"Bone Gap marks Laura Ruby as one of fiction's most original voices. She is capable of moving you to tears, terrifying you on deep and dreamlike levels, and making your heart shout with happiness. This book is magic realism at its most magical."—E. Lockhart, author of We Were LiarsBone Gap is the story of Roza, a beautiful girl who is taken from a quiet midwestern town and imprisoned by a mysterious man, and Finn, the only witness, who cannot forgive himself for being unable to identify her kidnapper. As we follow them through their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness—a story about how the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are. Views: 27
Tui T. Sutherland, author of the bestselling Wings of Fire series, soars further into the world of Pyrrhia's dragons than ever before. In these brand-new short stories, fans will meet old friends and new ones, uncover shocking secrets, and learn more about the terrible challenges that will test all dragonkind... Each story is available exclusively in e-book and is the perfect read for Wings of Fire fans who just can't wait for the next book in the series. Views: 27
Many years ago, the storytellers say, the great King Arthur brought justice to England with the help of his gallant knights of the roundtable. While most of King Arthur's knights freely chose a life of duty, for Sir Balin the Ill-Fated, destiny was foretold in a prophecy. And seriously, "ill-fated" is right there in his title, so Balin's not surprised when things go sour. Still, no matter how dire the task, a loyal and gallant knight never refuses adventure! Will Sir Balin finally discover his true destiny? And which ill-fated path will he have to choose? Join Balin on this, the noblest quest of all. Views: 27
It is 1932. Polly and her older sister, Maud, travel by trainand boat from Winnipeg to an island between Vancouverand Victoria. Polly will live with their grandmother, the sisters'new guardian, and attend the small school on the island, while Maud will go to boarding school in Victoria.Their extended family welcomes the girls warmly. New-school jitters give way to new friendships and even a new puppy, and slowly Polly feels that she is becoming part of a larger family she never knew until now. But Polly and Maud have a dramatic secret, and they have promised each other never to tell anyone. A surprise arrival on the island, however, threatens Polly's newfound happiness andtests the bonds of family love. Can Polly keep the secret and her new life on the island? Views: 27
From the creators of the internationally bestselling Edge Chronicles comes an epic story of dragons! The wyrmeweald is a hostile place, an arid wasteland where man is both hunter and hunted, and where the dragon-like wyrmes reign supreme. Seventeen-year-old Micah enters the wyrmeweald intent on stealing a wyrme egg to sell for a bounty. With the riches such an egg will bring—returner's wealth—Micah can go home to a life of luxury, and win the hand of the girl he loves. But the wyrmeweald is a treacherous place, and Micah quickly finds himself in mortal danger. When a tracker named Eli rescues him, Micah is forced to prove his worth, and together he and Eli defend a rare wyrme hatchling from kith bandits intent on stealing and selling wyrme eggs. As Micah soon discovers, this hatchling has a guardian already—the beautiful, brave, and dangerous Thrace. Micah and Thrace make the worst possible match: Micah is a would-be bandit, and Thrace is a wyrme... Views: 27
There's a little bit of magic in every box.™Scottish Play Doe—aka Scott—is used to being a little different. Sometimes he hallucinates things no one else can see. Mermaids. Unicorns. A talking rabbit-man in tweed pants.But then one of these hallucinations tries to steal Scott's backpack, and he comes face-to-face with an honest-to-goodness leprechaun named Mick who's on the run from, of all things, the Goodco Cereal Company.With the help of their friends Erno and Emily, Scott and Mick uncover Goodco's sinister plans—and take the first steps in saving the world from the evil cereal company.Amazon.com Review Jon Scieszka Interviews Adam Rex Jon Scieszka is the National Ambassador for Children’s Literature emeritus and the bestselling author of more than 25 books for kids, including The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, Robot Zot!, and the Time Warp Trio series. Jon founded Guys Read to encourage a passion for reading among young boys, with the philosophy that boys love to read most when they are reading things they love. Jon Scieszka: Cold Cereal is the only novel I have ever read that combines Celtic folklore, cryptozoology, Arthurian legends, codes and puzzles, Freemasonry, dragon biology, TV cereal commercials, Shakespeare, and a rough outline for the musical version of Huckleberry Finn. How did that happen? Adam Rex: Honestly? After my last novel (Fat Vampire) I wanted to get back to writing for a middle-grade audience, and I had, like, six or seven possible novels already started to some degree or another. And I began to notice some connective tissue between a few of them. My idea about the twins who are test subjects in a sinister experiment had an evil breakfast cereal company in it. The