked at all until he was almost four. Meg would turn white with fury when people looked at him and clucked, shaking their heads sadly.

"Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg," her father hadonce told her. Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away. "There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time."

"I don't want him to grow up to be dumb like me," Meg had said.

"Oh, my darling, you're not dumb," her father answered. "You're like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn't happen to be the usual pace."

"How do you know?" Meg had demanded. "How do you know I'm not dumb? Isn't it just because you love me?"

"I love you, but that's not what tells me. Mother and I've given you a number of tests, you know."

Yes, that was true. Meg had realized that some of the "games" her parents played with her were tests of some kind, and that there had been more for her and Charles Wallace than for the twins. "IQ tests, you mean?"

"Yes, some of them."

"Is my IQ okay?"

"More than okay."

"What is it?"

"That I'm not going to tell you. But it assures me that both you and Charles Wallace will be able to do pretty much whatever you like when you grow up yourselves. You just wait till Charles Wallace starts to talk. You'll see."

How right he had been about that, though he himself had left before Charles Wallace began to speak, suddenly, with none of the usual baby preliminaries, using entire sentences. How proud he would have been!

"You'd better check the milk," Charles Wallace said to Meg now, his diction clearer and cleaner than that of most five-year-olds. "You know you don't like it when it gets a skin on top."

"You put in more than twice enough milk." Meg peered into the saucepan.

Charles Wallace nodded serenely. "I thought Mother might like some."

"I might like what?" a voice said, and there was their mother standing in the doorway.

"Cocoa," Charles Wallace said. "Would you like a liverwurst-and-cream-cheese sandwich? I'll be happy to make you one."

"That would be lovely," Mrs. Murry said, "but I can make it myself if you're busy."

"No trouble at all." Charles Wallace slid down from his chair and trotted over to the refrigerator, his pajamaed feet padding softly as a kitten's. "How about you, Meg?" he asked. "Sandwich?"

"Yes, please," she said. "But not liverwurst. Do we have any tomatoes?"

Charles Wallace peered into the crisper. "One. All right if I use it on Meg, Mother?"

"To what better use could it be put?" Mrs. Murry smiled. "But not so loud, please, Charles. That is, unless you want the twins downstairs, too."

"Let's be exclusive," Charles Wallace said. "That's my new word for the day. Impressive, isn't it?"

"Prodigious," Mrs. Murry said. "Meg, come let me look at that bruise."

Meg knelt at her mother's feet. The warmth and light ofthe kitchen had relaxed her so that her attic fears were gone. The cocoa steamed fragrantly in the saucepan; geraniums bloomed on the windowsills and there was a bouquet of tiny yellow chrysanthemums in the center of the table. The curtains, red, with a blue-and-green geometrical pattern, were drawn, and seemed to reflect their cheerfulness throughout the room. The furnace purred like a great, sleepy animal; the lights glowed with steady radiance; outside, alone in the dark, the wind still battered against the house, but the angry power that had frightened Meg while she was alone in the attic was subdued by the familiar comfort of the kitchen. Underneath Mrs. Murry's chair Fortinbras let out a contented sigh.

Mrs. Murry gently touched Meg's bruised cheek. Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs. Murry's flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg's outrageous plainness. Meg's hair had been passable as long as she wore it tidily in braids. When she went into high school it was cut, and now she and her mother struggled with putting it up, but one side would come out curly and the other straight, so that she looked even plainer than before.

"You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling?" Mrs. Murry asked. "A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn. That's a nasty bruise the Henderson boy gave you. By the way, shortly after you'd gone to bed his mother called up to complain about how badly you'd hurt him.I told her that since he's a year older and at least twenty-five pounds heavier than you are, I thought I was the one who ought to be doing the complaining. But she seemed to think it was all your fault."

"I suppose that depends on how you look at it," Meg said. "Usually, no matter what happens, people think it's my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I'm sorry I tried to fight him. It's just been an awful week. And I'm full of bad feeling."

Mrs. Murry stroked Meg's shaggy head. "Do you know why?"

"I hate being an oddball," Meg said. "It's hard on Sandy and Dennys, too. I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're just able to pretend they are. I try to pretend, but it isn't any help."

"You're much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren't," Mrs. Murry said. "I'm sorry, Meglet. Maybe if Father were here he could help you, but I don't think I can do anything till you've managed to plow through some more time. Then things will be easier for you. But that isn't much help right now, is it?"

"Maybe if I weren't so repulsive-looking—maybe if I were pretty like you—"

"Mother's not a bit pretty; she's beautiful," Charles Wallace announced, slicing liverwurst. "Therefore I bet she was awful at your age."

"How right you are," Mrs. Murry said. "Just give yourself time, Meg."

"Lettuce on your sandwich, Mother?" Charles Wallace asked.

"No, thanks."

He cut the sandwich into sections, put it on a plate, and set it in front of his mother. "Yours'll be along in just a minute, Meg. I think I'll talk to Mrs Whatsit about you."

"Who's Mrs Whatsit?" Meg asked.

"I think I want to be exclusive about her for a while," Charles Wallace said. "Onion salt?"

"Yes, please."

"What's Mrs Whatsit stand for?" Mrs. Murry asked.

"That's her name," Charles Wallace answered. "You know the old shingled house back in the woods that the kids won't go near because they say it's haunted? That's where they live."

"They?"

"Mrs Whatsit and her two friends. I was out with Fortinbras a couple of days ago—you and the twins were at school, Meg. We like to walk in the woods, and suddenly he took off after a squirrel and I took off after him and we ended up by the haunted house, so I met them by accident, as you might say."

"But nobody lives there," Meg said.

"Mrs Whatsit and her friends do. They're very enjoyable."

"Why didn't you tell me about it before?" Mrs. Murry asked. "And you know you're not supposed to go off our property without permission, Charles."

"I know," Charles said. "That's one reason I didn't tell you. I just rushed off after Fortinbras without thinking. And then I decided, well, I'd better save them for an emergency, anyhow."

A fresh gust of wind took the house and shook it, and suddenly the rain began to lash against the windows.

"I don't think I like this wind," Meg said nervously.

"We'll lose some shingles off the roof, that's certain," Mrs. Murry said. "But this house has stood for almost two hundred years and I think it will last a little longer, Meg. There's been many a high wind up on this hill."

"But this is a hurricane!" Meg wailed. "The radio kept saying it was a hurricane!"

"It's October," Mrs. Murry told her. "There've been storms in October before."

As Charles Wallace gave Meg her sandwich Fortinbras came out from under the table. He gave a long, low growl, and they could see the dark fur slowly rising on his back. Meg felt her own skin prickle.

"What's wrong?" she asked anxiously.

Fortinbras stared at the door that opened into Mrs. Murry's laboratory, which was in the old stone dairy right off the kitchen. Beyond the lab a pantry led outdoors, though Mrs. Murry had done her best to train the family to come into the house through the garage door or the front door and not through her lab. But it was the lab door and not the garage door toward which Fortinbras was growling.

"You didn't leave any nasty-smelling chemicals cooking over a Bunsen burner, did you, Mother?" Charles Wallace asked.

Mrs. Murry stood up. "No. But I think I'd better go see what's upsetting Fort, anyhow."

"It's the tramp, I'm sure it's the tramp," Meg said nervously.

"What tramp?" Charles Wallace asked.

"They were saying at the post office this afternoon that a tramp stole all Mrs. Buncombe's sheets."

"We'd better sit on the pillowcases, then," Mrs. Murry said lightly. "I don't think even a tramp would be out on a night like this, Meg."

"But that's probably why he is out," Meg wailed, "trying to find a place not to be out."

"In which case I'll offer him the barn till morning." Mrs. Murry went briskly to the door.

"I'll go with you." Meg's voice was shrill.

"No, Meg, you stay with Charles and eat your sandwich."

"Eat!" Meg exclaimed as Mrs. Murry went out through the lab. "How does she expect me to eat?"

"Mother can take care of herself," Charles said. "Physically, that is." But he sat in his father's chair at the table and his legs kicked at the rungs; and Charles Wallace, unlike most small children, had the ability to sit still.

After a few moments that seemed like forever to Meg, Mrs. Murry came back in, holding the door open for—was it the tramp? It seemed small for Meg's idea of a tramp. The age or sex was impossible to tell, for it was completely bundled up in clothes. Several scarves of assorted colors were tied about the head, and a man's felt hat perched atop. A shocking-pink stole was knotted about a rough overcoat, and black rubber boots covered the feet.

"Mrs Whatsit," Charles said suspiciously, "what are you doing here? And at this time of night, too?"

"Now, don't you be worried, my honey." A voice emerged fromamong turned-up coat collar, stole, scarves, and hat, a voice like an unoiled gate, but somehow not unpleasant.

"Mrs—uh—Whatsit—says she lost her way," Mrs. Murry said. "Would you care for some hot chocolate, Mrs Whatsit?"

"Charmed, I'm sure," Mrs Whatsit answered, taking off the hat and the stole. "It isn't so much that I lost my way as that I got blown off course. And when I realized that I was at little Charles Wallace's house I thought I'd just come in and rest a bit before proceeding on my way."

"How did you know this was Charles Wallace's house?" Meg asked.

"By the smell." Mrs Whatsit untied a blue-and-green paisley scarf, a red-and-yellow flowered print, a gold Liberty print, a red-and-black bandanna. Under all this a sparse quantity of grayish hair was tied in a small but tidy knot on top of her head. Her eyes were bright, her nose a round, soft blob, her mouth puckered like an autumn apple. "My, but it's lovely and warm in here," she said.

