When his father dies, fourteen-year-old Kenny has to leave school and find work. Includes flashbacks to previous generations of Kenny's family.
Book of the Day: Walking on Air by Kelly Easton
In 1931, a young girl travels around the country performing on a tightrope during revival meetings held by her father, and seeking her own answers about God, her family, and her life of poverty and homelessness.
Book of the Day: The Freedom Writers diary : how a teacher and 150 teens used writing to change themselves and the world around them
Did anyone see the movie Freedom Writers? This book came first. It contains the actual writings of the students that were featured in the film.
Book of the Day: We Just Want to Live Here: a Palestinian teenager, an Israeli teenager : an unlikely friendship by Amal Rifa'i
An unsparing--yet hopeful--account of what it means to grow up in Jerusalem today as told through the candid exchange of letters between a Palestinian teenager and an Israeli teenager.
Posting Early!
Posting Books of the Day early because I will be out of town for a school librarian's conference with Mrs. Paz. Any of you folks have Mrs. Paz when you were in elementary school? She rules!
See you soon! Don't forget that the Star Wars movie nights are coming up and also we have that cool bracelet craft next week! CLICK HERE TO SEE DETAILS. Call us at 412-835-2207, ex. 267 to register!
See you soon! Don't forget that the Star Wars movie nights are coming up and also we have that cool bracelet craft next week! CLICK HERE TO SEE DETAILS. Call us at 412-835-2207, ex. 267 to register!
Book of the Day: Straydog by Kathe Koja
Rachel, a teenager with a healthy dose of both aptitude and attitude, begins to feel at home volunteering at an animal shelter.
Book of the Day: The River Between Us by Richard Peck
During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New Orleans to come north to Illinois.
Book of the Day: The Schwa Was Here by Neil Schusterman
A Brooklyn eighth-grader nicknamed Antsy befriends the Schwa, an "invisible-ish" boy who is tired of blending into his surroundings and going unnoticed by nearly everyone.
Book of the Day: The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick
With the help of his servant and an orphan girl, a magician named Valerian searches graveyards, churches, and underground waterways for a book he hopes will save him from a pact he has made with evil.
Book of the Day: Hush by Jacqueline Woodson
Twelve-year-old Toswiah finds her life changed when her family enters the witness protection program.
Book of the Day: Secret Hour by Scott Westerfield
Upon moving to Bixby, Oklahoma, fifteen-year-old Jessica Day learns that she is one of a group of people who have special abilities that help them fight ancient creatures living in an hour hidden at midnight; creatures that seem determined to destroy Jess.
Book of the Day: Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator by Jennifer Allison
During the summer before ninth grade, intrepid Gilda Joyce invites herself to the San Francisco mansion of distant cousin Lester Splinter and his thirteen-year-old daughter, where she uses her purported psychic abilities and detective skills to solve the mystery of the mansion's boarded-up tower.
Book of the Day: Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez
In the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, twelve-year-old Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.
Book of the Day: Goblin Wood by Hilari Bell
A young Hedgewitch, an idealistic knight, and an army of clever goblins fight against the ruling hierarchy that is trying to rid the land of all magical creatures.
Book of the Day: Race for the Sky: the Kitty Hawk Diaries by Johnny Moore by Dan Gutman
Johnny Moore was just a typical boy enjoying life in North Carolina in 1900 until 2 things happened. His mother gave him a book, a blank book, and told him to fill it up. Then two brothers named Wright came to town with a hair-brained idea of building a flying machine.
Book of the Day: Alice, I Think by Susan Juby
Fifteen-year-old Alice keeps a diary as she struggles to cope with the embarrassments and trials of family, dating, school, work, small town life, and a serious case of "outcastitis."
Book of the Day: Alphabet of Dreams by Susan Fletcher
Mitra and her younger brother, Babak, are refugees in ancient Persia, living in a labyrinth of caves, scraping by with the food they can steal in the nearby marketplace. Disguised as a boy for safety and mobility, Mitra dreams of returning to her former life of opulence before her father's plot against a despotic king scattered the family. When it is discovered that Babak possesses the ability of prophetic dreaming, he comes to the attention of a local magus, Melchior, who takes the children under his protection as he travels westward, following signs in the stars.
Book of the Day: Odd Man Out by Sarah Ellis
Twelve-year-old Kip is spending the summer with his grandmother and his five cousins, all of whom are full of enthusiasm, action, and talk. His mother has just remarried and he is not sure what life will be like when the newlyweds get back from Hawaii. Gran's seaside home is like nowhere else. The house has been sold and will be demolished soon so Kip and the girls are free to write on the walls, paint them, and bash them with sledgehammers if they wish, and the cousins do so with gusto. The onslaught of the girls takes a while to adjust to, but Kip has the attic bedroom as his retreat. There he finds his deceased father's adolescent journal, a notebook filled with a story of espionage, secret plots, and a boy called the Operative. Kip feels an instant connection to this story and comes to see that Tristan was the same sort of kid that he is.
Book of the Day: The Killer's Tears by Ann-Laure Bondoux
A young boy, Paolo, and the man who murdered his parents, Angel, gradually become like father and son as they live and work together on the remote Chilean farm where Paolo was born.
Book of the Day: Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos
As part of a U.S. government crackdown on illegal immigration after 9/11, Muslim men were required to register with the government and many were arrested because their visas had long-since expired. Families who had lived and worked in this country were suddenly and forcibly reminded of their illegal status without any likelihood of changing it. For 18-year-old Aisha Hossain, this means the end of her dream of going to college to become a doctor. For 14-year-old Nadira, her younger sister and the story's narrator, it means coming out from behind the shadow of her perfect older sister to reveal her own strength and find a way to reunite her nearly shattered family.
