Americas

Materials from the Americas

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.

Jellaby Vol. 1

Quiet, brilliant Portia has just moved to a new neighborhood with her mom. Adjusting to life without a father is hard enough, but school is boring and her classmates are standoffish — and even Portia’s mom is strangely distant. But things start looking up when Portia mounts a late-night excursion into the woods behind her house and discovers a shy, sweet-natured purple monster. Life with Jellaby is a lot more exciting, but Portia’s purple friend has secrets of his own; secrets that may even lead to the mystery of Portia’s father’s disappearance!

A Wizard In Love

A retired wizard and his cat discover love in a most unexpected way!Hector, a retired wizard, lives happily with his cat, Poison, in a dilapidated house at the edge of the forest. Hector and Poison are content to pass the time in front of the TV, munching cookies. Their days are peaceful and quiet. That is until a dreadful noise begins to pour out of the old abandoned house across the road. It seems Hector and Poison have a new neighbor, and things will never be the same again.

Kira (Shadow Of The Dragon)

Under no circumstances are girls EVER to be allowed anywhere near dragons. THE PENALTY FOR ANY GIRL CAUGHT BREAKING THE FIRST LAW IS DEATH. Kira is twelve, and strong willed. The daughter of a retired dragon knight, she yearns for adventure and dreams of following in her father’s footsteps astride her own magnificent mount. But this can never happen. According to the ‘stupid laws’ of the kingdom, she must be married by thirteen. Kira hates it, but being a girl she has no choice. Then Lord Dorcon arrives, in a whirl of destruction and fire and Kira knows the real fight is just beginning. To stand a chance of seeing her family again, and to protect the life of her younger sister, she will need every bit of willpower she can find. Let the battle commence.

The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin in America / Cigars of the Pharaoh / The Blue Lotus (3 Complete Adventures In One Volume, Vol. 1)

As all Tintin fans know, once you’ve read one of his terrific adventures, you’ve got to read another and then another. Each of these collections contains three classic and fully complete Tintin adventures. Packed with all the color, wit, and derring-do that has made Tintin one of the world’s most beloved comic characters, these books are easy to carry and fun to read. each.

The Corps Of The Bare-Boned Plane

When an accident leaves teenage cousins Meline and Jocelyn parentless, they come to live with their unknown and eccentric Uncle Marten on his private island. They soon discover that the island has a history as tragic as their own: it was once an air force training camp, led by a mad commander whose crazed plan to train pilots to fly airplanes without instruments sent eleven pilots to their deaths. Jocelyn, Meline, and Uncle Marten are soon joined on this island of wrecked planes and wrecked men by an elderly Austrian housekeeper, a very mysterious butler, a cat, and a dog. But to Jocelyn and Meline, being in a strange new place around strange new people only underscores the fact that the world they once knew has ended. Told in the alternating voices of four characters dealing with grief in different ways, Polly Horvath’s new novel is a rich and complicated story about loss and the possibility— and impossibility—of beginning again.

Dear Sylvia

Owen Skye can’t forget about his true love Sylvia, even though she’s moved away. He still has the stationary set she gave him for his birthday, and so he decides to use it to write her. Owen is a true writer in his head but getting the right words onto the page is another story. As he nervously begins to write, young readers easily identify with his struggles against spelling, his writer’s insecurity, and his deep desire to tell Sylvia the truth about what’s going on in his life — and in his heart. Owen manages to write about how his little brother got his head stuck in the banister, the disastrous camping trip with his irritating cousins, and how his new baby cousin will only stop crying if he holds her. . . but writing the letters is only the first step. Will Owen have the courage to send them? Will he ever see Sylvia again? Alan Cumyn has given his well-loved series a new and original twist in this irresistible epistolary novel.

Bradley Mcgogg, the Very Fine Frog

Bradley McGogg makes his home in the bog where there are plenty of yummy bugs for a frog to feed on. Upon finding his pantry bare one day, Bradley decides to meet his neighbors, in the hopes that they will share some of their favorite meals with him. But this “bog frog” soon finds that not all animals eat alike.

The Book of Jude

In 1989, when fifteen-year-old Jude’s mother wins a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Czechoslovakia, the family postpones a planned move to Utah to join her, but the political situation and the move itself are too much for Jude, who is overwhelmed by a previously undiagnosed psychological disorder.