"Do sit down." Mrs. Murry indicated a chair. "Would you like a sandwich, Mrs Whatsit? I've had liverwurst and cream cheese; Charles has had bread and jam; and Meg, lettuce and tomato."

"Now, let me see," Mrs Whatsit pondered. "I'm passionately fond of Russian caviar."

"You peeked!" Charles cried indignantly. "We're saving that for Mother's birthday and you can't have any!"

Mrs Whatsit gave a deep and pathetic sigh.

"No," Charles said. "Now, you mustn't give in to her, Mother, or I shall be very angry. How about tuna-fish salad?"

"All right," Mrs Whatsit said meekly.

"I'll fix it," Meg offered, going to the pantry for a can of tuna fish.

—For crying out loud, she thought,—this old woman comes barging in on us in the middle of the night and Mother takes it as though there weren't anything peculiar about it at all. I'll bet she is the tramp. I'll bet she did steal those sheets. And she's certainly no one Charles Wallace ought to be friends with, especially when he won't even talk to ordinary people.

"I've only been in the neighborhood a short time," Mrs Whatsit was saying as Meg switched off the pantry light and came back into the kitchen with the tuna fish, "and I didn't think I was going to like the neighbors at all until dear little Charles came over with his dog."

"Mrs Whatsit," Charles Wallace demanded severely, "why did you take Mrs. Buncombe's sheets?"

"Well, I needed them, Charles dear."

"You must return them at once."

"But Charles, dear, I can't. I've used them."

"It was very wrong of you," Charles Wallace scolded. "If you needed sheets that badly, you should have asked me."

Mrs Whatsit shook her head and clucked. "You can't spare any sheets. Mrs. Buncombe can."

Meg cut up some celery and mixed it in with the tuna. After a moment's hesitation she opened the refrigerator door and brought out ajar of little sweet pickles.—Though why I'm doing it for her I don't know, she thought, as she cut them up.—I don't trust her one bit.

"Tell your sister I'm all right," Mrs Whatsit said to Charles. "Tell her my intentions are good."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Charles intoned.

"My, but isn't he cunning." Mrs Whatsit beamed at him fondly. "It's lucky he has someone to understand him."

"But I'm afraid he doesn't," Mrs. Murry said. "None of us is quite up to Charles."

"But at least you aren't trying to squash him down." Mrs Whatsit nodded her head vigorously. "You're letting him be himself."

"Here's your sandwich," Meg said, bringing it to Mrs Whatsit.

"Do you mind if I take off my boots before I eat?" Mrs Whatsit asked, picking up the sandwich nevertheless. "Listen." She moved her feet up and down in her boots, and they could hear water squelching. "My toes are ever so damp. The trouble is that these boots are a mite too tight for me, and I never can take them off by myself."

"I'll help you," Charles offered.

"Not you. You're not strong enough."

"I'll help." Mrs. Murry squatted at Mrs Whatsit's feet, yanking on one slick boot. When the boot came off, it came suddenly. Mrs. Murry sat down with a thump. Mrs Whatsit went tumbling backward with the chair onto the floor, sandwich held high in one old claw. Water poured out of the boot and ran over the floor and the big braided rug.

"Oh, dearie me," Mrs Whatsit said, lying on her back in theoverturned chair, her feet in the air, one in a red-and-white striped sock, the other still booted.

Mrs. Murry got to her feet. "Are you all right, Mrs Whatsit?"

"If you have some liniment I'll put it on my dignity," Mrs Whatsit said, still supine. "I think it's sprained. A little oil of cloves mixed well with garlic is rather good." And she took a large bite of sandwich.

"Do please get up," Charles said. "I don't like to see you lying there that way. You're carrying things too far."

"Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?" But Mrs Whatsit scrambled up, righted the chair, and then sat back down on the floor, the booted foot stuck out in front of her, and took another bite. She moved with great agility for such an old woman. At least Meg was reasonably sure that she was an old woman, and a very old woman at that.

Mrs Whatsit, her mouth full, ordered Mrs. Murry, "Now pull while I'm already down."

Quite calmly, as though this old woman and her boots were nothing out of the ordinary, Mrs. Murry pulled until the second boot relinquished the foot. This foot was covered with a blue-and-gray Argyle sock, and Mrs Whatsit sat there, wriggling her toes, contentedly finishing her sandwich before scrambling to her feet. "Ah," she said, "that's ever so much better," and took both boots and shook them out over the sink. "My stomach is full and I'm warm inside and out and it's time I went home."

"Don't you think you'd better stay till morning?" Mrs. Murry asked.

"Oh, thank you, dearie, but there's so much to do I just can't waste time sitting around frivoling."

"It's much too wild a night to travel in."

"Wild nights are my glory," Mrs Whatsit said. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course."

"Well, at least till your socks are dry—"

"Wet socks don't bother me. I just didn't like the water squishing around in my boots. Now, don't worry about me, lamb." ("Lamb" was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."

Mrs. Murry went very white and with one hand reached backward and clutched at a chair for support. Her voice trembled. "What did you say?"

Mrs Whatsit tugged at her second boot. "I said," she grunted, shoving her foot down in, "that there is"—shove—"such a thing"—shove—"as a tesseract." Her foot went down into the boot, and grabbing shawls, scarves, and hat, she hustled out the door. Mrs. Murry stayed very still, making no move to help the old woman. As the door opened, Fortinbras streaked in, panting, wet and shiny as a seal. He looked at Mrs. Murry and whined.

The door slammed.

"Mother, what's the matter!" Meg cried. "What did she say? What is it?"

"The tesseract—" Mrs. Murry whispered. "What did she mean? How could she have known?"

A WRINKLE IN TIME. Text copyright © 1962 by Crosswicks, Ltd. Introduction copyright © 2012 by Katherine Paterson. Afterword copyright © 2012 by Charlotte Jones.

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A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet Series #1)|Paperback

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A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Edition 1 MRS WHATSIT IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.

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Read an Excerpt

Crenshaw

By Katherine Applegate

Feiwel and Friends

Copyright © 2015 Katherine Applegate
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-08022-6

CHAPTER 1

I noticed several weird things about the surfboarding cat.

Thing number one: He was a surfboarding cat.

Thing number two: He was wearing a T-shirt. It said CATS RULE, DOGS DROOL.

Thing number three: He was holding a closed umbrella, like he was worried about getting wet. Which, when you think about it, is kind of not the point of surfing.

Thing number four: No one else on the beach seemed to see him.

He'd grabbed a good wave, and his ride was smooth. But as the cat neared shore, he made the mistake of opening his umbrella. A gust of wind yanked him into the sky. He missed a seagull by seconds.

Even the gull didn't seem to notice him.

The cat floated over me like a furry balloon. I looked straight up. He looked straight down. He waved.

His coat was black and white, penguin style. All he needed was a bow tie and a top hat. He looked like he was heading somewhere fancy.

He also looked awfully familiar.

"Crenshaw," I whispered.

I glanced around me. I saw sandcastle builders and Frisbee tossers and crab chasers. But I didn't see anyone looking at the floating, umbrella-toting, surfer cat in the sky.

I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten. Slowly.

Ten seconds seemed like the right amount of time for me to stop being crazy.

I felt a little dizzy. But that happens sometimes when I'm hungry. I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

When I opened my eyes, I sighed with relief. The cat was gone. The sky was endless and empty.

Whap. Inches from my toes, the umbrella landed in the sand like a giant dart.

It was red and yellow plastic, decorated with pictures of tiny smiling mice. On the handle, printed in crayon, were the words: THIS BUMBERSHOOT BELONGS TO CRENSHAW.

I closed my eyes again. I counted to ten. I opened my eyes, and the umbrella - or the bumbershoot, or whatever it was - had vanished. Just like the cat.

It was late June, nice and warm, but I shivered.

I felt the way you do the instant before you leap into the deep end of a pool.

You're on your way to somewhere else. You're not there yet. But you know there's no turning back.

CHAPTER 2

Here's the thing: I am not an imaginary friend kind of guy.

Seriously. This fall I go into fifth grade. At my age, it's not good to have a reputation for being crazy.

I like facts. Always have. True stuff. Two-plus-two-equals-four facts. Brussels-sprouts-taste-like-dirty-gym-socks facts.

Okay, maybe that second one's just an opinion. And anyway, I've never eaten a dirty gym sock so I could be wrong.

Facts are important to scientists, which is what I want to be when I grow up. Nature facts are my favorite kind. Especially the ones that make people say no way.

Like the fact that a cheetah can run seventy miles per hour.

Or the fact that a headless cockroach can survive for two weeks.

Or the fact that when a horned toad gets mad it shoots blood from its eyes.

I want to be an animal scientist. I'm not sure what kind. Right now I really like bats. I also like cheetahs and cats and dogs and snakes and rats and manatees. So those are some options.

I like dinosaurs too, except for them all being dead. For a while, my friend Marisol and I both wanted to be paleontologists and search for dinosaur fossils. She used to bury chicken bone leftovers in her sandbox for digging practice.

Marisol and I started a dog-walking service this summer. It's called See Spot Walk. Sometimes when we're walking dogs, we'll trade nature facts. Yesterday she told me that a bat can eat twelve hundred mosquitoes in an hour.

Facts are so much better than stories. You can't see a story. You can't hold it in your hand and measure it.

You can't hold a manatee in your hand either. But still. Stories are lies, when you get right down to it. And I don't like being lied to.

I've never much been into make-believe stuff. When I was a kid, I didn't dress up like Batman or talk to stuffed animals or worry about monsters under my bed.

