Materials from Europe
In 1941, having a German plane crash near your house is exciting, but when twelve-year-old Peter Dixon and his friend Kim find a wounded German airman, Peter is faced with a dilemma. Should he help take care of the man as Kim wants to do, or report him to the soldiers searching for him?
In England in 1346 Adrian has three problems: he is small for his twelve years, he is an albino, so people are suspicious of him, and his father wants him to be a scribe, while he wants to be an archer–but when he runs away to join his friend in the fight against the invading Scots, he learns that war can be a lot more complicated then he imagined.
When your school’s motto is “Life is dangerous,” you know that anything can happen—and everything does!This raucous tale of education gone awry is rife with “disgracefully dangerous high-octane fun,” according to the The Guardian, which awarded Ribblestrop the Children’s Fiction Prize. There’s no school that’s quite like Ribblestrop, complete with roofless dormitories, distracted teachers, and a perilous underground labyrinth. And then there are the students! You’ll meet Sanchez, a Colombian gangster’s son hiding from kidnappers; Millie, an excluded arsonist and self-confessed wild child; Caspar, the landlady’s spoiled grandson; the helpful but hapless Sam and his best friend Ruskin, plus a handful of orphans from overseas who are just happy to have beds—even if they are located in a roofless part of the building.
Twelve-year-old Maisie is a noticing sort of person. Thats why she is convinced she would make an excellent detective if she ever got the chance! But instead of detecting, she spends her days polishing the banisters at her grandmother’s boarding house or fetching fish for the lodgers’ dinner. In The Case of the Stolen Sixpence, Maisie’s big chance to prove herself finally arrives when crime strikes her Victorian London neighborhood.
Edinburgh, 1844. Beautiful Aileana Kameron only looks the part of an aristocratic young lady. In fact, she’s spent the year since her mother died developing her ability to sense the presence of Sithichean, a faery race bent on slaughtering humans. She has a secret mission: to destroy the faery who murdered her mother. But when she learns she’s a Falconer, the last in a line of female warriors and the sole hope of preventing a powerful faery population from massacring all of humanity, her quest for revenge gets a whole lot more complicated.
A fabulous bedtime show that’s perfect for a bedtime reading adventure! Join Max and his dazzling show! But in the end, even great magicians need to go to sleep. Max the Magnificent is a daring magician. He can make cookies disappear, make animals appear, and even tame savage beasts! Cheer as he makes a cookie disappear (very slowly)! Gasp as he asks for ten (yes, ten) bedtime stories! Will he be able to accomplish the most difficult trick and put off bedtime?
The top-selling U.K. series for middle-grade readers now crosses the pond! Meet Tom Gates. When his teachers don’t have their beady eyes on him, he likes to draw pictures and write about stuff, like last summer’s worst camping vacation ever (five merits!), or how much he hates sitting next to nosy Marcus Meldrew, the most annoying boy at school. All Tom really wants is to score tickets to see the best band ever, Dude3, when they come to town, and to impress Amy Porter, who is very nice and smart (but is currently ignoring him). Tom’s teachers think he is easily distracted and “lacks focus,” but that’s a bit harsh — can he help it if his grumpy big sister, Delia, made him late for school (again), or that last night’s homework had to be sacrificed to stave off a vicious dog attack? Master of excuses, creative storyteller, and middle-school comedian extraordinaire, Tom Gates is guaranteed to get kids turning the pages — and keep them laughing.
A new drug is on the street. Everyone’s buzzing about it. Take the hit. Live the most intense week of your life. Then die. It’s the ultimate high at the ultimate price. Adam thinks it over. He’s poor, and doesn’t see that changing. Lizzie, his girlfriend, can’t make up her mind about sleeping with him, so he can’t get laid. His brother Jess is missing. And Manchester is in chaos, controlled by drug dealers and besieged by a group of homegrown terrorists who call themselves the Zealots. Wouldn’t one amazing week be better than this endless, penniless misery? After Adam downs one of the Death pills, he’s about to find out.
When Emily’s father and the goddess Diana return from a visit to Earth, they bring with them disturbing news. There’s a horse called Tornado Warning that’s winning all the races, with times faster than anyone’s ever seen. Emily, Joel, Paelen, Pegasus, and the sphinx Alexis return to Earth to investigate—and discover a CRU plot to clone Olympians and Nirads using DNA retrieved from their previous time in the human realm.
“She plunged beneath the surface, her eyes blind in the murky, green water: dived again and again until she couldn’t take another breath. There was no trace. Freya was gone.” Jess has heard the rumours, old folk tales of creatures that live beneath the water: dangerous shapeshifters with a taste for human children. She’s dismissed them as crazy stories — until her best friend is stolen and Jess discovers all the legends are true Trying to rescue her friend, she meets one of them — a kelpie — but he turns out to be nothing like she imagined. Caught between two worlds, between kelpies and humans, and between mysterious Finn and brave Magnus, Jess must chose between what she’s always known and what lies beneath. Gill Arbuthnott creates an enthralling world of love and revenge, divided loyalties and imminent danger in this brilliant fantasy novel for young teens set in 16th century Scotland.