Newly arrived in England from South Africa, a fifteen-year-old’s family deteriorates, as the effects of living under apartheid take a toll on every aspect of the family members’ lives.
Young Adult (ages 14-18)
Material appropriate for young adults
Stained Glass
Charles Endicott discovers many things about himself and his past as he follows a homeless girl through the streets of his hometown on a warm summer day.
Imagining Isabel: 9
The sequel to Among the Volcanoes portrays the intellectual and political transformation of a young Mayan woman who leaves her Guatemalan village to attend a special program for teachers.
Crocodile Burning
Seraki Mandindi, young man from Soweto, South Africa, learns a life lesson and finds direction when he travels to Broadway with the cast of iSezela.
The Singing Mountain
When sixteen-year-old Carlie learns that her older cousin Mitch is staying in Israel to study at an Orthodox yeshiva, she is upset and angry. Since she was orphaned years ago, Carlie and Mitch have lived together like brother and sister. In Israel Mitch finds fulfillment in studying the Torah, in his work as an artist, and in his new relationship with an Israeli girl.
In California, Carlie, her aunt Vivian and uncle Harry grow increasingly alarmed at Mitch’s defection. They fear he has been brainwashed. Aunt Vivian decides to take Carlie to Israel to lure Mitch back home. Once there, Carlie is awakened by Mitch’s new spirituality. After surviving a traumatic incident she realizes that she has a strength of her own. Finally, Carlie holds the key to the changing paths that each of them will take.
Hidden Voices: The Orphan Musicians of Venice
While studying under Vivaldi, three girls in a Venice orphanage forge their own notions of love in a sensuous, engrossing novel told in three narrative voices. It is a longing and search for love that motivates three girls living in the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage renowned for its extraordinary musical program. But for Rosalba, Anetta, and Luisa, the love they seek is not where they expect to find it. Set in the early 1700s in the heart of Venice, this remarkable novel deftly weaves the history of Antonio Vivaldi’s early musical career into the lives of three young women who excel in voice and instrument.
The Snake-Stone
Fifteen-year-old James, a championship diver, finds himself torn between his dreams of Olympic glory, his love for his adoptive parents, and his desperate need to find his birth mother.
Pirates!
In 1722, after arriving with her brother at the family’s Jamaican plantation where she is to be married off, sixteen-year-old Nancy Kington escapes with her slave friend, Minerva Sharpe, and together they become pirates traveling the world in search of treasure.
Letters From The Inside
When Tracey and Mandy first became pen pals, they never guessed that they would soon discover the darkest secrets of each other’s troubled lives.
Thursday’s Child
A stunningly original voice in young adult fiction. Harper Flute believes that her younger brother Tin, with his uncanny ability to dig, was born to burrow. While their family struggles to survive in a desolate landscape during the Great Depression, the silent and elusive little Tin – “born on a Thursday and so fated to his wanderings” – begins to escape underground, tunneling beneath their tiny shanty. As time passes and fate deals the family an especially cruel hand, Harper’s parents withdraw emotionally, and her siblings bravely try to fill the void, while Tin becomes a wild thing, leaving them further and further behind. With exquisite prose, richly drawn characters, and a touch of magical realism, Sonya Hartnett tells a breathtakingly original coming-of-age story through the clear eyes of an observant child. It’s a loving and unsentimental portrait of family loyalty in the face of poverty and heartbreak, entwined with a surreal vision of the enigmatic Tin – disappearing into a mysterious labyrinth that reaches unimaginably far, yet remains hauntingly near.