My parents say when I was in pre-K I marched around telling everybody I was the mayor of Earth. But that was just for a couple days.

Sure, I had my Crenshaw phase. But lots of kids have an imaginary friend.

Once my parents took me to see the Easter Bunny at the mall. We stood on fake grass next to a giant fake egg in a giant fake basket.

When it was my turn to pose with the bunny, I took one look at his paw and yanked it right off.

A man's hand was inside. It had a gold wedding ring and puffs of blondish hair.

"This man is not a rabbit!" I shouted. A little girl started bawling.

The mall manager made us leave. I did not get the free basket with candy eggs or a photo with the fake rabbit.

That was the first time I realized people don't always like to hear the truth.

CHAPTER 3

After the Easter bunny incident my parents started to worry.

Except for my two days as mayor of Earth, I didn't seem to have much of an imagination. They thought maybe I was too grown-up. Too serious.

My dad wondered if he should have read me more fairy tales.

My mom wondered if she should have let me watch so many nature shows where animals eat each other.

They asked my grandma for advice. They wanted to know if I was acting too adult for my age.

She said not to worry.

No matter how adult I seemed, she told them, I would definitely grow out of it when I became a teenager.

CHAPTER 4

A few hours after my Crenshaw sighting at the beach, he appeared again.

No surfboard this time. No umbrella.

No body, either.

Still. I knew he was there.

It was about six in the evening. My sister Robin and I were playing cerealball in the living room of our apartment. Cerealball is a good trick for when you're hungry and there's nothing much to eat till morning. We invented it when our stomachs were grumbling to each other. Wow, I would love a piece of pepperoni pizza, my stomach would growl. And then hers would grumble, Yeah, or maybe a Ritz cracker with peanut butter.

Robin loves Ritzs.

Cerealball is easy to play. All you need is a few Cheerios or even a little piece of bread all torn up. M&Ms would be good too, if your mom isn't around to say no sugar. But unless it's right after Halloween you probably don't have any.

In my family those guys go really fast.

First you pick a target to throw at. A bowl or cup works fine. Don't use a wastebasket because that might have germs. Sometimes I use Robin's T-ball cap. Although that's probably pretty gross too.

For a five-year-old, that girl can really sweat.

What you do is throw your one piece of cereal and try to make a basket. The rule is you can't eat that piece until you score. Make sure your target's far away or you'll finish your food too fast.

The trick is that you take so long to hit the target, you forget about being hungry. For a while, anyway.

I like to use Cheerios and Robin likes Frosted Flakes. But you can't be picky when the cupboard is bare. My mom says that sometimes.

If you run out of cereal and your stomach's still growling, you can always try chewing a piece of gum to distract yourself. Stuck behind your ear is a good hiding place if you want to use your gum again. Even if the flavor is gone your teeth get a workout.

Crenshaw showed up - at least he seemed to show up - while we were busy throwing my dad's bran cereal into Robin's cap. It was my turn to throw, and I got a direct hit. When I went to take out the cereal piece, I found four purple jelly beans instead.

I love purple jelly beans.

I stared a long time at those things. "Where did the jelly beans come from?" I finally asked.

Robin grabbed the cap. I started to pull it away, but then I changed my mind. Robin is small, but you don't want to mess with her.

She bites.

"It's magic!" she said. She started dividing up the jelly beans. "One for me, one for you, two for me -"

"Seriously, Robin. Stop kidding around. Where?"

Robin gobbled down two jelly beans. "Shlp tchzzzn muh," she said, which I figured meant "stop teasing me" in candy-mouth.

Aretha, our big Labrador mutt, rushed over to check things out. "No candy for you," Robin said. "You are a dog so you eat dog food, young lady."

But Aretha didn't seem interested in the candy. She was sniffing the air, ears cocked toward the front door, as if we had a guest approaching.

"Mom," I yelled, "did you buy some jelly beans?"

"Sure," she called back from the kitchen. "They're to go with the caviar."

"I'm serious," I said, picking up my two pieces.

"Just eat Dad's cereal, Jackson. You'll poop for a week," she answered.

A second later she appeared in the doorway, a dish towel in her hands. "Are you guys still hungry?" She sighed. "I've got a little mac and cheese left over from dinner. And there's half an apple you could share."

"I'm fine," I said quickly. Back in the old days, when we always had food in the house, I would whine if we were out of my favorite stuff. But lately we'd been running out of everything, and I had the feeling my parents felt lousy about it.

"We have jelly beans, Mom," Robin said.

"Well, okay, then. As long as you're eating something nutritious," said my mom. "I get my paycheck at Rite-Aid tomorrow, and I'll stop by the grocery store and pick up some food after work."

She gave a little nod, like she'd checked something off a list, and went back to the kitchen.

"Aren't you gonna eat your jelly beans?" Robin asked me, twirling her yellow ponytail around her finger. "Because if you want me to do you a big favor I guess I could eat them for you."

"I'm going to eat them," I said. "Just not ... yet."

"Why not? They're purple. Your favorite."

"I need to think about them first."

"You are a weirdo brother," said Robin. "I'm going to my room.

Aretha wants to play dress up."

"I doubt that," I said. I held a jelly bean up to the light. It looked harmless enough.

"She especially likes hats and also socks," Robin said as she left with the dog. "Don't you, baby?"

Aretha wagged. She was always up for anything. But as she left with Robin, she glanced over her shoulder at the front window and whined

I went to the window and peered outside. I checked behind the couch. I flung open the hall closet.

Nothing. Nobody.

No surfing cats. No Crenshaw.

I hadn't told anybody about what I'd seen at the beach. Robin would just think I was messing with her. My mom and dad would do one of two things. Either they'd freak out and worry I was going crazy. Or they'd think it was adorable that I was pretending to hang out with my old invisible friend.

I sniffed the jelly beans. They smelled not-quite-grapey, in a good way. They looked real. They felt real. And my real little sister had just eaten some.

Rule number one for scientists is this: there is always a logical explanation for things. I just had to figure out what it was.

Maybe the jelly beans weren't real, and I was just tired or sick. Delirious, even.

I checked my forehead. Unfortunately, I did not seem to have a fever.

Maybe I'd gotten sunstroke at the beach. I wasn't exactly sure what sunstroke was, but it sounded like something that might make you see flying cats and magic jelly beans.

Maybe I was asleep, stuck in the middle of a long, weird, totally annoying dream.

Still. Didn't the jelly beans in my hand seem extremely real?

Maybe I was just hungry. Hunger can make you feel pretty weird. Even pretty crazy.

I ate my first jelly bean slowly and carefully. If you take tiny bites, your food lasts longer.

A voice in my head said "Never take candy from strangers." But Robin had survived. And if there was a stranger involved, he was an invisible one.

There had to be a logical explanation. But for now, the only thing I knew for sure was that purple jelly beans tasted way better than bran cereal.

CHAPTER 5

The first time I met Crenshaw was about three years ago, right after first grade ended.

It was early evening, and my family and I had parked at a rest stop off a highway. I was lying on the grass near a picnic table, gazing up at the stars blinking to life.

I heard a noise, a wheels-on-gravel skateboard sound. I sat up on my elbows. Sure enough, a skater on a board was threading his way through the parking lot.

I could see right away that he was an unusual guy.

He was a black-and-white kitten. A big one, taller than me. His eyes were the sparkly color of morning grass. He was wearing a black and orange San Francisco Giants baseball cap.

He hopped off his board and headed my way. He was standing on two legs just like a human.

"Meow," he said.

"Meow," I said back, because it seemed polite.

He leaned close and sniffed my hair. "Do you have any purple jelly beans?"

I jumped to my feet. It was his lucky day. I just happened to have two purple jelly beans in my jeans pocket.

They were a little smushed, but we each ate one anyway.

I told the cat my name was Jackson.

He said yes, of course it is.

I asked him what his name was.

He asked what did I want his name to be.

It was a surprising question. But I had already figured out he was a surprising guy.

I thought for a while. It was a big decision. People care a lot about names.

Finally I said, "Crenshaw would be a good name for a cat, I think."

He didn't smile because cats don't smile.

But I could tell he was pleased.

"Crenshaw it is," he said.

CHAPTER 6

I don't know where I got the name Crenshaw.

No one in my family has ever known a Crenshaw.

We don't have any Crenshaw relatives or Crenshaw friends or Crenshaw teachers.

I'd never been to Crenshaw, Mississippi, or Crenshaw, Pennsylvania, or Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles.

I'd never read a book about a Crenshaw or seen a TV show with a Crenshaw in it.

Somehow Crenshaw just seemed right.

Everybody in my family was named after somebody or something else. My dad was named after his grandpa. My mom was named after her aunt. My sister and I weren't even named after people. We were named after guitars.

I was named after my dad's guitar. It was designed by a manufacturer called Jackson. My sister was named after the company that made my mom's guitar.

My parents used to be musicians. Starving musicians is what my mom calls it. After I was born they stopped being musicians and became normal people. Since they'd run out of instruments, my parents named our dog after a famous singer called Aretha Franklin. That was after Robin wanted to name her Bellybutton and I wanted to call her Dog.

At least our middle names came from people and not instruments. Orson and Marybelle were my dad's uncle and my mom's great-grandma. Those folks are dead so I don't know if they're good names or not.

Dad says his uncle was a charming curmudgeon, which I think means grumpy with some niceness thrown in.

Honestly, another middle name might have been better. A brand-new one. One that wasn't already used up.

Maybe that's why I liked the name Crenshaw. It felt like a blank piece of paper before you draw on it.