one about the kid who catches a leprechaun trying to steal his backpack in a bus station restroom had a character who’s at home both in ancient folklore and cereal commercials. The one about the modern-day pop-star knight who has to slay a dragon and the one about a time-traveling Merlin had European folklore connections, too. So I started mashing them all together and found they complemented each other better than they had any right to. And then I added a musical Huck Finn. Scieszka: In writing so extensively about leprechauns and clurichauns, unicorns and unicats, goblins and pookas and other assorted Fair Folk… don’t you worry that you might have revealed too much? About both Queen Titania’s court and your middle-school reading history?Rex: Ha! (Cough.) Yes. My middle-school reading history was pretty dire, actually, as practically everything I read outside of school was some officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons novel. Which is to say: I read a lot of fantasy, but I didn't even read any good fantasy. To this day I still haven't read The Lord of the Rings, which is, of course, the basis for everything I liked in middle school until I discovered comic books.And the really stupid thing is: seventh-grade me probably would have resented a lot of what I try to get away with in Cold Cereal. “That’s not what goblins are like,” I would have said. “There’s no such thing as a unicat.” But I think I would have read it anyway for the humor because I was also big in Douglas Adams at the time. And still am. Scieszka: Two two-part questions: What is the best or worst cereal commercial you’ve ever seen? And why? What is your most favorite or most hated breakfast cereal? And why?Rex: As a kid I actually wasn’t allowed any of the kind of “sugar cereals” that the Goodco Cereal Company makes in my book. Which is probably why the commercials made such an impression on me. I was like Lancelot, offered a glimpse of the Sangrail but not allowed to enter into its presence. You see what I did there? Tied together breakfast cereal and the Arthurian legends? That’s what’s called “staying on point.”I think the worst commercial I ever saw was an eighties spot for Apple Jacks. A group of girls are sitting around talking about how great Apple Jacks are, as girls do, and the main girl’s dad butts in and asks why the girls like them if they don’t even taste like apples. The girls look at one another, stumped and flustered, until the daughter blurts out, “We just do, okay?” “Okay.” Dad shrugs and leaves. And when he’s out of earshot, the main girl tells her friends, “He’s old,” and they all giggle. Even as a kid I knew this commercial failed on every level.My favorite cereal commercial was anytime there was a crazy mix-up at the Crunchberry factory. Scieszka: The brother and sister spats and tricks between Erno and Emily and Scott and Polly are so real that I have to ask: Do you have an annoying younger, older, or twin sister?Rex: I was the annoying younger brother. But we got along better than most. I also have a sister who's twelve years younger—too young to have been a source of any conflict in my life. If anything, I wanted my younger sister to tag along on my outings—I got more attention from teenage girls when she did.I think I developed my sense of sibling rivalry from watching my childhood best friend’s family. They fought so much they even had their own family-only derogatory term for each other: “buh.” “You’re being a buh,” they’d tell a brother or sister who was judged at that moment to be difficult or annoying. It’s an excellent word and one I hope to teach to my own children someday. Scieszka: The briefly described musical of Huckleberry Finn sounds perfectly awful. Can you share any more details about Oh Huck! with us?Rex: Well, as the book says, the play’s narrator is a talking raft (Riff-Raft), and it features a rapping scarecrow. I also imagine it to be the sort of Julie Taymor–inspired production where the Mississippi is represented by a hundred dancers in leotards doing the worm or whatever. And in our supposedly post-racial society, Jim is played by Nathan Lane. But that’s all I can say about it. Scieszka: What more can you tell us about the next two books in this promised “Magically Delicious New Trilogy”?Rex: In book two, Unlucky Charms, my heroes will travel to England, attempt to expose the queen as two goblins in a queen suit, travel to the enchanted isles of Pretannica to plead for humanity from Queen Titania herself, and possibly slay a dragon while they’re there. Along the way they’ll accidentally ingest the Salmon of Knowledge; learn the true history of Arthur, King of the Britons; and if I have time, face the unspeakable terror of the Ronopolisk. Probably not that last thing.Review“Totally original and wholly brilliant. Adam Rex must be stopped.” (Eoin Colfer, bestselling author of the Artemis Fowl series )“With an off-the-wall sensibility that fans of the author’s True Meaning of Smekday will recognize with delight, Rex brings together unconventional allies to be hunted by agents of the huge Goodco Cereal Company.