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ROSS SCHOOL LIBRARIES |
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2010 Berger-Davis Family Donation |
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LOWER SCHOOL LIBRARY |
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14 Cows for Kimeli Naiyomah returned home to his Maasai village
from |
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Absolute Beginner’s Origami Twenty enchanting designs are presented in three easy-to-follow stages: first, bases and folds. Next, combining bases and folds and learning to interpret those line drawings. Finally, learning to fold origami paper into real, elegant origami animals and objects: butterflies, swans, dogs, and more! Ten sheets of practice paper are printed with folding lines; ten more sheets are blank for solo work. By the end of the book, readers will understand how to read those line drawings and explore the wonderful world of origami with excitement and confidence. |
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All the World All the world is here. It is there. It is everywhere. All the world is right where you are. Now. Following a circle of family and friends through the course of a day from morning till night, this book affirms the importance of all things great and small in our world, from the tiniest shell on the beach, to warm family connections, to the widest sunset sky. |
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Bad News for the Outlaws: The
Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy Bass Reeves seemed bigger than life. As a deputy
U.S. Marshal--and former slave who escaped to freedom in the |
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Big Wolf & Little Wolf Big Wolf has always lived alone at the top of a hill under a tree, so when a little wolf suddenly arrives one day, he does not know what to think. |
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Birds Fascinated by the colors, shapes, sounds, and movements of the many different birds she sees through her window, a little girl is happy to discover that she and they have something in common. |
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Black Magic Black is a look, a taste, a speed, an emotion. It’s the surprising stripes on a zebra, the taste of dark chocolate, the scary, exciting feeling of going inside a tunnel, and a mother’s voice as her daughter falls asleep. In this celebration of the African American spirit, Dinah Johnson and R. Gregory Christie paint a picture of "black" that is vivid, varied, and proud. |
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Book Fiesta!: Celebrate Children’s
Day/Book Day Children read aloud in various settings to
celebrate of El día de los niños, or Children's Day, in this bilingual story.
Includes facts about |
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Composting: Nature’s Recyclers Describes what composting is, what goes into compost, and why composting is beneficial. |
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The Curious Garden Liam discovers a hidden garden and with careful tending spreads color throughout the gray city. |
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Gooney Bird Greene A most unusual new student who loves to be the center of attention entertains her teacher and fellow second graders by telling absolutely true stories about herself, including how she got her name. |
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Grow It, Cook It Showing how to grow plants and then how to use them in delicious kid-appealing recipes, "Grow It, Cook It" is more than a cookbook--it offers a fresh approach to healthy eating by getting children involved in food right from the start! |
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I Spy Fly Guy! While playing hide-and-seek with Buzz, Fly Guy is taken away by a garbage man. |
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Just Grace Goes Green As Miss Lois's class learns about ways to help the environment, Grace helps comfort her friend Mimi, whose favorite stuffed toy has gone missing. |
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Little Mouse Gets Ready Little Mouse gets dressed to go to the barn with his mother, brothers, and sisters. |
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The Magical Ms. Plum The students in Ms Plum's third grade class soon learn that there is something very special about their teacher and her classroom's mysterious supply closet. |
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Mouse and Mole: Fine Feathered
Friends Mouse and Mole set out with the Spring wind gusts to collaborate on their very own bird book. They decide to dress up like birds in order to get closer to them. When it's time to work on their respective books, Mouse draws jiggly lines and colors a red bird orange and words just aren't Mole's thing--so they resolve to work together! Mole's painting is just lovely and Mouse is quite the sing-song poet. In their sonorous feather-filled adventure through nature, Mouse and Mole team-up to put their book-making creativity to the test. |
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Mudshark Principal Wagner confidently deals with a faculty washroom crisis, a psychic parrot, and a terrorizing gerbil, but when sixty-five erasers go missing, he enlists the help of the school's best problem solver and locator of lost items, twelve-year-old Lyle Williams, aka Mudshark. |
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Odd and the Frost Giants An unlucky twelve-year-old Norwegian boy named Odd leads the Norse gods Loki, Thor, and Odin in an attempt to outwit evil Frost Giants who have taken over Asgard. |
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April Fools' Day is not a happy one for Wagner the
mouse because his best friend, |
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Rachel Carson: Preserving A Sense
of Wonder A biography of Rachel Carson interspersed with her own memorable quotes. |