It was an anything-is-possible kind of name.

CHAPTER 7

I don't exactly remember how I felt about Crenshaw that day we met.

It was a long time ago.

I don't remember lots of stuff about that happened when I was young.

I don't remember being born. Or learning to walk. Or wearing diapers. Which is probably not something you want to remember anyway.

Memory is weird. I remember getting lost at the grocery store when I was four. But I don't remember getting found by my mom and dad, who were yelling and crying at the same time. I only know that part because they told me about it.

I remember when my little sister first came home. But I don't remember trying to put her in a box so we could mail her back to the hospital.

My parents enjoy telling people that story.

I'm not even sure why Crenshaw was a cat, and not a dog or an alligator or a Tyrannosaurus rex with three heads.

When I try to remember my whole entire life, it feels like a Lego project where you're missing some of the important pieces, like a robot mini-figure or a monster truck wheel. You do the best you can to put things together, but you know it's not quite like the picture on the box.

It seems like I should have thought to myself, Wow, a cat is talking to me, and that is not something that usually happens at a highway rest stop.

But all I remember thinking is how great it was to have a friend who liked purple jelly beans as much as I did.

CHAPTER 8

A couple hours after the mysterious jelly bean appearance during cerealball, my mom gave Robin and me each a grocery bag. She said they were for our keepsakes. A bunch of our things were going to be sold at a yard sale on Sunday, except for important stuff like shoes and mattresses and a few dishes. My parents were hoping to make enough money to pay some back rent and maybe the water bill too.

Robin asked what is a keepsake. My mom said it's an object you treasure. Then she said things don't really matter, as long as we have each other.

I asked what were her keepsakes and my dad's. She said probably their guitars would be at the top of the list, and maybe books, because those were always important.

Robin said she would bring her Lyle book for sure.

My sister's favorite book in the world is The House on East 88th Street. It's about a crocodile named Lyle who lives with a family. Lyle likes to hang out in the bathtub and walk the dog.

Robin knows every word of that book by heart.

Excerpted from Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate. Copyright © 2015 Katherine Applegate. Excerpted by permission of Feiwel and Friends.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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In her first novel since The One and Only Ivan, winner of the Newbery Medal, Katherine Applegate delivers an unforgettable and magical story about family, friendship, and resilience.Jackson and his family have fallen on hard times. There's no more money for rent. And not...

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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

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Robert C. O'Brien was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Williams College and graduated from the University of Rochester. He was a writer and editor for Newsweek, National Geographic, and other publications. He lived in New York City and then in Washington, DC, with his wife and four children. Z for Zachariah-which is now a major motion picture starring Margot Robbie, Chris Pine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor-was completed by his wife and daughter, with the help of his notes, after his death in 1973. He is also the author of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and The Silver Crown.

Zena Bernstein has a BFA from Syracuse University. She began her career as a book illustrator in New York City. Zena uses a combination of watercolor and acrylics in her work. Through a meticulous process, she carefully places several layers of dots of pure color to suggest subtle tones and shades. She refers to her creative work as a labor of love. Her drawings range from the natural world of mushrooms and insects to the unseen world of fairies and gnomes. She's perhaps best known for illustrating the children's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Zena currently calls Canada home; it's also the home of the fairies she draws and writes about.

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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh|Paperback

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Some extraordinary rats come to the aid of a mouse family in this Newbery Medal Award-winning classic by notable children’s author Robert C. O’Brien.Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, is faced with a terrible problem. She must move her family...

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Notes From Your Bookseller

Full of Dahl's usual array of inventive vocabulary, The BFG is the story of a giant who isn't as swollomping as other giants. In fact, he's rather friendly. On the surface hilarious and classic Dahl, there's also a refreshing undercurrent to remember that not all people (or giants) are the same.

From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda!

One of TIME MAGAZINE's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG-she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are flush-bunking off to England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!

"This warmhearted tall tale, published a year before Dahl picked up the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, artfully whisks readers away on a magical journey through London, Giant Country and beyond, to a realm of wild imagination." —TIME Magazine

Cover may vary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780142410387

Publisher:

Penguin Young Readers Group

Publication date:

08/16/2007

Edition description:

Reprint

Pages:

224

Sales rank:

7,014

Product dimensions:

5.06(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.52(d)

Lexile:

720L ( what's this?)

Age Range:

8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter-pilot, chocolate historian and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG and many more brilliant stories. He remains the World's No.1 storyteller. Find out more at roalddahl.com.

Date of Birth:

September 13, 1916

Date of Death:

November 23, 1990

Place of Birth:

Llandaff, Wales, England

Place of Death:

Oxford, England

Read an Excerpt

The Witching Hour

Sophie couldn't sleep.

A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on to her pillow.

The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours.

Sophie closed her eyes and lay quite still. She tried very hard to doze off.

It was no good. The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room onto her face.

The house was absolutely silent. No voices came up from downstairs. There were no footsteps on the floor above either.

The window behind the curtain was wide open, but nobody was walking on the pavement outside. No cars went by on the street. Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere. Sophie had never known such a silence.

Perhaps, she told herself, this was what they called the witching hour.

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.

***

The moonbeam was brighter than ever on Sophie's pillow. She decided to get out of bed and close the gap in the curtains.

You got punished if you were caught out of bed after lights-out. Even if you said you had to go to the lavatory, that was not accepted as an excuse and they punished you just the same. But there was no one about now, Sophie was sure of that.

She reached out for her glasses that lay on the chair beside her bed. They had steel rims and very thick lenses, and she could hardly see a thing without them. She put them on, then she slipped out of bed and tiptoed over to the window.

When she reached the curtains, Sophie hesitated. She longed to duck underneath them and lean out of the window to see what the world looked like now that the witching hour was at hand.

She listened again. Everywhere it was deathly still.

The longing to look out became so strong she couldn't resist it. Quickly, she ducked under the curtains and leaned out of the window.

In the silvery moonlight, the village street she knew so well seemed completely different. The houses looked bent and crooked, like houses in a fairy tale. Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white.

Across the road, she could see Mrs Rance's shop, where you bought buttons and wool and bits of elastic. It didn't look real. There was something dim and misty about that too.

Sophie allowed her eye to travel further and further down the street.

Suddenly she froze. There was something coming up the street on the opposite side.

It was something black . . .

Something tall and black . . .

Something very tall and very black and very thin.

Who?

It wasn't a human. It couldn't be. It was four times as tall as the tallest human. It was so tall its head was higher than the upstairs windows of the houses. Sophie opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Her throat, like her whole body, was frozen with fright.

This was the witching hour all right.

The tall black figure was coming her way. It was keeping very close to the houses across the street, hiding in the shadowy places where there was no moonlight.

On and on it came, nearer and nearer. But it was moving in spurts. It would stop, then it would move on, then it would stop again.

But what on earth was it doing?

Ah-ha! Sophie could see now what it was up to. It was stopping in front of each house. It would stop and peer into the upstairs window of each house in the street. It actually had to bend down to peer into the upstairs windows. That's how tall it was.

It would stop and peer in. Then it would slide on to the next house and stop again, and peer in, and so on all along the street.

It was much closer now and Sophie could see it more clearly.

Looking at it carefully, she decided it had to be some kind of PERSON. Obviously it was not a human. But it was definitely a PERSON.

A GIANT PERSON, perhaps.

Sophie stared hard across the misty moonlit street. The Giant (if that was what he was) was wearing a long BLACK CLOAK.

In one hand he was holding what looked like a VERY LONG, THIN TRUMPET.

In the other hand, he held a LARGE SUITCASE.

The Giant had stopped now right in front of Mr and Mrs Goochey's house. The Goocheys had a greengrocer's shop in the middle of the High Street, and the family lived above the shop. The two Goochey children slept in the upstairs front room, Sophie knew that.

The Giant was peering through the window into the room where Michael and Jane Goochey were sleeping. From across the street, Sophie watched and held her breath.

***

She saw the Giant step back a pace and put the suitcase down on the pavement. He bent over and opened the suitcase. He took something out of it. It looked like a glass jar, one of those square ones with a screw top. He unscrewed the top of the jar and poured what was in it into the end of the long trumpet thing.

Sophie watched, trembling.

She saw the Giant straighten up again and she saw him poke the trumpet in through the open upstairs window of the room where the Coochey children were sleeping. She saw the Giant take a deep breath and whoof, he blew through the trumpet.

No noise came out, but it was obvious to Sophie that whatever had been in the jar had now been blown through the trumpet into the Coochey children's bedroom.

What could it be?

As the Giant withdrew the trumpet from the window and bent down to pick up the suitcase, he happened to turn his head and glance across the street.

In the moonlight, Sophie caught a glimpse of an enormous long pale wrinkly face with huge ears. The nose was as sharp as a knife, and above the nose there were two bright flashing eyes, and the eyes were staring straight at Sophie. There was a fierce and devilish look about them.

Sophie gave a yelp and pulled back from the window. She flew across the dormitory and jumped into her bed and hid under the blanket.

And there she crouched, still as a mouse, and tingling all over.

The Snatch

Under the blanket, Sophie waited.

After a minute or so, she lifted a corner of the blanket and peeped out.

For the second time that night her blood froze to ice and she wanted to scream, but no sound came out. There at the window, with the curtains pushed aside, was the enormous long pale wrinkly face of the Giant Person, staring in. The flashing black eyes were fixed on Sophie's bed.

The next moment, a huge hand with pale fingers came snaking in through the window. This was followed by an arm, an arm as thick as a tree-trunk, and the arm, the hand, the fingers were reaching out across the room towards Sophie's bed.

