After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

World War II has ended, but while America has won the war, twelve-year-old Hanako feels lost. To her, the world, and her world, seems irrevocably broken. America, the only home she’s ever known, imprisoned then rejected her and her family–and thousands of other innocent Americans–because of their Japanese heritage, because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Japan, the country they’ve been forced to move to, the country they hope will be the family’s saving grace, where they were supposed to start new and better lives, is in shambles because America dropped bombs of their own.

Hanako feels she could crack under the pressure, but just because something is broken doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed.

Is eternal life a blessing or a curse? That is what young Winnie Foster must decide when she discovers a spring on her family’s property whose waters grant immortality. Members of the Tuck family, having drunk from the spring, tell Winnie of their experiences watching life go by and never growing older. But then Winnie must decide whether or not to keep the Tucks’ secret―and whether or not to join them on their never-ending journey.

A staple on home bookshelves and in classrooms and libraries, Tuck Everlasting is a timeless story that has captivated readers of all ages for almost half a century.

Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann—a boy and his two dogs...

A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river bottoms of Cherokee County. Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains—and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger—and a possible murderer—to inherit his vast fortune, on things for sure: Sam Westing may be dead…but that won’t stop him from playing one last game!

Winner of the Newbery Medal
Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award
An ALA Notable Book

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the Forest, Xan, is kind. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. Xan rescues the children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.
One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic.

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.
Outside the towering stone walls that surround them is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through     alive.  Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying: Remember. Survive. Run.

Animal Farm is a devastating satire of the Soviet Union by the man V.S. Pritchett called “the conscience of his generation.” A fable about an uprising of farm animals against their human masters, it illustrates how new tyranny replaces old in the wake of revolutions and power corrupts even the noblest of causes.

Cash, Fitch, and Bird Nelson Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties.  The Nelson Thomas children exist in their own orbits, circling a tense and unpredictable household, with little in common except an enthusiastic science teacher named Ms. Salonga. As the launch of the Challenger approaches, Ms. Salonga gives her students a project—they are separated into spacecraft crews and must create and complete a mission. When the fated day finally arrives, it changes all of their lives and brings them together in unexpected ways.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.  But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Dill isn’t the most popular kid at his rural Tennessee high school. After his father fell from grace in a public scandal that reverberated throughout their small town, Dill became a target. Fortunately, his two fellow misfits and best friends, Travis and Lydia, have his back.  Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending–one that will rock his life to the core.

Debut novelist Jeff Zentner provides an unblinking and at times comic view of the hard realities of growing up in the Bible belt, and an intimate look at the struggles to find one’s true self in the wreckage of the past.

The collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.  In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.

In this book, award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos strings together the diverse experiences of eleven real migrant teenagers, offering readers a beginning road map to issues facing the region. These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survival–including two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry waters–offer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.-Central American refugee crisis.

A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school’s annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he’s got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends—true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up on “greasers” like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect—until the night someone takes things too far.

We can let racism stand, or we can stand against it. Readers will follow a young Kendi as he learns (and unlearns) lessons that help shape his understanding racism. Kendi’s concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America.

A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards’ families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

A team of explorers makes an expedition into a crater in Iceland which leads to the center of the earth and to incredible and horrifying discoveries.

Though she is from a family of clairvoyants, Blue Sargent’s only gift seems to be that she makes other people’s talents stronger, and when she meets Gansey, one of the Raven Boys from the expensive Aglionby Academy, she discovers that he has talents of his own–and that together their talents are a dangerous mix.

The adventure is over but life goes on for an elf mage just beginning to learn what living is all about. Elf mage Frieren and her courageous fellow adventurers have defeated the Demon King and brought peace to the land. With the great struggle over, they all go their separate ways to live a quiet life. But as an elf, Frieren, nearly immortal, will long outlive the rest of her former party. How will she come to terms with the mortality of her friends?

The Edelweiss Pirates were a loosely organized group of working-class young people in the Rhine Valley of Germany. They faced off with Nazis during the Third Reich and suffered consequences for their resistance during and after World War II.

Michael Arroyo has the ‘heat’. His pitches are fast and his teams fighting its way through to compete in the Little League World Series. Michael might just be too good, a rival team complains to the league that he’s older than his 13 years and demands that he’s benched until he produces a birth certificate. But Michael can’t do that, he’s keeping a secret – he and his 17 year old brother Carlos, are orphans. Refugees from Cuba life has always been tough, when their Papi died of a heart attack the boys decided to pretend he was visiting relatives to try and avoid the foster homes. All Michael wants to do is play baseball and take the South Bronx All-Stars into the playoffs.

Ever since she wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth birthday party, Ellie’s been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by her list of Fat Girl Rules, which are all about not standing out. And she’s found a haven in her swimming pool, where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch out like a starfish and take up all the space she wants.

Capricorn (Cap for short), doesn’t exactly fit in to the normal routines of Claverage Middle School. He’s got long, ungroomed hair, practices Tai Chi on the lawn, never tasted a pizza and worst of all, never been to an actual school in his life. Cap grew up on an old farm commune, home schooled by his caretaker Rain he’s led a sheltered life. Now Rain’s been injured Cap’s had to start at public school and nothing’s prepared him for life as the schools biggest ‘nerd’.

When a deadly plague reaches the small fish camp where he lives, an orphan named Leif is forced to take to the water in a cedar canoe. He flees northward, following a wild, fjord-riven shore, navigating from one danger to the next, unsure of his destination. Yet the deeper into his journey he paddles, the closer he comes to his truest self as he connects to “the heartbeat of the ocean . . . the pulse of the sea.

Jess Aaron can’t wait to start 5th grade. All summer long he’s been practicing, ready to become the fastest runner at school. But when his big day arrives he finds himself being out run by his new next-door neighbor – a girl! Jess is determined not to like Leslie but soon finds out she’s not like other girls. The two become best friends and together they create the magical world of Terabithia in the woods by their homes.

Thirteen-year-old Bina faces her first summer without her best friend, Austin, who has left for soccer camp.