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Discusses recycling and provides information and instructions for making art projects from a variety of recycled materials. |
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Red Sings From Treetops: A Year in
Colors Winner of a 2010 Caldecott Honor! With original and spot-on perceptions, Joyce Sidman brings the colors of the seasons to life in a fresh light, combining the senses of sight, sound, smell and taste. Illustrator Pam Zagarenski's interpretations go beyond the concrete, allowing us to not just see color, but feel it. |
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Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up
by Sitting Down It was February 1, 1960. They didn't need menus. Their order was simple. A doughnut and coffee, with cream on the side. This picture book is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the momentous Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in, when four college students staged a peaceful protest that became a defining moment in the struggle for racial equality and the growing civil rights movement. Andrea Davis Pinkney uses poetic, powerful prose to tell the story of these four young men, who followed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words of peaceful protest and dared to sit at the "whites only" Woolworth's lunch counter. Brian Pinkney embraces a new artistic style, creating expressive paintings filled with emotion that mirror the hope, strength, and determination that fueled the dreams of not only these four young men, but also countless others. |
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What Does Peace Feel Like? LS
LIB 303.6 RAD Simple text and illustrations portray what peace looks, sounds, tastes, feels, and smells like to children around the world. |
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When You Reach Me Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world
forever. By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate
their |
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MIDDLE SCHOOL LIBRARY |
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Animal Life (One Million Things) MS
LIB 590 WAL Planet Earth (One Million Things) MS
LIB 550 WOO These two new entries in the One Million Things series are a couple hundred pages (and, one assumes, a few things) short of the One Million Things: A Visual Encyclopedia (2008) that instigated the series, but they maintain the flashy cover and familiar DK interior design. The series name is a bit of a head-scratcher, as there simply isn't one million of anything in either book, but who's counting? Animal Life lumps Diversity, Life Skills, and Lifestyles into three main subsections and again makes good use of DK's anything-goes approach to layout, introducing a concept with a paragraph before numerous smaller captions per page delve into greater detail. Planet Earth
opens in the deep recesses of our galaxy before zooming in to investigate the
amazing features teeming on our little speck of a planet. The book is
subdivided into five main sections (Planet Earth, Rocks and Minerals, Water
and Weather, Life Zones, and Human Influence ), and
there isn't a whole lot the volume doesn't at least touch on. The artwork is
a balanced mix of stunning photography, effective illustrations, and somewhat
depth-challenged Photoshop jobs. An eye-catching catchall on the natural
world, this series is great browsing material, packed full of
well-articulated information. –Booklist
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The Atlas of Ancient Worlds MS
LIB 930 CHR This atlas is more text-heavy than most, consisting
of maps and illustrations accompanied by extensive captions outlining the
cultures of many civilizations. Each section begins with a map of a continent
and a table of contents detailing which peoples will be discussed in it. Each
civilization is covered in a chapter spread that includes a small map of the
extent of each empire and many photos, pictures, and captioned drawings.
Plastic overlays allow readers to look inside such famous structures as the
pyramids of |
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Cookie MS
LIB FIC WIL Beauty Cookson's father spends lavishly on his wife
and daughter. They have a beautiful, large house, but it is not a happy home
as Beauty and her mother walk on eggshells to keep him from lashing out at
them. Beauty's father reminds her frequently that she is plain and tries to
make her fit his image with fancy clothes and inappropriate hairdos. Beauty
is either bullied or ignored at her private school. Her mother, to help
Beauty fare better at school, attempts to make cookies for the class with
disastrous results. Still, she keeps trying, and cookie baking becomes their
special time together. As Beauty's birthday approaches, her father plans an
extravagant celebration with all of her classmates, even those who torment
her daily. The event is a disaster. Later, when Mr. Cookson lets loose the
rabbit that Beauty received as a gift from the one girl who befriends her and
it gets killed, she and her mother leave him. With the help of new friends,
the two finally feel safe and discover just how strong-and beautiful-they
are. |
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The Dragon of Trelian MS
LIB FIC KNU Calen, a young mage-in-training, is vaguely
dissatisfied with his life. Learning magic isn't as exciting as he thought,
he's alone much of the time and always in trouble with his master for
something. Then he meets Princess Meglynne and an unlikely friendship begins.
Meg has secretly a dragon baby she found and is discovering all sorts of
complications with keeping it secret. Calen helps her learn more about
dragons and through his studies finds out more about magic and his own unique
talents. When they discover that treachery is afoot, they must find a way to
save the kingdom with only their wits and their talents. This is an exciting
fantasy that draws in readers from the start. Knudsen does a fantastic job of
creating sympathetic and realistic characters that really drive the story.