This time Sophie really did scream, but only for a second because very quickly the huge hand clamped down over her blanket and the scream was smothered by the bedclothes.

Sophie, crouching underneath the blanket, felt strong fingers grasping hold of her, and then she was lifted up from her bed, blanket and all, and whisked out of the window.

***

If you can think of anything more terrifying than that happening to you in the middle of the night, then let's hear about it.

The awful thing was that Sophie knew exactly what was going on although she couldn't see it happening. She knew that a Monster (or Giant) with an enormous long pale wrinkly face and dangerous eyes had plucked her from her bed in the middle of the witching hour and was now carrying her out through the window smothered in a blanket.

What actually happened next was this. When the Giant had got Sophie outside, he arranged the blanket so that he could grasp all the four corners of it at once in one of his huge hands, with Sophie imprisoned inside. In the other hand he seized the suitcase and the long trumpet thing and off he ran.

***

Sophie, by squirming around inside the blanket, managed to push the top of her head out through a little gap just below the Giant's hand. She stared around her.

She saw the village houses rushing by on both sides. The Giant was sprinting down the High Street. He was running so fast his black cloak was streaming out behind him like the wings of a bird. Each stride he took was as long as a tennis court. Out of the village he ran, and soon they were racing across the moonlit fields. The hedges dividing the fields were no problem to the Giant. He simply strode over them. A wide river appeared in his path. He crossed it in one flying stride.

Sophie crouched in the blanket, peering out. She was being bumped against the Giant's leg like a sack of potatoes. Over the fields and hedges and rivers they went, and after a while a frightening thought carne into Sophie's head. The Giant is running fast, she told herself, because he is hungry and he wants to get home as quickly as possible, and then he'll have me for breakfast.

Editorial Reviews

Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake are uncanny in their understanding of what children like to read and see. Sophie, an eight-year-old orphan, is kidnapped by the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) and taken to Giantland, where [her] alliance with the BFG and the queen of England results in the capture of the nine evil giants. Children will enjoy this book." — The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

In a perfect combination of plot and narration, Natasha Richardson has created a splendid rendition of a true children's classic. Dahl's ability to twist words into a clever and creative new language is fascinating to children, and an enjoyable challenge to adults. The gruesome descriptions of the horrid giants and the subtle allusions to other stories will entertain children young and old. Richardson's narration adds the final perfect touch--her voices are marvelous, investing Sophie with the innocence and longing of a lonely but proper little girl, creating a lovable if sometimes irascible giant, and even finding the exact tones for the imperious yet understanding queen. Even the narrator is absolutely right--objective yet compassionate! With voices full of emotion, indignation, and humor, Richardson builds and maintains the story, bringing it to its charming end. A true gem! W.L.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 02 - AudioFile

Read More

Customer Reviews

The international bestselling series with over 5 million copies sold in the U.S. alone!

Kidnapped after the fierce battle with Lord Morgarath, Will and Evanlyn are bound for Skandia as captives

Inspired by his millions of fans worldwide, many of whom wrote him emails and letters questioning the fate or the origin of some of the most popular characters and storylines from Ranger's

The international bestselling series with over 5 million copies sold in the U.S. alone!

When a cult springs up in neighboring Clonmel, promising to quell the recent attacks by lawless marauders,

The international bestselling series with over 5 million copies sold in the U.S. alone!

The renegade outlaw group known as the Outsiders has journeyed from kingdom to kingdom, conning the

Little Billy strays into the forest, where he meets the Minpins-tiny people who live within the trees. The Minpins tell Billy about The Gruncher, who preys on them. So Billy embarks on a mission to

"Spotty Powder" - the missing chapter from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - available for the first time!

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie Bucket loves chocolate. And Mr. Willy Wonka,

This collectable hardcover edition will feature a beautiful cover and deluxe packaging, including plum-colored interior text and illustrations!
From the bestselling author of The BFG and Matilda comes

Pranks, tricks, mischief, and more in this ideal companion book to Roald Dahl's beloved novels!
Professional tricksters put your cunning to the test. Inside this wicked little book you'll find

A little magic can take you a long way.

When James Henry Trotter accidentally drops some magic crystals by the old peach tree, strange things start to happen. The peach at the top of the tree begins

Who but Roald Dahl could think up such mouthwatering and deliciously disgusting foods as Lickable Wallpaper, Stink Bugs Eggs, and Eatable Pillows? Now theres a practical guide to making these and

From the World's No. 1 Storyteller, The Witches is a children's classic that has captured young reader's imaginations for generations.
This is not a fairy tale. This is

This collectable hardcover edition will feature a beautiful cover and deluxe packaging, including color interior text and illustrations!
From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate

Find out where the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG got all his wonderful story ideas in this autobiographical account of his childhood!
From his own

From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG!
Mr. Hoppy is in love with his neighbor, Mrs. Silver; but she is in love with someone else-Alfie, her pet

From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG!
The Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company certainly doesn't. They don't need a pail, either, because they

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From the bestselling author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda! One of TIME MAGAZINE’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All TimeThe BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky...

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This gripping story, written in sparse first-person, free-verse poems, is the compelling tale of Billie Jo's struggle to survive during the dust bowl years of the Depression. With stoic courage, she learns to cope with the loss of her mother and her grieving father's slow deterioration. There is hope at the end when Billie Jo's badly burned hands are healed, and she is able to play her beloved piano again. The 1998 Newbery Medal winner.

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780590371254

Publisher:

Scholastic, Inc.

Publication date:

01/28/1999

Edition description:

Reissue

Pages:

240

Sales rank:

15,418

Product dimensions:

7.62(w) x 5.24(h) x 0.60(d)

Age Range:

11 - 14 Years

Editorial Reviews

Awards and Praise for Out of the Dust:
Winner of the Newbery Medal
Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award
An ALA Notable Children's Book
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A Book Links "Lasting Connection"
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing selection
* "Hesse's spare prose adroitly traces Billie Jo's journey in and out of darkness.... With each meticulously arranged entry she paints a vivid picture of Billie Jo's emotions, ranging from desolation.... to longing... to hope." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
* "Hesse uses free-verse poems to advance the plot, allowing the narrator to speak for herself much more eloquently than would be possible in standard prose. The author's astute and careful descriptions of life during the dust storms of the 1930s are grounded in harsh reality, yet are decidedly poetic... Hesse's ever growing skill as a writer willing to take chances with her form shines through superbly..." -- School Library Journal, starred review
* "The story is bleak, but Hesse's writing transcends the gloom and transforms it into a powerfully compelling tale of a girl with enormous strength, courage and love. The entire novel is written in very readable blank verse, a superb choice for bringing out the exquisite agony and delight to be found in such a difficult period lived by such a vibrant character." Booklist, starred review

From the Publisher

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This gripping story, written in sparse first-person, free-verse poems, is the compelling tale of Billie Jo's struggle to survive during the dust bowl years of the Depression. With stoic courage, she learns to cope with the loss of her mother and her grieving father's slow deterioration. There...

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$12.99

Square Fish

Square Fish

ISBN: 9781250073495
208 Pages, Ages 10-14

Less...

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, NYTBR Notable Children's BOTY, Boston Globe - Horn Book Award, School Library Best Books of the Year, IRA Teachers' Choices, CCBC Choice (Univ. of WI), Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, NCSS-CBC NotableTrade-Soc.Stdy, National Book Awards - Longlist, Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, ALA Notable Children's Books, National Book Awards Finalist, YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist, Boston Book Review - Winner, Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, Vermont Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, Iowa Teen Award Master List

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FIRST HERO

HE WAS GATHERING dirty laundry when the bombs started falling.
It was early on the morning of December 7, 1941, at the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Mess Attendant Dorie Miller had just gone...

READ THE FULL EXCERPT →

Reviews

Praise for The Port Chicago 50

Reviews from Goodreads

Steve Sheinkin

Steve Sheinkin is the award-winning author of fast-paced, cinematic histories for young readers. He is a three-time National Book Award finalist and two-time winner of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. Bomb was a Newbery Honor Book and The Port Chicago 50 won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. His other acclaimed books include The Notorious Benedict Arnold and Most Dangerous. Sheinkin also writes the Time Twisters series. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and two children.

Steve Sheinkin

Erica Miller

OTHER GUIDES
Teacher's Guide

From the Publisher

Square Fish

g

$12.99

Square Fish

Square Fish

ISBN: 9781250073495
208 Pages, Ages 10-14

FIRST HERO

HE WAS GATHERING dirty laundry when the bombs started falling.
It was early on the morning of December 7, 1941, at the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Mess Attendant Dorie Miller had just gone...

READ THE FULL EXCERPT →

Reviews

Praise for The Port Chicago 50

"An impressive work and an inspiring one." - The New York Times

"Sheinkin lets the participants tell the story, masterfully lacing the narrative with extensive quotations drawn from oral histories." - Kirkus, starred review

"Sheinkin's narrative shines." - Booklist, starred review

"Through effective research, Sheinkin re-creates a story that remains largely unknown to many Americans, and is one of the many from World War II about segregation and race that is important to explore with students." - School Library Journal, starred review

"Sheinkin delivers another meticulously researched WWII story, one he discovered while working on his Newbery Honor book, Bomb....Archival photos appear throughout, and an extensive bibliography, source notes, and index conclude this gripping, even horrific account of a battle for civil rights predating Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Sheinkin follows Bomb (rev. 11/12) with an account of another aspect of the Second World War, stemming from an incident that seems small in scope but whose ramifications would go on to profoundly change the armed forces and the freedom of African Americans to serve their country." - The Horn Book

-

Reviews from Goodreads

Steve Sheinkin

Steve Sheinkin is the award-winning author of fast-paced, cinematic histories for young readers. He is a three-time National Book Award finalist and two-time winner of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. Bomb was a Newbery Honor Book and The Port Chicago 50 won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. His other acclaimed books include The Notorious Benedict Arnold and Most Dangerous. Sheinkin also writes the Time Twisters series. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and two children.

