Young Adult (ages 14-18)

Material appropriate for young adults

Laika

Laika was the abandoned puppy destined to become Earth’s first space traveler. This is her journey. Along with Laika, there is Korolev, once a political prisoner, now a driven engineer at the top of the Soviet space program, and Yelena, the lab technician responsible for Laika’s health and life. Abadzis gives life to a pivotal moment in modern history, casting light on the hidden moments of deep humanity behind history. This graphic novel is a blend of fact and fiction dealing with the first animal to be sent into space. He was on the Russian Sputnik 2 in November 1957. Laika would die on that trip.

Yoruba Girl Dancing

For Remi, growing up in Nigeria is a celebration of love and family, eccentricity and old ritual. She feels confident in her privilege and grounded in the heart of her culture. But when she turns six, she is sent to faraway England, to a posh all-girls’ boarding school where she will stay for what seems like a desolate, lonely eternity. There she’s left to find her own way – the only black in a school full of upper-class English girls whose rituals are as foreign to Remi as her’s are to them. Through sheer inner exuberance, Remi triumphs over the dismal climate, social anomalies, and glaring affronts that are her English experience. She endures foreign holidays celebrated with strangers, and navigates the labyrinth of race, caste, and culture, taking nothing lying down, and emerges victorious – if changed forever.

Yoruba Girl Dancing is the story of a girl’s exile from her homeland and her metamorphosis into someone that even she at times hardly recognizes.

Captives

Martin and his family are enjoying a sun-filled vacation on a beautiful Caribbean island–until they are stopped at gunpoint, blindfolded, and bundled into a truck that heads for the dense forest of the island’s interior. Pushed to their physical and emotional limits as they are forced deeper into the wild terrain, the hostages come to understand something of the harsh political backdrop of life on sunny Santa Clara, and the events that have shaped the lives of their captors and fueled their actions.

The Lion Hunter (The Mark Of Solomon)

It is the sixth century in Aksum, Africa. Young Telemakos—King Arthur’s half-Ethiopian grandson—is still recovering from his ordeal as a government spy in the far desert, trying to learn who was breaking the Emperor’s plague quarantine. Before he is fully himself again, tragedy and menace strike, and he finds himself sent, with his baby sister, Athena, to live with Abreha, the ruler of Himyar—a longtime enemy of the Aksumites, now perhaps a friend. His aunt Goewin, Arthur’s daughter, warns him that Abreha is a man to be wary of, someone to watch carefully. Telemakos promises he will be mindful—but he does not realize that Goewin’s warnings are not enough to protect him. The Sunbird was the first book about Telemakos. The Lion Hunter continues his story, to be quickly followed by The Empty Kingdom—a two-book sequence called The Mark of Solomon.

Forged in the Fire

London, 1665. Cast out by his father for becoming a Quaker, the newly independent Will travels from the countryside to London to earn a living. He and his beloved Susanna wait patiently to be reunited and, at last, married. But when Will is thrown into jail for his beliefs, the pair’s future becomes uncertain. The plague is beginning to spread throughout the city.

War in the Middle East: A Reporter’s Story: Black September and the Yom Kippur War

In 1970, when the Jordanian civil war known as Black September began, U.P.I. correspondent Wilborn Hampton was sent to report on unfolding events. Holed up in the InterContinental Hotel and caught in the crossfire, he managed to get the story out. Three years later, dispatched to Israel to cover the Yom Kippur War, the reporter took it on himself to drive to the front lines.

Dreamquake

The dreamhunting began as a beautiful thing, when Tziga Hame discovered that he could enter the Place and share the dreams he found there with other people. But Tziga Hame has disappeared and Laura, his daughter, knows that the art of projecting dreams has turned sour.

On St. Lazarus’s Eve, when elite citizens gather at the Rainbow Opera to experience the sweet dream of Homecoming, Laura, determined to show them the truth, plunges them into the nightmare used to control the convict workers. The event marks the first blow in the battle for control of the Place, the source of dreams. Then, when Laura’s cousin, Rose, uncovers evidence that the government has been building a secret rail line deep into the Place, Laura follows it to find out what lies at its end. As she struggles to counter the government’s sinister plans, a deeper mystery surfaces, a puzzle only Laura can unravel, a puzzle having to do with the very nature of the Place.

Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea

It looks like a bear, but isn’t one. It climbs trees as easily as a monkey—but isn’t a monkey, either. It has a belly pocket like a kangaroo,but what’s a kangaroo doing up a tree? Meet the amazing Matschie’s tree kangaroo, who makes its home in the ancient trees of Papua New Guinea’s cloud forest. Scientists in the Field.

The Invisible

One ordinary Monday morning in May, Hilmer Eriksson walks into his high school classroom and discovers that he has become invisible. No one can see him, no one can hear him. In fact, a police detective named Harald Fors arrives at school that very morning to investigate Hilmer’s disappearance. The boy has no idea what’s going on, but he’s frightened, and he’s starting to forget things – including what happened to him a few nights earlier. Detective Fors suspects foul play, and those suspicions lead him – trailed by the ghostlike presence of Hilmer – to a group of skinheads. These unpopular, disaffected kids are vocal about their Nazi sympathies. But how does Hilmer’s life intersect with theirs? As Fors scours the village and interviews area residents for clues, he begins to piece together the puzzle of Hilmer’s disappearance. Meanwhile Hilmer waits, silently, to discover what has happened to him.

Runner

Charlie’s father is dead, and although his mother insists he stay in school, Charlie has no patience for the classroom. All he wants is to make money, to give his mother and baby brother a better life. So when he catches the eye of Squizzy Taylor, a notorious mobster, and is offered a job as Squizzy’s courier, it doesn’t take Charlie long to accept—even if he has to go against his own mother’s wishes. At first, the job’s a thrill—running with messages, illegal liquor, whatever Squizzy orders. It fills Charlie with power. But then come the not-so-savory parts of the job. Collecting Squizzy’s debts. Dodging Squizzy’s enemies. The very real dangers of the streets. And at some point Charlie has to ask himself—how long before running for a better life means cutting his life short?