We’ve all felt like we don’t fit in at some point, but for Emma Freke (who quips that her mom forgot to say her name out loud before she was born!), it’s a chronic problem. Taller than all of her juni…
Based on the author's time teaching at an inner-city school, "What Can't Wait" is a realisitc story of one Hispanic teen's life in a low-income neighborhood in Texas. Marisa's voice drew me in immedia…
The Catch by Rick Jasper is the first in a six-book series, Travel Team. Each book in the series follows a different player of the U17 Las Vegas Roadrunners baseball team with a different sports-rela…
Broxo is a fun, action-packed fantasy that reads very quickly. The illustrations are quite dark, but fit the theme of the story, and they're beautifully done. I had a little bit of a hard time fo…
In a style similar to his The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson wraps up a slice of history with an entwining narrative line. This time the history is Germany in the 1930’s during Hitler’s ascensi…
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Talking animals, magical transformations, sentient winds—have you ever wondered if there could be a logical explanation for all the fantastical things that happen in fairy tales? In Ice, Sarah Beth Du…
Shabanu: Daughter of the Winds is the coming-of-age tale of a young Muslim girl who lives in the Cholistan desert in Pakistan. Suzanne Fisher Staples tells a poignant story portraying the life and cu…
Combine a charming, haunting, and lyrical writing style with a fabulous cat, a complex villain, and a lonely but strong girl, and you have Plain Kate by Erin Bow. The protagonist, Plain Kate, struggl…
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis may technically be a science fiction novel, but it feels more like The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde. You don’t have to be a die-hard science fi…
