Julie Dretzin
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5 - AR Pts: 18
Language
English
Description
A young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, 10-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Today is Monday. The calls do not come as before. Weeks elapse between them, and when I answer the phone there is no overlap of voices, only my mother's. She spends much of the conversation avoiding mention of the pink elephant trumpeting in the middle of the room.
The pink elephant would be my defection to Georgia. When I telephoned with the news of my imminent relocation my father asked, "Georgia, as in the Republic of Georgia by the Black Sea,...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Five young California homemakers forge a bond of friendship that sustains them through the turbulent 1960s and beyond. Meeting weekly, the Wednesday Sisters share a love of writing, literary classics, and the Miss America Pageant--in a moving testament to the mysterious link between friends.
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.6 - AR Pts: 8
Language
English
Formats
Description
In 1913 Russia, twelve-year-old Katya eagerly anticipates leaving her St. Petersburg home, though not her older cousin Misha, to join her mother, a lady in waiting in the household of Tsar Nicholas II, but the ensuing years bring world war, revolution, and undreamed of changes to her life.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 3
Language
English
Formats
Description
Although Zana, an eleven-year-old Albanian girl, experiences the turmoil and violence of the 1999 conflict in her native Kosovo, she remembers her father's admonition to not let her heart become filled with hate.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
One Russian night in 1934, Marya and Georgi's parents disappear. Despite high risks, Katya and Misha had spoken against the government. The children, alone and desperate, fear the worst. Will they ever see their parents again? But all it takes is one crumpled letter to give Marya and Georgi hope and send them on a dangerous mission to reunite their family. They must steal away in the dark of night, escape the city, and find passage to the great Siberian...
7) Story Time
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
George and Kate are promised the finest education when they transfer to the Whittaker Magnet School. It boasts the highest test scores in the nation. But at what price? Their school's curriculum is focused on beating standardized tests; classes are held in dreary, windowless rooms; and students are force-fed noxious protein shakes to improve their test performance. Worst of all, there seems to be a demon loose in the building--one whose murderous...
Author
Series
Echo Falls mystery volume 3
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 8
Language
English
Formats
Description
In Echo Falls, secrets buried in the past don't always stay there. In the third book in the Edgar Award–nominated and national bestselling Echo Falls series, Peter Abrahams's talent for building suspense shines as Ingrid embarks on her most harrowing adventure yet. Perfect for middle schoolers looking for a good mystery. An idyllic day of snowshoeing on Grampy's land with the sheriff's son, Joey, turns out to be less than idyllic when thirteen-year-old...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.6 - AR Pts: 10
Language
English
Formats
Description
It is 1943, and 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is traveling west on a train to live with her scientist father--but no one will tell her exactly where he is. When she reaches Los Alamos, New Mexico, she learns why: he's working on a top secret government program.
13) Jumping the Nail
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.8 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Formats
Description
When teenagers in a California coastal community challenge each other to "jump the Nail"--Leap from dangerous cliffs into the ocean--group pressure and manipulative relationships quickly drive the game out of control.
14) Prep: a novel
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.5 - AR Pts: 26
Language
English
Description
In the late 1980s, for reasons even she has difficulty pinpointing, fourteen-year-old Lee Fiora leaves her middle-class, close-knit, ribald family in Indiana and enrolls at Ault, an elite co-ed boarding school in Massachusetts. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of, and ultimately a participant in, their rituals and mores, although, as a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider. By the...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 10
Language
English
Formats
Description
It is 1946, and Dewey Kerrigan is now living near the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico with the Gordon family. Dewey and her "sister," Suze, share secrets, art, and science as they adjust to high school in an isolated desert town. Then, Dewey's long-lost mother, Rita Gallucci, reappears in their lives.
Author
Language
English
Description
Winner of two World championships, three U.S. National championships, and an Olympic Silver Medal, Michelle Kwan is a true champion. Her warm, friendly confidence and extraordinary skating talent have made her a legend in her own time. Michelle has had to work hard and make sacrifices to get to the top. Now she shares her thoughts and experiences to help others make their dreams come true. Vision, discipline, and dedication head her list of requirements...
18) Body Bags
Author
Series
Body of evidence thrillers volume 1
Language
English
Description
Jenna Blake, a freshman in college, wants to be a doctor like her mother. Unfortunately, she has a deep dislike of blood and an even deeper fear of doing harm to someone. Her father suggests an unusual option-medical examiner. Although Jenna finds the idea disgusting, she decides to go for an interview at the campus hospital. Part of the interview involves witnessing an autopsy. What she learns there draws her into a medical mystery with political...
Author
Language
English
Description
Dilly's mom, Elspeth Dillon Howell, died when Dilly was just six. She left her daughter an Adirondack farmhouse and a letter for when Dilly was "older." Now that Dilly's old enough, the letter's missing. As Dilly searches for it in the house's many hiding places, she makes a few discoveries about the mom she never really knew. Surprisingly, Elspeth's long-ago life looks a lot like Dilly's today.
20) Skin Deep
Author
Series
Body of evidence thrillers volume 6
Language
English
Description
Jenna Blake's second semester in college is off to a good start. She has a new boyfriend and a job she loves in the county medical examiner's office. Then an African-American couple on campus is brutally attacked. Racial tension suddenly floods her normally liberal campus. The African-American students don't think the police are doing all they can to find the killer. When a white student is killed, the campus erupts in a storm of protests, rallies...