Watch Out for Flying Kids! How Two Circuses, Two Countries, and Nine Kids Confront Conflict and Build Community
By Cynthia Levinson Publisher: Peachtree Publishers, Ltd. Pages: 224 Lexile: 930L Age Range: 10 – 13 Years ABOUT The author of We’ve Got a Job explores the world of social circus—a movement that brings kids from different worlds together to perform remarkable acts on a professional level. Levinson follows the participants of two specific circuses that also work together periodically: Circus Harmony, in St. Louis, whose participants are inner-city and suburban kids, and Circus Galilee in Israel, whose participants and Jews and Arabs. As the kids’ relationships evolve over...
Read MoreRed Moon Rising
By K. A. Holt Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books Pages: 336 Lexile: 760L Age Range: 10 – 14 Years ABOUT Space-farmer Rae Darling is kidnapped and trained to become a warrior against her own people in this adventurous middle grade space western. Rae Darling and her family are colonists on a moon so obscure it doesn’t merit a name. Life is hard, water is scarce, and the farm work she does is grueling. But Rae and her sister Temple are faced with an added complication—being girls is a serious liability in their strict society. Even worse, the Cheese—the colonists’ name for the native...
Read MoreFinding Wild
By Megan Wagner Lloyd Illustrated by Abigail Halpin Publisher: Random House Children’s Books Pages: 32 Age Range: 3 – 7 Years ABOUT A lovely, lyrical picture book with gorgeous illustrations that explores the ways the wild makes itself known to us and how much closer it is than we think. There are so many places that wild can exist, if only you know where to look! Can you find it? Two kids set off on an adventure away from their urban home and discover all the beauty of the natural world. From the bark on the trees to the sudden storm that moves across the sky to fire and...
Read MoreAdios, Nirvana
By Conrad Wesselhoeft Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 240 Lexile: HL550L Age Range: 14 Years ABOUT When you piss off a bridge into a snowstorm, it feels like you’re connecting with eternal things. Paying homage to something or someone. But who? The Druids? Walt Whitman? No, I pay homage to one person only, my brother, my twin. In life. In death. Telemachus. Since the death of his brother, Jonathan’s been losing his grip on reality. Last year’s Best Young Poet and gifted guitarist is now Taft High School’s resident tortured artist, when he bothers to show up. He’s on track...
Read MoreTyger Tyger: A Goblin Wars Book
By Kersten Hamilton Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 336 Lexile: HL590L Age Range: 12 – 17 Years ABOUT What would you do if the stories of your childhood suddenly began coming to life? Teagan Wylltson’s best friend, Abby, dreams that horrifying creatures—goblins, shapeshifters, and beings of unearthly beauty but terrible cruelty—are hunting Teagan. Abby is always coming up with crazy stuff, though, so Teagan isn’t worried. Until Finn Mac Cumhaill arrives, with his killer accent and a knee-weakening smile. Either he’s crazy or he’s been haunting Abby’s dreams, because he’s...
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