Alison Dare, The Heart Of The Maiden

Alison Dare: Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft in fabulous, graphic adventures.Alison Dare is not your typical twelve-year-old. She’s the daughter of an archaeologist/adventurer and the masked hero known as the Blue Scarab. To top it off, she’s also the niece of an international super-spy; it’s no surprise that a craving for danger is in her blood! Unfortunately, her parents have locked her away at the prestigious St. Joan’s Academy for Girls, hoping that this would lead to a more “normal” life for their daughter. But despite all the strict rules at the school, Alison and her best pals – Wendy and Dot – somehow manage to find themselves involved in adventures that rival those of Alison’s globetrotting, planet-saving relatives. Whether it’s magic genies, super-powered bank robbers, or a dastardly baron bent on world domination,Alison Daredelivers the best thrills since Indiana Jones and more action than Lara Croft!

Northward To The Moon

Jane and her family have moved to Canada . . . but not for long. When her stepfather, Ned, is fired from his job as a high school French teacher (seems he doesn’t speak French), the family packs up and Jane embarks on a series of new adventures. At first, she imagines her family as a gang of outlaws, riding on horseback in masks, robbing trains, and traveling all the way to Mexico. But the reality is different: Setting off by car, they visit the tribe of Native Americans with whom Ned once lived, head to Las Vegas in search of Ned’s magician brother, and wind up spending the summer with his eccentric mother on her ranch out west. As Jane lives through it all–developing a crush on a ranch hand, reevaluating her relationship with Ned, watching her sister Maya’s painful growing up–she sees her world, which used to be so safe and secure, shift in strange and inconvenient ways.

You Can Pick Me Up At Peggy’s Cove

Ryan’s dad is having a midlife crisis. He went away for the summer to try to work through his problems, leaving his family behind. Ryan’s mother decides to send Ryan to Peggy’s Cove, the most beautiful cove in the world, for the summer to stay with his Aunt Fay, who owns and operates a store there. Peggy’s Cove is all right, Ryan thinks, if it weren’t so small and crowded with tourists.

Still, he manages to make friends. First, he befriends Drummer, a misfit. But hanging out with Drummer proves disastrous because it makes him behave in ways he never has before and gets him into trouble. Next, he finds friendship with fishermen Eddie and Wing Ding, who teach him how to fish. The time he spends with the two fishermen is the best moments of his visit. Even so, he still thinks of his father a lot and writes him a letter in hopes of getting his attention. After spending a summer apart, will their relationship ever be the same?

Emil And Karl

This is a unique work. It is one of the first books written for young readers describing the early days of the event that has since come to be known as the Holocaust. Originally written in Yiddish in 1938, it isone of the most accomplished works of children’s literature in this language. It is also the only book for young readers by Glatshteyn, a major American Yiddish poet, novelist, and essayist. Written in the form of a suspense novel, Emil and Karl draws readers into the dilemmas faced by two young boys-one Jewish, the other not-when they suddenly find themselves without families or homes in Vienna on the eve of World War II. Because the book was written before World War II, and before the full revelations of the Third Reich’s persecution of Jews and other civilians, it offers a fascinating look at life during this period and the moral challenges people faced under Nazism. It is also a taut, gripping, page-turner of the first order.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 2

Milkweed

A stunning novel of the Holocaust from a Newbery MedalistHe’s a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Filthy son of Abraham.He’s a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He’s a boy who steals food for himself, and the other orphans. He’s a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels.He’s a boy who wants to be a Nazi, with tall, shiny jackboots of his own-until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind.And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he’s a boy who realizes it’s safest of all to be nobody.Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable-Nazi-occupied Warsaw during World War II-and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young Holocaust orphan.