The tale is adventurous and exciting with many twists and turns along the
way. The ending is satisfying yet leaves room for sequels, which readers will
be clamoring for. A page-turner. –School
Library Journal |
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The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate A charming and inventive story of a child
struggling to find her identity at the turn of the 20th century. As the only
girl in an uppercrust |
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Front and Center MS
LIB FIC This final installment in the "Dairy
Queen" trilogy kicks off with |
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George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt MS
LIB FIC HAW George and Annie, the middle-school cosmologists in
the Hawkings' George's Secret Key to
the Universe (S & S, 2007), return in a sequel that, if not
spellbinding, will please fans of the first book. Annie's scientist dad,
Eric, is called from the |
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Gifted: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow MS
LIB FIC KAY Emily thinks her ability to see the future should
be great, but her visions never seem to make sense. Then students from her
"gifted" class begin vanishing and she is determined to learn to
use her talent and save her friends. Teen issues including fitting in,
dealing with low self-esteem, and bullying are subtly woven into the
fast-moving plot. Emily and her classmates are realistically drawn
characters. Kaye pays special attention to hard-edged Jenna (a mind reader)
and soft-spoken Tracey (who can become invisible) as they are Emily's two
closest friends. As the girls struggle to deal with their special gifts and
navigate the rough waters of middle school, they build an intense bond that
will ring true with the intended audience. Even minor characters are given
depth through Kaye's descriptive text. With both teen angst and tightly woven
supernatural suspense, the book will have readers clamoring for the next
volume. –School Library Journal |
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Gilda Joyce: The Dead Drop MS
LIB FIC ALL In her latest psychic investigation, Gilda Joyce,
"fourteen years and 11 months," has slightly fudged her age to land
a summer internship at the |
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The Girl Who Threw Butterflies Cochrane (Sport) revisits the baseball diamond in this unhurried novel about a girl with a mean knuckleball ("Molly loved watching one of her knuckleballs in flight, but what she felt was not self-admiration at all, just simple curiosity. What was this one going to do?"). Dealing with her father's death in a car accident six months prior and her mother's subsequent zombie-like disinterest in life, Molly hopes that playing on the eighth-grade boys' baseball team will keep her connected to her dad. Molly is bolstered by her free-spirited friend, Celia (who steals every scene she's in), and Lonnie, a kindhearted, artistically inclined catcher. Cochrane offers poignant flashbacks of father-daughter bonding, realistic mother-daughter squabbling and some nail-biting moments on the pitcher's mound, but some readers may find the story's pace sluggish. Still, Cochrane's honest, quiet prose should find fans, as Molly finally pitches a winning game, earns the respect of her teammates and symbolically "lets go" of her need to understand her dad's death. –Publisher’s Weekly |
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Human Body: Ripley’s Believe It or
Not MS LIB 612 DEL This volume in the Ripley's Twists series uses a chapter progression through human
anatomy as an excuse to unleash the freakiest factoids at the author's
disposal. An introduction increases the fun by calling attention to the
book's various styles of sidebar: Big Word Alert! is
exactly what it sounds like, and Twist It! requires turning the book on its
end to absorb the miscellanea. De la Bedoyere gamely supplies some actual
biological basics (the two-page spread of a skeleton is especially handy),
but this is all about the exceptions to every rule: the student who can pop
her eyes out, the woman with 33-inch fingernails, the man with the mental
acuity to juggle chain saws. The book resembles something published by
Guinness and will be similarly passed around so that kids can show their
friends (or enemies, depending on the desired effect) pictures of full-body
tattoos and metal-eating daredevils. The enclosed bookmarks and poster won't
last long, but that won't stop this from fielding heavy traffic. –Booklist |
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I’ll Pass for Your Comrade: Women
Soldiers in the Civil War While previous books for young people have profiled
women who served as nurses and spies during the Civil War, this one
spotlights |
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Junkyard Dog MS
LIB FIC POL Orca Currents continues its line of hard-hitting
novels for reluctant readers with this brutal yet rewarding moral quagmire.
Thirteen-year-old Justin is initially thrilled when he is hired by a man who provides
guard dogs to convenience stores, junkyards, and car dealerships Justin's
father is jobless, and a few extra bucks would put food on the table. But the
fact that Justin loves dogs quickly becomes a liability. The animals, many of
which are acquired illegally from animal control or shelters, are cruelly
debarked and treated like disposable machines. When Justin's favorite dog,
Smokey, becomes too feeble, Justin is forced to abandon him on the highway,
setting off the climactic dilemma of making money versus doing what's right.