Steve Sheinkin

Erica Miller

OTHER GUIDES
Teacher's Guide

From the Publisher

Square Fish

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The Port Chicago 50 | Steve Sheinkin | Macmillan

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g $12.99 Square Fish Square Fish ISBN: 9781250073495 208 Pages, Ages 10-14 Less... Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, NYTBR Notable Children's BOTY, Boston Globe - Horn Book Award, School Library Best Books of the Year, IRA Teachers' Choices, CCBC Choice (Univ.

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Editorial Reviews

★ 01/26/2015
When Astrid's mother takes her and her best friend Nicole to a roller derby event, Astrid is intrigued, but Nicole is left cold. The rift between them grows as Astrid signs up for derby camp, while Nicole opts for ballet. Astrid works her tail off, makes friends, finds a mentor in a star skater named Rainbow Bite, and, at last, appears in her first bout. She also undergoes some uncomfortable preadolescent ordeals before reconciling with Nicole, in scenes that Jamieson (Pest in Show), in her first graphic novel, keeps blessedly free of smarminess. Jamieson's full-color cartooning has a Sunday comics vibe, and her pacing is faultless. Astrid struggles to do right as she tries to understand her soured friendship with Nicole, and she narrates her own failures with heartwarming candor ("I don't know why I did it. I didn't mean to hit them"). When she comes up with an elaborate scheme to bolster a teammate's failing confidence and carries it off despite the pressure of their upcoming bout, readers will want to stand up and cheer. Ages 9-12. Agent: Paul Rodeen, Rodeen Literary Management. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A Newbery Honor book
2016-2017 Texas Bluebonnet Award winner
A New York Times Bestseller
A Spring 2015 Indie Next Pick
A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2015
A New York Public Library Best Book for Reading and Sharing of 2015
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2015
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015
A Top 10 Latin@ Book of 2015
A Parents Magazine Best Children's Book of 2015
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2015
A Texas Bluebonnet Award 2016-2017 nominee
A 2016 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers selection
A 2016 YALSA Popular Paperback selection
An ALA Notable Children's Book of 2016
A 2015 Nerdy Book Club Award Winner for Best Graphic Novel

" Roller Girl's message of self-discovery, friendship, and perseverance will roll its way right into your heart." -Raina Telgemeier, N ew York Times bestselling author of Sisters

"This spiky, winning graphic novel captures the bittersweetness of finding a new passion and saying goodbye to your former, more uncertain self." - New York Times Book Review

* "Jamieson captures this snapshot of preteen angst with a keenly decisive eye, brilliantly juxtaposing the nuances of roller derby with the twists and turns of adolescent girls' friendships...Full of charm and moxie-don't let this one roll past." - Kiruks, starred review

* "The story will engage readers... Offer this comic to fans of Telgemeier's Smile and Laura Lee Gulledge's Page by Paige."-School Library Journal, starred review

* "Readers will stand up and cheer."- Publishers Weekly, starred review

* "Jamieson's dialogue captures coming-of-age...so authentically"- Horn Book, starred review

* "[A] sharp and engaging graphic novel"- BCCB, starred review

"Visually, Roller Girl is very appealing - think Lynn Johnston with a modern edge - but it's the storytelling that really sets this graphic novel apart...A great choice for tween girls, whether they're remaking themselves, renegotiating friendships or just weathering the stormy seas of early adolescence." - Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2014
Gr 4-8-Twelve-year-old Astrid realizes that her interests are distinctly different from those of her best friend. Mesmerized while viewing a roller derby, she dreams of becoming a "Roller Girl" but discovers that the sport is considerably more daunting than she imagined and is not without physical, social, and emotional pain. Nevertheless, Astrid is determined to succeed. While this graphic novel provides interesting information about the sport, at its heart it is a story of friendship, exploring the tensions which test the girls' relationship as they move from childhood to adolescence. Astrid learns to be honest with herself, her mother, and her friends through a series of stressful events. The graphic novelist employs several excellent visual devices: angles to denote action and effective placement and space within panels. Jamieson's clever use of imagery is noteworthy. For example, desert and prehistoric depictions are used to suggest exaggerated perceptions of elapsed time. Her clothes shopping "hell" sequence is spot-on. Panels with stick figures are employed for comments, notes, and explanations. A prologue effectively frames the story and the realistic style with full-color art is reminiscent of the work of Raina Telgemeier. While at times some panels are a bit text-dense, the story will engage readers who will identify with Astrid as she deals with frustrations and disappointments. It will especially appeal to those whose aspirations fly in the face of convention. Offer this comic to fans of Telgemeier's Smile (Scholastic, 2010) and Laura Lee Gulledge's Page by Paige (Abrams, 2011).-Barbara M. Moon, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

School Library Journal

★ 2014-12-06
One summer changes everything for two 12-year-old girls whose friendship is tested when their interests-and attitudes-diverge.Astrid and Nicole have been BFFs truly forever. When the girls go to the roller derby one night, Astrid is immediately hooked and jumps at the chance to attend a roller-derby camp, skating alongside the tough, dyed girls. Nicole, however, who's passionate about ballet, decides not to follow along with Astrid, creating the first real rift the girls have known. The two quickly make new friends in their new circles: Astrid with her roller-derby cohorts and Nicole with the popular ballet crowd. As Astrid navigates the rough-and-tumble sport she's fallen in love with (and the bumps and bruises that come with it), she must also deal with what happens when friends just stop being friends and grow apart. Jamieson captures this snapshot of preteen angst with a keenly decisive eye, brilliantly juxtaposing the nuances of roller derby with the twists and turns of adolescent girls' friendships. Clean, bright illustrations evince the familiar emotions and bring the pathos to life in a way that text alone could not. Fans of Raina Telgemeier or Jimmy Gownley's Amelia series should certainly skate on over to this gem. Full of charm and moxie-don't let this one roll past. (Graphic fiction. 9-13)

Kirkus Reviews

This spiky, winning graphic novel captures the bittersweetness of finding a new passion and saying goodbye to your former, more uncertain self.

The New York Times Book Review - Maria Russo

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★ 01/26/2015When Astrid's mother takes her and her best friend Nicole to a roller derby event, Astrid is intrigued, but Nicole is left cold. The rift between them grows as Astrid signs up for derby camp, while Nicole opts for ballet.

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Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

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Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

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Editorial Reviews

06/01/2015
In a compassionate story that opens in the summer of 1976, the brother-sister team behind the Babymouse and Squish series introduces 10-year-old Sunny Lewin, who is facing unwanted change on multiple fronts. Sunny's planned vacation with a best friend has turned into a solo trip to visit her grandfather at a Florida retirement village. With no kids in sight, a squeaky hide-a-bed to sleep on, and a haircut that falls short of the Dorothy Hamill wedge she'd hoped for, Sunny is disappointed at the direction her summer has taken. Through skillfully deployed flashbacks, the Holms reveal that these concerns, while not trivial, mask a larger one-Sunny's older brother's increasingly out-of-control use of alcohol and drugs. Colored by Lark Pien in creamy aquas, corals, and yellows, the illustrations shout "Florida coast," and, along with the short chapters, give the story the feel of a serialized Sunday comic. Sunny's introduction, via a new friend, to comic-book heroes like Swamp Thing and Batman creates some slightly heavy-handed but effective parallels for Sunny's conflicted feelings about a family she cares for deeply. Ages 8-12. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

...one of the best books I have yet read about growing up in the 1970s...slyly funny and moving...there's much more than ironic nostalgia going on here. The Holms...have created a subtle exploration of the ways, in any time period, addiction and its lesser-evil twin, denial, can creep into a family and take over.

The New York Times - Maria Russo

Praise for Sunny Side Up:

"Heartbreaking and hopeful, Sunny Side Up is just the thing to chase away the clouds." --Raina Telgemeier, creator of Smile and Sisters

From the Publisher

★ 2015-06-16
Family troubles temporarily strand 10-year-old Sunny in a Florida retirement community. Imagine the recreational possibilities. In the hands of the sibling creators of Babymouse and Squish, even a story inspired by troubling circumstances in their own mid-1970s childhoods offers hilarious turns aplenty. Instead of a trip to the shore with a friend, Sunny finds herself on a solo flight to stay with her genial grandfather-in a development where a trip to the post office is the day's big outing, Walt Disney World is hours away, and her exposure to senior culture includes being fawned over by old ladies. Happily, there is one other child around: Buzz, a groundskeeper's boy, who turns her on to superhero comics and joins her in starting up a moderately lucrative business recovering golf balls and residents' (illegal) lost cats. Less happily, interspersed flashbacks reveal the reason for the sudden change of plans by tracking her older brother Dale's increasingly erratic behavior and drug abuse, leading up to an intervention in the wake of a violent incident. Colored by Lark Pien in subdued hues that subtly reflect Sunny's state of mind, the sequential panels present both storylines in a mix of terse labels, brief dialogue, and, particularly, silent, effective reaction shots.Funny, poignant, and reassuringly upbeat by the end but free of glib platitudes or easy answers. (afterword) (Graphic historical fiction. 9-11)

Kirkus Reviews

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Sunny Side Up (Sunny Series #1)|Paperback

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Sunny Lewin has been packed off to Florida to live with her grandfather for the summer. At first she thought Florida might be fun -- it is the home of Disney World, after all. But the place where Gramps lives is no amusement park. It's full of . . .