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )“Rex takes his magically delicious premise seriously, finding the thin line between absurdity and comedy, while giving this story more gravitas and depth than might be expected.” (Publishers Weekly )“The story is filled with wildly imaginative elements and clever wisecracks, but the humor is couched within a rich, complex plot that’s filled with engaging characters and concepts. Readers who enjoy fantasies that are equal parts hilarious and exciting will eagerly await the next two in the series.” (School Library Journal (starred review) )“An expansive cast of colorful characters (including Merle Lynn, an accountant) keep the surprises coming. Reader interest and suspension of disbelief never flag in this humorous, consistently entertaining, well-spun yarn.” (The Horn Book )“Rex supports his centrifugal imagination with tight storytelling, effervescent characterization, and strong imagery and metaphor. . . . will leave readers anxious for the sequel.” (ALA Booklist )“The divinely demented Adam Rex strikes again! Cold Cereal is exciting, strange, and deliciously different. His deft mixing of myth with modernity is flat-out fabulous.” (Bruce Coville, author of My Teacher Is an Alien )“Warning—this book contains the following ingredients in dangerously high quantities: wild fantasy, dynamic action, great satire and silly jokes. It’s as addictive as one of Goodco’s sinister breakfast products—and a whole lot better for you. I loved it. Second helpings, please!” (Jonathan Stroud, bestselling author of the Bartimaeus Trilogy ) Views: 27
From School Library Journal Grade 5–8. This fifth book about third-born children who must go into hiding to avoid elimination picks up where Among the Barons ( S & S, 2003) ended. The ruthless head of the Population Police has taken over the government, and executions are common. Trey has gone to Mr. Talbot's home seeking help to rescue Luke and his other third-born friends just as the man is taken away in handcuffs. Desperate, he teams up with Luke's older, more reckless brother, Mark, to try to find the others. Mark is caught and Trey enlists in the Population Police, his only hope of freeing him. To escape, the boys make a deal with a resistance member disguised as a guard to rescue a prisoner from another torture camp. The prisoner turns out to be none other than Mr. Talbot, who headed the resistance movement. Mark and Trey are able to rescue their friends, but are unable to help the guard who helped them. The adults are ready to give up but the third-born children vow to keep up the fight. Even though elements of the plot seem timeworn and not all of it is plausible, this book provides a fast and wild ride that will appeal to reluctant readers. Once again, Haddix makes real how hard ordinary and not-so-ordinary actions would be for kids who've spent most of their lives hidden away. Although this installment could be read on its own, this series works best when read in sequence. — Tina Zubak, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Gr. 4–7. Like its predecessors in the Shadow Children series, this novel concerns children hidden from society because their families have exceeded the strictly enforced, two-child limit. Trey struggles to survive during a dangerous political shift, as the most repressive faction of the government seizes power. On a personal level, Trey feels intense fear and increasing mistrust as he tries to maneuver in a world where he often cannot tell friend from foe. Haddix writes a compelling story, full of intrigue, danger, and adventure. The level of tension barely lets up, ensuring that "can't-put-it-down" headlong impulse to keep reading. Still, the constant tension gives individual scenes less impact than they might have had in a book with more contrast. Trey makes an interesting, sympathetic protagonist, reflective about his past, convincing in his outlook, and fundamentally alone even among his allies. Carolyn Phelan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 27
New York Times Bestselling Author Young, beautiful and successful, psychotherapist Nikki Roberts should have the world at her feet. Instead, she's mourning her husband after his tragic death in a car accident – her world shattered irrevocably. Nikki's life takes another dark twist when one of her patients is brutally murdered. Before detectives Agnelli and Johnson can catch a break, another victim turns up – Nikki's PA, reformed drug addict Trey Raymond. And when the post-mortem DNA results reveal 'dead' skin cells under the victims' fingernails, LA is gripped by sensational reports of a predatory Zombie Killer. Before long, someone makes an attempt on Nikki's life. And when reports surface challenging the nature of her late husband's 'accident', it's clear that Nikki's number is marked. The question is, why? With the police at a dead end, Nikki drafts in Derek Moody, a PI with a deep and nefarious case history. Moody investigated the infamous Charlotte Clancy missing persons'... Views: 27
Karen's friend, Nancy, is going to be a big sister. Her mommy is having a baby. At first, Karen is so jealous. Then Nancy promises to share the baby with her. Now Karen is super excited. Nancy might even bring the baby to school for Show and Share! Karen and Nancy can't wait for the baby to be born. But how much longer will it be? Views: 27
