Liar & Spy
Kirkus Reviews A seventh-grade boy who is coping with social and economic issues moves into a new apartment building, where he makes friends with an over-imaginative home-schooled boy and his eccentric family. Social rules are meant to be broken is the theme of this big-hearted, delightfully quirky tale, and in keeping with that, Stead creates […]
The Time Hackers
Masters of Disaster
Children's Literature – Jean Boreen: Henry worries that he and his friends Riley and Reed "may be the most boring twelve-year-olds on the planet." So Henry talks his friends into joining him on a number of wacky adventures that often put all three friends, but Reed in particular, into some sticky and stinky situations. Henry […]
Wild Girl
Children's Literature Lidie has been waiting five long years to join her father and older brother, Rafael, in New York. When the time finally comes to pack up and leave her Aunt and Uncle in Brazil, Lidie has high expectations for what her American future will hold. None of these expectations, however, include a baby […]
When You Reach Me
Donated in Memory of Theresa Dowd by Mary & Don Beaudin. Children's Literature: Charmingly eccentric and impossible to categorize, this middle grade novel pays homage to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time while employing many of that book's elements as it crisscrosses the boundaries between reality and fantasy, time travel and mystery. Three distinct storylines […]
Lawn Boy
Publisher Weekly Review: At the start of this witty, quick-moving tale from the Newbery author, a 12-year-old receives an unexpected birthday present from his grandmother: his late grandfather's riding lawn mower. Since his family's lawn is postage-stamp size with grass that never seemed to grow enough to need mowing, he's initially unsure what to do […]
The Legend of Bass Reeves : Being the True and Fictional Account of the Most Valiant Marshal In the West
School Library Journal Review: Gr 6 Up?Drawing on newspaper accounts and his own fertile imagination, Paulsen tells Reeves???s story. Brief sections give the known facts of this hero???s life, set in historical context, and longer, narrative sections (the longest being about his boyhood) fill out the details. The result is a compelling tale of the […]
Willow Run
School Library Journal Review: Gr 4-7?Meggie Dillon, 11, candidly shares her perspective on the sacrifices and fears experienced on the homefront during World War II. The girl's family moves from Rockaway, NY, to Willow Run, MI, so that her father can work in a plant constructing B-24 bombers. Meggie is a likable, realistic, fleshed-out character, […]