Book of the Day: Framed by Frank Cottrell
Dylan and his sisters have some ideas about how to make Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel into a more profitable business, but it is not until some strange men arrive in their small town of Manod, Wales with valuable paintings, and their father disappears, that they consider turning to crime.
Book of the Day: The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance by Catherine Ryan Hyde
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.
Book of the Day: Lemonade Mouth by Mark Peter Hughes
A disparate group of high school students thrown together in detention form a band to play at a school talent show and end up competing with a wildly popular local rock band.
Book of the Day: Trigger by Susan Vaught
Teenager Jersey Hatch must work through his extensive brain damage to figure out why he decided to shoot himself.
Book of the Day: Code Orange by Caroline B. Cooney
While conducting research for a school paper on smallpox, Mitty finds an envelope containing 100-year-old smallpox scabs and fears that he has infected himself and all of New York City.
Book of the Day: Dragon Spell by Donita K. Paul
This is the first in a series of three Christian fantasy books about a young girl who is saved by a magical dragon egg. Lots of action and drama, great adventure!
Book of the Day: The New Policeman by Kate Thompson
Irish teenager JJ Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into Tir na nOg, the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out a lot about his family history, the music that he loves, and a crime his great-grandfather may or may not have committed.Book of the Day: Baboon King by Anton Quintana
Son of a Kikuyu mother and a Masai herdsman father, Morengáru the hunter lives on the edges of tribal society until an actual banishment forces him to make a life for himself among a troop of baboons.
Book of the Day: Island Boyz by Graham Salisbury
A collection of short stories including Island Boyz, Angel-Baby and Cloud of Hats. (BPHS AR BOOK)
Book of the Day: Sons from Afar by Cynthia Voight
Six years after coming to live with their grandmother, James and Sammy Tillerman go in search of their long-lost father.
Book of the Day: Memories of Summer by Ruth White
In 1955, thirteen-year-old Lyric finds her whole life changing when her family moves from the hills of Virginia to a town in Michigan and her older sister Summer begins descending into mental illness.
Book of the Day: Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier
Trent, an ace interrogator from Vermont, works to procure a confession from an introverted twelve-year-old accused of murdering his seven-year-old friend in Monument, Massachusetts.
Book of the Day: Both Sides Now by Ruth Pennebaker
Fifteen-year-old Liza tries to deal with the normal everyday crises of life in an Austin, Texas, high school, a process complicated by her mother's fight with breast cancer.
Book of the Day: Heaven Eyes by David Almond
Having escaped from their orphanage on a raft, Erin, January, and Mouse float down into another world of abandoned warehouses and factories, meeting a strange old man and an even stranger girl with webbed fingers and little memory of her past.
Book of the Day: Ace Hits the Big Tim by Barbara Murphy
On the day he enters Kennedy High in Manhattan wearing a patch over one eye, sixteen-year-old Horace Hobart is urged to join the toughest gang at school. (BPHS AR BOOK)
Book of the Day: You, Maybe by Rachel Vail
Josie, a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore, is smart, funny, and very much her own person, but when popular senior Carson Gold starts wooing her, she cannot resist his attention.
Book of the Day: Jumping the Nail by Eve Bunting
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. (BPHS AR BOOK)
Book of the Day: In Lane Three, Alex Archer by Tessa Duder
Fifteen-year-old Alex struggles to overcome personal trauma and hardship as she competes with her arch rival for a place on the New Zealand swimming team participating in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. (BPHS AR BOOK)
Book of the Day: If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is black and whose parents are separated, and Ellie, who is white and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with people's reactions.
Laura, Jace, and Chloe were best friends growing up, but once high school hit, they grew apart and found new friends. Now they are juniors, and Laura has decided that nothing would be better than to go to the prom with her two oldest friends.
Book of the Day: Now You See by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Fifteen-year-old Hope describes events leading her to agree to her boyfriend's plan to stage her abduction, and the consequences for their relationship, her family life, and her budding career as an actress.Book of the Day: Broken Song by Kathryn Lasky
In 1897, fifteen-year-old Reuven Bloom, a Russian Jew, must set aside his dreams of playing the violin in order to save himself and his baby sister after the rest of their family is murdered.Book of the Day: Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks
Two brothers, sons of an incarcerated gypsy, leave London traveling to an isolated and desolate village, in search of the brutal killer of their sister.
Book of the Day: The Miner's Daughter by Gretchen Morgan Laskas
Sixteen-year-old Willa, living in a Depression-era West Virginia mining town, works hard to help her family, experiences love and friendship, and finds an outlet for her writing when her family becomes part of the Arthurdale, West Virginia, community supported by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Book of the Day: Stiff by Mary Roach
In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bosies when we are no longer with them.Book of the Day: Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams
Like her idol Sherlock Holmes, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill uses her intellect to solve a murder case in her home town of Echo Falls.
Book of the Day: Listening for Lions by Gloria Whalen
Left an orphan after the influenza epidemic in British East Africa in 1918, thirteen-year-old Rachel is tricked into assuming a deceased neighbor's identity to travel to England, where her only dream is to return to Africa and rebuild her parents' mission hospital.
Book of the Day: The Color of Water by James McBride
A young African American man describes growing up as one of twelve children of a white mother and Black father, and discusses his mother's contributions to his life and his confusion over his own identity.
Book of the Day: Johnny Jihad by Ryan Inzana
Inspired by the experiences of John Walker Lindh and the Columbine shootings, this exploration of our culture's casual acceptance of violence and the emptiness of lower middle-class life concerns young martyr-in-training John Sendel.