Love is in the air for the Casson family! Four hilarious, endearing tales unfold as Rose, Indigo, Saffy, and Caddy each tell their intertwining stories. Rose begins by showing how she does special with her Valentine\’s card for Tom in New York. Not to be outdone, Indigo has his own surprise in store for the Valentine,s Day disco at school. For her part, Saffy has an unusual date in a very, very dark graveyard, and is haunted by a balloon that almost costs her her best friend.But it is Caddy who dares everything — as she tells all about love at first sight when you have found the Real Thing. Unfortunately the Real Thing is not darling Michael. What is Rose going to do?
Realistic Fiction
Realistic Fiction genre
City Boy

Set in contemporary Malawi, a poignant account of an orphaned boy’s transition from city life to village life. Sam’s widowed mother has died from “the Disease,” and Sam is claimed by his aunt Mercy, who lives in the small African village where Sam’s mother was born and raised. The gap between Sam’s life in the city, where he had his own room, attended private school, and used a computer, and his new life in the dirt-floored one-room hut, which he is to share with his aunt and cousins, is vast beyond imagining. Grief, loneliness, and the absence of everything familiar make for a rocky transition to a traditional culture where possessions count for little and everyone is expected to do his or her share.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 2
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.
Thank You, World

Eight very different kids, from eight different continents, all go about their day and experience the same moments of happiness: greeting the sun in the morning, swinging on a swing, flying a kite, being tucked in by Mommy at bedtime.
This Is a Poem That Heals Fish

Panorama: A Foldout Book

The Snog Log

Robbie and his friends have come up with a contest. It’s kind of likea read-a-thon . . . or a telathon . . . except, it’s a snogathon. In otherwords, a kissing contest. And it’s top secret. None of the girls in school know–which is especially tricky, since they’re all in it. What’s also tricky are the rules and points and charts involved. Robbie wants to win by snogging Mel, the class ice maiden, who is high up on the points scale. But Mel has other ideas. This is going to be a weirder and wilder challenge than anyone expected!
Hate You

A young adult novel explores the path from hatred of an abusive father to healing as Alice learns to sing with her own true voice. Alice Silvers writes songs she can never sing, because she has a broken, “Frankenstein” voice. Her father choked her years before when she got in his way while he was fighting with her mother. After that night, her mother threw him out. Alice has never seen him again. Now she’s 17. Alice has her songs, her words, her mother, her boyfriend, her life. Everything but her voice. Years have passed since that terrifying night, but Alice burns with a hate stronger than anything she’s ever known.
I Need You More Than I Love You And I Love You To Bits

When Morris meets Betty, love is unavoidable. In short prose
passages, we follow the course of their passionate first love. A
confident debut written in a surprising form, which gives the story intelligence and depth.
Morris feels like Betty can see everything he’s thinking. Betty
believes Morris understands her like no one ever before. She tells him everything, even about the dried-up worm that she saw on the sidewalk on the way to school. But sometimes the darkness closes in on Morris. His father is manic-depressive and his mother is always talking about dreams and poetry and her new boyfriend. Morris begins to wonder if crazy people are drawn to each other. Betty points out that he is like his father. As their love grows, it almost consumes them. Soon it’s as if they are always trying to escape
themselves until they ask, “How do you know when it’s over?”
The China Year: A Novel
Henrietta Rich, a New York City teenager, spends a year in China when her father accepts a teaching position in Beijing.