Polak writes with a nervy confidence, and her specificity (for example,
Justin suffers from hair loss due to his extreme anxiety) lends an
authenticity that lives beyond the book's relatively few pages. A powerful
story for anyone who has ever looked into the eyes of a dog and accepted the
offer: Be good to us, and we'll be good to you. –Booklist |
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Marching for Freedom: Walk
Together, Children, And Don’t You Grow Weary MS
LIB 323.1 PAR The subtitle of this stirring photo-essay, drawn
from an African American spiritual that was often quoted by Martin Luther King,
Jr., points to the book's focus: the essential role that young people played
in the Civil Rights movement. Of course, the movement's adult leaders are
represented, including Dr. King, John Lewis, Rosa Parks, and President Lyndon
Johnson. Segregationist Governor George Wallace and his followers are also
mentioned. But this overview, which zeros in on the |
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On a parent-mandated cross-country road trip with
Mere, their unpredictable grandmother, 15-year-old Octavia and 17-year-old
Tali make the transformation from complaining, self-absorbed teens to
observant, supportive family members. Mere promises not to smoke if the
sisters promise not to use earphones on their way to a family reunion. And
then she begins to tell her life story. As the miles pass from |
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The Monstrumologist: William James
Henry With a roaring sense of adventure and enough
viscera to gag the hardiest of gore hounds, Yancey's series starter might
just be the best horror novel of the year. Will Henry is the 12-year-old
apprentice to Pellinore Warthrop, a brilliant and self-absorbed
monstrumologist a scientist who studies (and when necessary, kills) monsters
in late-1800s |
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The Mostly True Adventures of
Homer P. Figg Twelve-year-old Homer, a poor but clever orphan, has extraordinary adventures after running away from his evil uncle to rescue his brother, who has been sold into service in the Civil War. –catalog summary |
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Mysterious Messages MS
LIB 952.8 BLA This well-written history of cryptography begins with a pottery-glaze formula encrypted in cuneiform on a clay tablet (1500 BCE) and traces the uses of secret messages in statecraft, espionage, warfare, crime, literature, and business up to the present. Along the way, Blackwood, whose historical novels include Second Sight (2005) and The Shakespeare Stealer (2007), discusses the historical development of coding and encryption and tells many good stories of messages ciphered and deciphered, particularly in English and American history. For readers motivated to understand the codes and ciphers mentioned in the text, he stops to explain their principles and how to use them. The many sidebars and illustrations, including photos, reproductions of artworks and artifacts, and the pictures demonstrating the codes themselves, contribute to the book's approachable look. Source notes for quotes, a bibliography, a glossary, and lists of recommended fiction, nonfiction, and Internet sites are appended. A solid introduction to a topic of perennial interest. –Booklist |
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The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior Frank and Joe are harassed when they try to locate a descendant of the Aztecs. –catalog summary |
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The Mystery of the The Hardy boys track down the saboteurs who kidnapped their father. –catalog summary. |
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One Crazy Summer Williams-Garcia (Jumped) evokes the close-knit bond between three sisters, and the
fervor and tumultuousness of the late 1960s, in this period novel featuring
an outspoken 11-year-old from |
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Rapunzel’s Revenge This is the tale as you've never seen it before. After using her hair to free herself from her prison tower, this Rapunzel ignores the pompous prince and teams up with Jack (of Beanstalk fame) in an attempt to free her birth mother and an entire kingdom from the evil witch who once moonlighted as her "mother." Dogged by both the witch's henchman and Jack's outlaw past, the heroes travel across the map as they right wrongs, help the oppressed, and generally try to stay alive. Rapunzel is no damsel in distress--she wields her long braids as both rope and weapon--but she happily accepts Jack¿s teamwork and friendship. While the witch¿s castle is straight out of a fairy tale, the nearby mining camps and rugged surrounding countryside are a throwback to the Wild West and make sense in the world that the authors and illustrator have crafted. The dialogue is witty, the story is an enticing departure from the original, and the illustrations are magically fun and expressive. Knowing that there are more graphic novels to come from this writing team brings readers their own happily-ever-after. –School Library Journal |
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The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of
Rocamadour MS
LIB 952.8 BEI A familiar heroine the girl detective gets a fresh
look (red blazer!) in this delightful debut. Narrator Sophie and her pals
Margaret and Rebecca go St. Veronica's, on the |
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Sabotage at The Hardy boys go undercover to protect the athletes at the Olympic games after sabotage and threatening notes are received. But the boys will have to expose the truth behind the terrorist plot once they find out who is responsible. –catalog summary |
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The Shepherd’s Granddaughter Palestinian teen Amani tends her extended Muslim
family's sheep alongside her beloved grandfather, Seedo, and helps tend their