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Notes From Your Bookseller

You can't do better if you're looking for wit, wordplay, and enough pun-inspiring passages to fill a dad joke book. This is a timeless (pun intended) tale of finding the beauty in life, no matter how hard you have to look for it.

For Milo, everything's a bore. When a mysterious tollbooth appears in his room, he drives through only because he's got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and goes up against the dastardly Discord and Dynne. By the time Milo and Tock set off toward the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the twin Princesses< Rhyme and Reason, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it's exciting beyond his wildest dreams...

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9780007263486

Publisher:

HarperCollins Children's Books

Publication date:

03/28/2008

Sales rank:

998,584

Product dimensions:

6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

Age Range:

8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Norton Juster was an architect and planner, professor emeritus of design at Hampshire College, and the author of a number of highly acclaimed children's books, including The Dot and the Line, which was made into an Academy Award-winning animated film. He collaborated with Sheldon Harnick on the libretto for an opera based on The Phantom Tollbooth. The musical adaptation, with a score by Arnold Black, premiered in 1995 and is performed in schools and theaters nationwide.

Jules Feiffer is the author of several books for young readers, including The Man in the Ceiling and A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears, I Lost My Bear, Bark, George, and Meanwhile.... He has won a number of prizes for his cartoons, plays, and screenplays. Mr. Feiffer lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter I: Milo

There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always.

When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd bothered. Nothing really interested him - least of all the things that should have.

"It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time," he remarked one day as he walked dejectedly home from school. "I can't see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February." And, since no one bothered to explain otherwise, he regarded the process of seeking knowledge as the greatest waste of time of all.

As he and his unhappy thoughts hurried along (for while he was never anxious to be where he was going, he liked to get there as quickly as possible) it seemed a great wonder that the world, which was so large, could sometimes feel so small and empty.

"And worst of all," he continued sadly, "there's nothing for me to do, nowhere I'd care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing," He punctuated this last thought with such a deep sigh that a house sparrow singing nearby stopped and rushed home to be with his family.

Without stopping or looking up, Milo dashed past the buildings and busy shops that lined the street and in a few minutes reached home - dashed through the lobby - hopped onto theelevator - two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and off again - opened the apartment door - rushed into his room - flopped dejectedly into a chair, and grumbled softly, "Another long afternoon."

He looked glumly at all the things he owned. The books that were too much trouble to read, the tools he'd never learned to use, the small electric automobile he hadn't driven in months - or was it years? - and the hundreds of other games and toys, and bats and balls, and bits and pieces scattered around him. And then, to one side of the room, just next to the phonograph, he noticed something he had certainly never seen before.

Who could possibly have left such an enormous package and such a strange one? For, while it was not quite square, it was definitely not round, and for its size it was larger than almost any other big package of smaller dimension that he'd ever seen.

Attached to one side was a bright-blue envelope which said simply: "FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME."

Of course, if you've ever gotten a surprise package you can imagine how puzzled and excited Milo was; and if you've never gotten one, pay close attention, because someday you might.

"I don't think it's my birthday," he puzzled, "and Christmas must be months away, and I haven't been outstandingly good, or even good at all." (He had to admit this even to himself.) "Most probably I won't like it anyway, but since I don't know where it came from, I can't possibly send it back." He thought about it for quite a while and then opened the envelope, but just to be polite.

"ONE GENUINE TURNPIKE TOLLBOOTH," it stated - and then it went on:

"EASILY ASSEMBLED AT HOME, AND FOR USE BY THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER TRAVELED IN LANDS BEYOOND."

"Beyond what?" thought Milo as he continued to read.

"THIS PACKAGE CONTAINS THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:

"One (1) genuine turnpike tollbooth to be erected according to directions.

"Three (3) precautionary signs to be used in a precautionary fashion.

"Assorted coins for use in paying tolls.

"One (1) map, up to date and carefully drawn by master cartographers, depicting natural and man-made features.

"One (1) book of rules and traffic regulations, which may not be bent or broken."

And in smaller letters at the bottom it concluded:

"RESULTS ARE NOT GUARANTEED, BUT IF NOT PERFECTLY SATISFIED, YOUR WASTED TIME WILL BE REFUNDED."

Following the instructions, which told him to cut here, lift there, and fold back all around, he soon had the tollbooth unpacked and set up on its stand. He fitted the windows in place and attached the roof, which extended out on both sides, and fastened on the coin box. It was very much like the tollbooths he'd seen many times on family trips, except of course it was much smaller and purple.

"What a strange present," he thought to himself. "The least they could have done was to send a highway with it, for it's terribly impractical without one." But since, at the time, there was nothing else he wanted to play with, he set up the three signs,

SLOW DOWN APPROACHING TOLLBOOTH

PLEASE HAVE YOUR FARE READY

HAVE YOUR DESTINATION IN MIND

And slowly unfolded the map.

As the announcement stated, it was a beautiful map, in many colors, showing principal roads, rivers and seas, towns and cities, mountains and valleys, intersections and detours, and sites of outstanding interest both beautiful and historic.

The only trouble was that Milo had never heard of any of the places it indicated, and even the names sounded most peculiar.

"I don't think there really is such a country," he concluded after studying it carefully. "Well, it doesn't matter anyway." And he closed his eyes and poked a finger at the map.

"Dictionopolis," read Milo slowly when he saw what his finger had chosen. "Oh, well, I might as well go there as anywhere."

He walked across the room and dusted the car off carefully. Then, taking the map and rule book with him, he hopped in and, for lack of anything better to do, drove slowly up to the tollbooth. As he deposited his coin and rolled past he remarked wistfully, "I do hope this is an interesting game, otherwise the afternoon will be so terribly dull."

From the Hardcover edition.

Copyright 1988 by Norton Juster

What People are Saying About This

" I read [The Phantom Tollbooth] first when I was 10. I still have the book report I wrote, which began 'This is the best book ever.'"
—Anna Quindlen, The New York Times

"A classic... Humorous, full of warmth and real invention."
— The New Yorker

Editorial Reviews

"I read The Phantom Tollbooth first when I was 10. I still have the book report I wrote, which began 'This is the best book ever.'"-Anna Quindlen, The New York Times

"A classic—Humorous, full of warmth and real invention."- The New Yorker

" The Phantom Tollbooth is the closest thing we have to a modern Alice in Wonderland."- The Guardian

"The book lingers long after turning the final page. . . . A classic indeed." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"You loved the humor and adventure . . . and [now] you'll marvel at [the book's] wit, complexity, and its understanding of how children perceive the passage of time." - Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher

David Hyde Pierce delivers an imaginative narration of this unforgettable family listen. Milo is unenthusiastic about life until he receives a mysterious gift-a tollbooth that becomes his portal to strange lands. The fantasy journey kicks off as Pierce presents the Whether Man, who speaks so quickly that listeners, like Milo, won't know whether they're coming or going. Switching pace, Pierce and Milo next steer listeners into the Doldrums. There, Pierce stretches out each word, punctuating his reading with yawns until listeners, like Milo, are too sleepy to function. Throughout the story Pierce provides superb characterizations and faultless timing, transporting listeners with wordplay, steering them through slapstick, and thrilling them at every twist and turn of Milo's adventures. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2009 - AudioFile

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For Milo, everything's a bore. When a mysterious tollbooth appears in his room, he drives through only because he's got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking...

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Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2

By now, you must have guessed just how far Artemis Fowl was prepared to go in order to achieve his goal. But what exactly was this goal? What outlandish scheme would involve the blackmailing of an alcohol-addicted sprite? The answer was gold.

Artemis's search had begun two years previously when he first became interested in surfing the Internet. He quickly found the more arcane sites: alien abduction, UFO sightings, and the supernatural. But most specifically the existence of the People.

Trawling through gigabytes of data, he found hundreds of references to fairies from nearly every country in the world. Each civilization had its own term for the People, but they were undoubtedly members of the same hidden family. Several stories mentioned a Book carried by each fairy. It was their Bible, containing, as it allegedly did, the history of their race and the commandments that governed their extended lives. Of course, this book was written in Gnommish, the fairy language, and would be of no use to any human.

Artemis believed that with today's technology the Book could be translated. And with this translation you could begin to exploit a whole new group of creatures.

Know thine enemy was Artemis's motto, so he immersed himself in the lore of the People until he had compiled a huge database on their characteristics. But it wasn't enough. So Artemis put out a call on the Web: Irish businessman will pay large amount of U.S. dollars to meet a fairy, sprite, leprechaun, pixie. The responses had been mostly fraudulent, but Ho Chi Minh City had finally paid off.

Artemis was perhaps the only person alive who could take full advantage of his recent acquisition. He still retained a childlike belief in magic, tempered by an adult determination to exploit it. If there was anybody capable of relieving the fairies of some of their magical gold, it was Artemis Fowl the Second.

It was early morning before they reached Fowl Manor. Artemis was anxious to bring up the file on his computer, but first he decided to call in on Mother.

Angeline Fowl was bedridden. She had been since her husband's disappearance. Nervous tension, the physicians said. Nothing for it but rest and sleeping pills. That was almost a year ago.

Butler's little sister, Juliet, was sitting at the foot of the stairs. Her gaze was boring a hole in the wall. Even the glitter mascara couldn't soften her expression. Artemis had seen that look already, just before Juliet had suplexed a particularly impudent pizza boy. The suplex, Artemis gathered, was a wrestling move. An unusual obsession for a teenage girl. But then again she was, after all, a Butler.

