Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
By R. L. LaFevers Illustrated by Yoko Tanaka Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 352 Lexile: 780L Age Range: 9 – 12 Years ABOUT Theodosia Throckmorton has her hands full at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in London. Her father may be head curator, but it is Theo—and only Theo—who is able to see all the black magic and ancient curses that still cling to the artifacts in the museum. Sneaking behind her father’s back, Theo uses old, nearly forgotten Egyptian magic to remove the curses and protect her father and the rest of the museum employees from the ancient, sinister...
Read MoreScreaming at the Ump
By Audrey Vernick Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 272 Age Range: 10 – 14 Years ABOUT Twelve-year-old Casey Snowden knows everything about being an umpire. His dad and grandfather run a New Jersey umpire school, Behind the Plate, and Casey lives and breathes baseball. Casey’s dream, however, is to be a reporter—objective, impartial, and fair, just like an ump. But when he stumbles upon a sensational story involving a former major league player in exile, he finds that the ethics of publishing it are cloudy at best. This emotionally charged coming-of-age novel about baseball,...
Read MoreFlight of the Phoenix (Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, Book I)
By R. LaFevers Illustrated by Kelly Murphy Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 137 Lexile: 640L Age Range: 6 – 9 Years ABOUT Ten-year-old Nathaniel Fludd is the reluctant hero of Flight of the Phoenix (2009), the madcap debut of the American author R. L. LaFevers’s Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series and a Junior Library Guild selection. The year is 1928, the setting England, and Nate’s wayward parents have just been reported lost at sea. Nate is sent that very day to his Aunt Phil’s house in Batting-at-the-Flies, but not for long . . . The morning after he arrives at the...
Read MoreDragon’s Keep
By Janet Lee Carey Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 302 Age Range: 12 – 17 Years ABOUT By learning to accept the dragon claw that mars her hand, a princess fulfills her destiny and saves her country from war. REVIEWS *”Stunning, lyrical prose . . . Carey smoothly blends many traditional fantasy tropes here, but her telling is fresh as well as thoroughly compelling.” —Booklist, starred review “Carey (Wenny Has Wings) has written a romantic fantasy steeped in the Arthurian tradition of knights, dragons and lost kingdoms. After eloping with an outlaw, King...
Read MoreDirt Bikes, Drones, and Other Ways to Fly
By Conrad Wesselhoeft Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pages: 352 Age Range: 12 – 17 Years ABOUT Seventeen year-old dirt-bike-riding daredevil Arlo Santiago catches the eye of the U.S. military with his first-place ranking on a video game featuring drone warfare, and must reconcile the work they want him to do with the emotional scars he has suffered following a violent death in his family. Adios, Nirvana author Conrad Wesselhoeft, takes readers from the skies over war-torn Pakistan to the dusty arroyos of New Mexico’s outback in this young adult novel about daring to live in...
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