Realistic Fiction genre
Twelve-year-old Thaddeus A. Ledbetter, who considers it a duty to share his knowledge and talent with others, refutes each of the charges which have sent him to “In-School Suspension” for the remainder of seventh grade.
Eleven-year-old Fish, seeking a way to help his family financially, becomes a reluctant cabin boy on a pirate ship, where he soon makes friends–and enemies–and is asked to help decipher clues that might lead to a legendary treasure.
Twelve-year-old Griff Carver knows a thing or two about fighting crime. Because Griff’s not just any kid—he’s a kid with a badge. And if you are a criminal, he’s your worst nightmare. Griff might be the new kid on the Rampart Jr. High Patrol squad, but he’s no rookie. And he’ll do whatever it takes to clean up the mean hallways of his middle school—even if it lands him in hot water. But when Griff links cool kid Marcus “The Smile” Volger to a counterfeit hall pass ring, can he and his friends close the case? Or will Griff let down the force—and lose his badge—for good?
Parents have a lingering impact on their teen children. If you act like Marlene, you end up like Marlene — messed up, lonely and broke. No wonder Samantha rejects her mother’s lifestyle. In The Trouble with Marlene, mother and daughter share one thing — thoughts of suicide. Marlene never stops talking about it, but for Samantha, it’s a private affair. There’s one other private thought for Samantha: putting a pillow over her mother’s face and bringing the madness to an end. How far is she prepared to take her fantasy?
For thirteen years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home Zan — an eight-day-old chimpanzee. Ben’s father, a renowned behavioral scientist, has uprooted the family to pursue his latest research project: a high-profile experiment to determine whether chimpanzees can acquire advanced language skills. Ben’s parents tell him to treat Zan like a little brother. Ben reluctantly agrees. At least now he’s not the only one his father’s going to scrutinize. It isn’t long before Ben is Zan’s favorite, and Ben starts to see Zan as more than just an experiment. His father disagrees. To him, Zan is only a specimen, no more, no less. And this is going to have consequences. Soon Ben is forced to make a critical choice between what he is told to believe and what he knows to be true — between obeying his father or protecting his brother from an unimaginable fate. Half Brother isn’t just a story about a boy and a chimp. It’s about the way families are made, the way humanity is judged, the way easy choices become hard ones, and how you can’t always do right by the people and animals you love. In the hands of master storyteller Kenneth Oppel, it’s a novel you won’t soon forget.
Some mistakes can never be repaired. The narrator of Train Wreck is looking back at the year she was 15 and in love with a bad boy named Johnny. Johnny’s friends play a cruel trick on a misfit named Suzy by convincing her that Johnny is attracted to her. When the prank goes too far, the narrator wants something big to happen to prove Johnny still loves her. The prank goes tragically wrong when Suzy is gang-raped. The narrator, now married to Johnny, reflects on the day she watched the horrific attack and did nothing.
In Too Late, 15-year-old Greg is in a teen sex offenders’ facility because of an assault on his stepsister. He hates the professionals who try to help him and can’t wait to go home. When he enters a room for a meeting, his mother is there crying. Her partner, whom Greg calls Step Dude, sits at her side. They have come to tell Greg they don’t want him back. It’s too late to be good, they say. Greg comes to the crippling realization of what he has become: the father he has both hated and feared.
Each book in the Single Voice series consists of two separate but thematically connected stories with distinct inverted covers in an alluring “flip-book” format. Exploding with the urgency, drama and confusion of adolescence, these books will appeal to both avid and less experienced readers.
The people of Bolivia have grown coca for legitimate purposes for hundreds of years, but the demands of America’s War on Drugs now threaten this way of life. Deborah Ellis’s searing follow-up to the highly praised “I Am a Taxi” deals with this frank reality. After he manages to escape from virtual enslavement in an illegal cocaine operation, Diego is taken in by the Ricardo family. These poor coca farmers give Diego a safe haven where he recovers from his ordeal in the jungle. But the army soon moves in and destroys the family’s coca crop — their livelihood. So Diego joins their protest of the destruction of their crops and confront the army head-on by barricading the roads. While tension between the cocaleros and the army builds to a dramatic climax, Diego wonders whether he will ever find a way to return to his family. This compelling novel defies conventional wisdom on an important issue, and shows how people in one part of the world unknowingly create hardship for people in another.
A young boy finds hope when he is given an old soccer ball to play with in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake.
It’s the start of fifth grade for seven kids at Snow Hill School. There’s . . . Jessica, the new girl, smart and perceptive, who’s having a hard time fitting in; Alexia, a bully, your friend one second, your enemy the next; Peter, class prankster and troublemaker; Luke, the brain; Danielle, who never stands up for herself; shy Anna, whose home situation makes her an outcast; and Jeffrey, who hates school. Only Mr. Terupt, their new and energetic teacher, seems to know how to deal with them all. He makes the classroom a fun place, even if he doesn’t let them get away with much . . . until the snowy winter day when an accident changes everything—and everyone.
In the second installment of the Century Quartet, Italian author P. D. Baccalario continues the mystery that will take four cities and four extraordinary kids to solve.Four kids. A wooden top. And four postcards with secret instructions.New York City, March 15 Another mysterious artifact reunites Harvey from New York, Elettra from Rome, Mistral from Paris, and Sheng from Shanghai in their attempt to save the world. When they meet people who knew Alfred Van Der Berger, the murdered professor who sent them on their quest in Rome, they realize that the challenge is far from over. And when they discover a series of four postcards written in code years ago by the professor himself, their destiny becomes even clearer.The cards send the kids all over New York City, through old libraries and abandoned tunnels, in search of the Star of Stone, an ancient object fundamentally connected to the earth. But a new set of villains, predators of Manhattan nightlife, will do anything to stop them….