vineyards and olive groves. When their quiet rural life is disturbed by
Israeli settlers encroaching on their land, Amani's uncle reacts with anger,
while her father tries to resist peacefully with the help of a sympathetic
rabbi. After Seedo dies, Amani has sole responsibility for the diminishing
flock and experiences physical threat and gunfire from the settlers as well
as friendship with their son, who just wants to return to |
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Spies of the Bowers draws upon archival material, supplemented with
his own extensive research, to document the activities of the Mississippi
State Sovereignty Commission, a Civil Rights-era state agency that
disseminated segregationist propaganda and used Soviet-style methods to spy
upon, harass, and harm those who challenged white supremacy. He describes how
the Commission, formed in 1956 in reaction to the Brown v. Board of Education
Supreme Court decision, recruited a wide network of spies and informants, and
conspired with elected officials and state and local law enforcement agencies
to thwart any progress on civil rights. Bowers details the Commission's
tactics, which disregarded constitutional protections for those who supported
or aided the cause, and discusses how the scope of its activities quickly
escalated from its initial attempts to control or marginalize the NAACP and
resist public and school and university integration into outright advocacy of
violence and obstruction of justice. He closes with a discussion of how
federal civil rights legislation and the threat of financial sanctions
resulted in the abolition of the Commission, but warns readers that the
bigotry that gave it free rein still exists and could emerge again. Period
black-and-white photographs, an appendix with reproductions of selected Commission
documents, and an extensive bibliography of books and links to online
archives supplement the text. This book's unique perspective will help
students understand the previously unknown history of the despicable actions
of |
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Starclimber MS
LIB FIC OPP This sequel to Airborn
(2004) and Skybreaker (2005, both
Eos) continues the fabulous adventures of Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries. In
classic steampunk fashion, this book blends the best of Victorian society and
science fiction. No longer content to be confined to planet Earth, Kate and
Matt leap at the opportunity to travel into space when Kate is invited to be
a part of the Canadian astralnaut program for her scientific expertise and
Matt must undergo rigorous training before he is accepted as a crew member.
Unexpected mechanical difficulties, friction among those onboard, sabotage,
and encounters with strange alien life-forms test their courage and ingenuity
and love for one another. Starclimber
is a thrilling roller-coaster ride of a book, full of humor and derring-do
and guaranteed to keep readers up long past midnight. –School Library Journal |
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Usagi Yojimbo, Book 23: MS
LIB 741.5 SAK No library serving tween boys should be without an
ample supply of |
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When You Reach Me If this book makes your head hurt, you're not
alone. Sixth-grader Miranda admits that the events she relates make her head hurt,
too. Time travel will do that to you. The story takes place in
1979, though time frames, as readers
learn, are relative. Miranda and Sal have been best friends
since way before that. They both live in a tired |
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Z. Rex MS
LIB FIC Adam's dad, a single father, is always on the verge
of success. He's a computer programmer who has been working on the creation
of an ultra-reality video game where the actions are created by sensors that
detect the players' thoughts and commands. He leaves his 13-year-old son for
what he promises will only be a couple of days to meet with a company
interested in backing his project. When he doesn't return after nine days,
Adam begins to worry. But nothing in his imagination could prepare him for
what comes knocking at his door. It's like a scenario from a movie or a video
game: men with guns, dark sedans, mysterious messages, and a man-eating
dinosaur that destroys everything in its path and, oh, by the way, can make itself invisible. Cole has created a likable character who
manages to come out on top in an extraordinary situation. The science aspects
offer an interesting perspective and dilemma for a discussion on genetic
engineering. In addition, the adventure, video gaming, and the perilous,
sometimes bloody scenes will capture reluctant readers who may not normally
devour their reading materials. –School
Library Journal |
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HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY |
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Stitches: A Memoir In this profound and moving memoir, Small, an award-winning children's book illustrator, uses his drawings to depict the consciousness of a young boy. The story starts when the narrator is six years old and follows him into adulthood, with most of the story spent during his early adolescence. The youngest member of a silent and unhappy family, David is subjected to repeated x-rays to monitor sinus problems. When he develops cancer as a result of this procedure, he is operated on without being told what is wrong with him. The operation results in the loss of his voice, cutting him off even further from the world around him. Small's black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small's intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible postsurgery scar on the main character's throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree. Small tells his story with haunting subtlety and power. –Publisher’s Weekly |
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