"Problems, Juliet?"

Juliet straightened hurriedly. "My own fault, Artemis. Apparently I left a gap in the curtains. Mrs. Fowl couldn't sleep."

"Hmm," muttered Artemis, scaling the oak staircase slowly.

He worried about his mother's condition. She hadn't seen the light of day in a long time now. Then again, should she miraculously recover, emerging revitalized from her bedchamber, it would signal the end of Artemis's own extraordinary freedom. It would be back off to school, and no more spearheading criminal enterprises for you, my boy.

He knocked gently on the arched double doors.

"Mother? Are you awake?"

Something smashed against the other side of the door. It sounded expensive.

"Of course I'm awake! How can I sleep in this blinding glare?"

Artemis ventured inside. An antique four-poster bed threw shadowy spires in the darkness, and a pale sliver of light poked through a gap in the velvet curtains. Angeline Fowl sat hunched on the bed, her pale limbs glowing white in the gloom.

"Artemis, darling. Where have you been?"

Artemis sighed. She recognized him. That was a

good sign.

"School trip, Mother. Skiing in Austria."

"Ah, skiing," crooned Angeline. "How I miss it. Maybe when your father returns."

Artemis felt a lump in his throat. Most uncharacteristic.

"Yes. Perhaps when Father returns."

"Darling, could you close those wretched curtains? The light is intolerable."

"Of course, Mother."

Artemis felt his way across the room, wary of the low-level clothes chests scattered around the floor. Finally his fingers curled around the velvet drapes. For a moment he was tempted to throw them wide open, then he sighed and closed the gap.

"Thank you, darling. By the way, we really have to get rid of that maid. She is good for absolutely nothing."

Artemis held his tongue. Juliet had been a hardworking and loyal member of the Fowl household for the past three years. Time to use Mother's absentmindedness to his advantage.

"You're right of course, Mother. I've been meaning to do it for some time. Butler has a sister I believe would be perfect for the position. I think I've mentioned her. Juliet?"

Angeline frowned. "Juliet? Yes, the name does seem familiar. Well, anyone would be better than that silly girl we have now. When can she start?"

"Straight away. I'll have Butler fetch her from the lodge."

"You're a good boy, Artemis. Now, give Mummy a hug."

Artemis stepped into the shadowy folds of his mother's robe. She smelled perfumed, like petals in water. But her arms were cold and weak.

"Oh, darling," she whispered, and the sound sent goose bumps popping down Artemis's neck. "I hear things. At night. They crawl along the pillows and into my ears."

Artemis felt that lump in his throat again.

"Perhaps we should open the curtains, Mother."

"No," his mother sobbed, releasing him from her grasp. "No. Because then I could see them, too."

"Mother, please."

But it was no use. Angeline was gone. She crawled to the far corner of the bed, pulling the quilt under her chin.

"Send the new girl."

"Yes, Mother."

"Send her with cucumber slices and water."

"Yes, Mother."

Angeline glared at him with crafty eyes. "And stop calling me Mother. I don't know who you are, but you're certainly not my little Arty."

Artemis blinked back a few rebellious tears. "Of course. Sorry, Moth - Sorry."

"Hmmm. Don't come back here again, or I'll have my husband take care of you. He's a very important man, you know."

"Very well, Mrs Fowl. This is the last you'll see of me."

"It had better be." Angeline froze suddenly. "Do you hear them?"

Artemis shook his head. "No. I don't hear any - "

"They're coming for me. They're everywhere."

Angeline dived for cover beneath the bedclothes. Artemis could still hear her terrified sobs as he descended the marble staircase.

The Book was proving far more stubborn than Artemis had anticipated. It seemed to be almost actively resisting him. No matter which program he ran it through, the computer came up blank.

Artemis hardcopied every page, tacking them to the walls of his study. Sometimes it helped to have things on paper. The script was like nothing he'd seen before, and yet it was strangely familiar. Obviously a mixture of symbolic and character-based language, the text meandered around the page in no apparent order.

What the program needed was some frame of reference, some central point on which to build. He separated all the characters and ran comparisons with English, Chinese, Greek, Arabic, and with Cyrillic texts, even with Ogham. Nothing.

Moody with frustration, Artemis sent Juliet scurrying when she interrupted with sandwiches, and moved on to symbols. The most frequently recurring pictogram was a small male figure. Male, he presumed, though with the limited knowledge of the fairy anatomy he supposed it could be female. A thought struck him. Artemis opened the ancient languages file on his Power Translator and selected Egyptian.

At last. A hit. The male symbol was remarkably similar to the Anubis god representation on Tutankhamen's inner-chamber hieroglyphics. This was consistent with his other findings. The first written human stories were about fairies, suggesting that their civilization predated man's own. It would seem that the Egyptians had simply adapted an existing scripture to suit their needs.

There were other resemblances. But the characters were just dissimilar enough to slip through the computer's net. This would have to be done manually. Each Gnommish figure had to be enlarged, printed, and then compared with the hieroglyphs.

Artemis felt the excitement of success thumping inside his rib cage. Almost every fairy pictogram or letter had an Egyptian counterpart. Most were universal, such as the sun or birds. But some seemed exclusively supernatural and had to be tailored to fit. The Anubis figure, for example, would make no sense as a dog god, so Artemis altered it to read king of the fairies.

By midnight, Artemis had successfully fed his findings into the Macintosh. All he had to do now was press Decode. He did so. What emerged was a long, intricate string of meaningless gibberish.

A normal child would have abandoned the task long since. The average adult would probably have been reduced to slapping the keyboard. But not Artemis. This book was testing him, and he would not allow it to win.

The letters were right, he was certain of it. It was just the order that was wrong. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Artemis glared at the pages again. Each segment was bordered by a solid line. This could represent paragraphs or chapters, but they were not meant to be read in the usual left to right, top to bottom fashion.

Artemis experimented. He tried the Arabic right to left and the Chinese columns. Nothing worked. Then he noticed that each page had one thing in common - a central section. The other pictograms were arranged around this pivotal area. So, a central starting point, perhaps. But where to go from there? Artemis scanned the pages for some other common factor. After several minutes he found it. There was on each page a tiny spearhead in the corner of one section. Could this be an arrow? A direction? Go this way? So the theory would be, start in the middle then follow the arrow. Reading in spirals.

The computer program wasn't built to handle something like this, so Artemis had to improvise. With a craft knife and ruler, he dissected the first page of the Book and reassembled it in the traditional Western languages order - left to right, parallel rows. Then he rescanned the page and fed it through the modified Egyptian translator.

The computer hummed and whirred, converting all the information to binary. Several times it stopped to ask for confirmation of a character or symbol...

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Twelve-year-old criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl has discovered a world below ground of armed and dangerous—and extremely high-tech—fairies. He kidnaps one of them, Holly Short, and holds her for ransom in an effort to restore his family's fortune. But he may have underestimated the...

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After tragedy strikes their family, Emily and Navin move with their mother into the old, mysterious home of their great-grandfather. On their first night in the strange house, Emily and Navin's mom is kidnapped by a tentacled creature. Determined to rescue her, Emily and Navin are led into a world of robots, talking animals, flying ships, new friends... and enemies. Emily learns that she is a Stonekeeper and essential to the survival of this world, and that her incredible story is only just beginning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781338328189

Publisher:

Scholastic, Inc.

Publication date:

10/30/2018

Series:

Amulet Series

Sales rank:

37,847

Product dimensions:

6.20(w) x 9.50(h) x 4.60(d)

Age Range:

8 - 12 Years

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After tragedy strikes their family, Emily and Navin move with their mother into the old, mysterious home of their great-grandfather. On their first night in the strange house, Emily and Navin's mom is kidnapped by a tentacled creature. Determined to rescue her, Emily and Navin are led into a...

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Set in 1947, when India gained independence from British rule and was partitioned into India and Pakistan, this book is a compilation of diary entries from 12-year-old Nisha. Nisha, along with her family, must flee their hometown that is now in Pakistan and cross the border into New India.
-Changchup

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A rich man named Samuel Westing is murdered. His will says to gather 16 different people and have them play a game. The winner will inherit his vast fortune. What's the catch? One of the 16 people is Westing's murderer! Why would he risk giving all his money to the person who ended his life? Nothing makes sense in this cliffhanging mystery!

--Lily

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A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg

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A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E.L. Konigsburg

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife to two kings, mother to two others, has been waiting in Heaven a long time -- eight centuries, more or less -- to be reunited with her second husband, Henry II of England. Finally, the day has come when Henry will be judged for admission. While Eleanor, never a patient woman in life or afterlife, waits, three people, each of whom was close to Eleanor during a time of her life, join her. Their reminiscences do far more than help distract Eleanor -- they also paint a rich portrait of an extraordinary woman who was front and center in a remarkable period in history and whose accomplishments have had an important influence on society through the ages.

E.L. Konigsburg is the only author to have won the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year. In 1968, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View from Saturday. Among her other acclaimed books are Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World.

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers (October 1, 2001)

Length: 208 pages

ISBN13: 9780689846243

Grades: 5 - 9

Ages: 10 - 14

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife to two kings, mother to two others, has been waiting in Heaven a long time -- eight centuries, more or less -- to be reunited with her second husband, Henry II of England. Finally, the day has come when Henry will be judged for admission.

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This book is an action packed adventure, which includes mythical creatures, evil and good characters, and magic. Buy       The Book HERE
-Rohan