From the back cover: Hollis Woods is the place where a baby was abandoned is the baby’s name is an artist is now a twelve-year-old girl who’s been in as many foster homes she can hardly remember them all. Hollis Woods is a mountain of trouble. She runs away even from the Regans, the one family who offers her a home. When Hollis is sent to Josie, an elderly artist who is quirky and affectionate, she wants to stay. But Josie is growing more forgetful every day. If Social Ser

From the back cover: When the sheriff rides into town with an unidentifiable body–wearing a blue-green ball gown–everyone assumes it’s Georgie Burkhardt’s older sister, Agatha. After all, it is Agatha’s dress. But Georgie refuses to believe the facts that are laid down (and coffined) before her. She will track every last clue and shred of evidence to find her sister and bring her home. Sometimes, we just know we’re right, even when all the evidence arranged in front of us and

From the back cover: Gustave doesn’t want to move from the exciting city to the boring countryside, far from his cousin Jean-Paul and his best friend, the mischievous Marcel. But he has no choice. It is March of 1940, and Paris is not a safe place for Jews. When Paris is captured by the Nazis, Gustave knows that Marcel, Jean-Paul, and their families must make it out of the occupied zone. And when he learns that his new friend Nicole works for the French Resistance, he comes u

The Complete Persepolis Marjane Satrapi From the inner flap: Persepolis is the story of Satrapi’s unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming–both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-impo

Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson From the back cover: Jack’s mom is gone. When eleven-year-old Jack Martel wakes up on the first morning of a camping trip with his mom in Acadia National Park, he is all alone. It’s not the first time Jack’s mom has disappeared, and Jack knows that it’s up to him to find her before someone figures out what’s happened and separates them forever. But finding his mom in the state of Maine isn’t the same as finding her in their n

From the back cover: Ten-year-old Caitlin’s world has always been black and white. Anything else was confusing; but her brother, Devon, helped her understand. Then tragedy struck, and now nothing makes sense. As a girl with Asperger’s syndrome, Caitlin turns to what she does know–textbooks and dictionaries. And after reading the definition of closure, she realizes that this is what everyone needs. In her search for closure, she discovers that black and white are surrounded by

From the back Did you, like me, grow up reading about Ramona and Beezus Quimby, their neighbor Henry Huggins, and his dog Ribsy? Do you, like me, lament your own kids’ disinterest in those stories? Hand your kids The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher. Dana Alison Levy captures the same sense of familial and neighborly belonging and the same sense of chaos and camaraderie that made Beverly Cleary’s stories so engaging. The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher is about self-