In 1942 sixteen-year-old Chaya Lindner is a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland, a courier who smuggles food and documents to the isolated Jewish ghettos in southern Poland, depending on her forged papers and “Aryan” features–but when a mission goes wrong and many of her colleagues are arrested she finds herself on a journey to Warsaw, where an uprising is in the works.
Intermediate (ages 9-14)
Material appropriate for intermediate age groups
Silver Meadows Summer
Eleven-year-old Carolina moves with her family from Puerto Rico to upstate New York, where she attends Silver Meadows camp with her cousin, finds an abandoned cottage, and reclaims parts of the life she left in Puerto Rico.
The Turnaway Girls
Delphernia Undersea wants to sing. But everyone on Blightsend knows music belongs to the Masters and girls with singing throats are swallowed by the sea.
The Turnaway Girls is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for June 2019.
Straw Into Gold
A collection of ten classic fairy tales, reimagined with fresh perspectives and unexpected twists, giving glimpses into happily, and not as happily, ever afters.
Superman: Dawnbreaker (Dc Icons Series)
Clark Kent has always been faster, stronger–better–than everyone around him. But it’s not like he’s earned his powers . . . yet. Lately it’s difficult to hold back and keep his heroics in the shadows. When Clark follows the sound of a girl crying, he comes across Gloria Alvarez and learns that people are disappearing from the Mexican-American and undocumented worker community in Smallville. Teaming up with his best friend, Lana Lang, Clark discovers that before he can save the world, he must save Smallville.
Lucky Luna
Fifth grader Luna Ramos has a great many cousins, mostly on her father’s side, but one of them, Claudia, is a source of constant annoyance; their current feud begins when Luna is punished for locking Claudia in the restroom at another cousin’s quinceanera but when there’s a bullying situation at school, Luna realizes that, despite their disagreements, cousins have to stand up for each other.
Watch Out For Clever Women!
A bilingual collection of humorous trickster tales, in which women pit their formidable intelligence to outwit villains, husbands, brothers, fathers, and sweethearts. From the kind woman who tricked two men who thought they had robbed her of a ham to the woman who saved her gold by tricking her foolish husband into thinking it had snowed tortillas, these tales cultivate lessons of honesty, goodness, hospitality, and honor―not to mention intelligence and wit to survive. As Joe Hayes points out, People the world over tell stories of a humble individual tricking an overbearing person of higher status, but the idea is especially cherished in Hispanic storylore. Making the trickster a woman adds spice to the trick.
The Casket Of Time
The world, according to Grace, is under an ancient curse. There once was a princess named Obsidiana, who was trapped in time by the greedy king of Pangea. To protect Obsidiana from dark and gloomy days, the king put her in a crystal casket made of spider silk woven so tightly that time itself couldn’t penetrate. The king’s greed for power doomed his kingdom and the trapped princess. Sigrun sees eerie parallels between the tale of Obsidiana and the present-day crisis, and realizes it’s up to her and her friends to break the ancient curse and fix the world.
The Casket of Time is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for May 2019.
Earthwaves
When Akela makes his first trading voyage with his wise grandfather, he learns that it takes courage, knowledge, and wisdom to cross the Pacific Ocean in a sailing canoe without compass or chart. Includes historical note.
Girl of the Southern Sea
From the time she was a little girl, Nia has dreamed up adventures about the Javanese mythical princess, Dewi Kadita. Now fourteen, Nia would love nothing more than to continue her education and become a writer. But high school costs too much. Her father sells banana fritters at the train station, but too much of his earnings go toward his drinking habit. Too often Nia is left alone to take over the food cart as well as care for her brother and their home in the Jakarta slums.