Materials from Europe
Six thousand years ago, Evil stalks the land. Only twelve-year-old Torak and his wolf-cub companion can defeat it. Their journey together takes them through deep forests, across giant glaciers, and into dangers they never imagined. Torak and Wolf are joined by a cast of characters as they battle to save their world, in this first book in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.
While caring for their aunt’s chickens, three little Swedish sisters are upset when the big red hen disappears.
What can you do when the people you love don’t think they love each other anymore? When one little girl learns that her grandparents are separating, it’s hard for her to understand. Grandpa explains that Grandma steals his chocolate pudding, and her favorite color is blue. Grandma says that Grandpa watches too much TV, and his favorite color is red. But when the little girl realizes they really do still love each other, she devises a plan she hopes will bring them back together. Perhaps blending two lives together can be just like knitting two colors together to make a beautiful scarf.
Recently unearthed in the archives of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, Nina Lugovskaya’s diary offers rare insight into the life of a teenage girl in Stalin’s Russia–when fear of arrest was a fact of daily life. Like Anne Frank, 13-year-old Nina is conscious of the extraordinary dangers around her and her family, yet she is preoccupied by ordinary teenage concerns: boys, parties, her appearance, who she wants to be when she grows up. As Nina records her most personal emotions and observations, her reflections shape a diary that is as much a portrait of her intense inner world as it is the Soviet outer one. Preserved here, these markings–the evidence used to convict Nina as a “counterrevolutionary”–offer today’s reader a fascinating perspective on the era in which she lived.
It’s the year 1095, and fifteen-year-old Anna longs for a different life in her small German village. But as the seasons turn, the year proves anything but ordinary. Her beloved youngest cousin disappears, and another cousin, Martin, runs away to join a murderous army of renegade Crusaders. When Anna risks everything to rescue Leah, an orphaned Jewish girl whose only connection to her former life is a silver cup, the two girls forge a friendship that defies the intolerance of their time. Filling her story with fascinating period details, debut novelist Constance Leeds paints a rich, colorful picture of an eleventh-century life marked by courage, will, and most of all-hope.Winner of the 2008 IRA Children’s and Young Adult Book Award in the Intermediate Fiction Category.
A ten-year-old boy in Madrid tells about the hilarious misadventures of his family and friends.
Muri loves his mama, and Mama loves him. But being one of seven, he sometimes wonders who is Mama’s favorite. He thinks maybe she loves his baby sister the most, but whenever he acts like the baby, Mama doesn’t like it. Then he wonders if she loves his oldest sister the most, because she lives far away. But when he threatens to run far away, Mama doesn’t appreciate it. Even when Muri pretends to be sick, Mama is wise to his ways. But when the two of them encounter a fearsome cat out in the yard, Mama grabs Muri and scampers to safety, and Muri finally understands that Mama loves them all the same.
Nine-year-old Helen is confused by the disappearance of her Jewish friend during the German occupation of Paris.
Bruno the marmot hibernates all winter, and upon waking in the spring, he discovers the most beautiful dandelion outside his burrow. The two quickly become friends, playing together every day. But when summer comes, the dandelion asks Bruno to trust her, so he obliges her request to blow her seeds away into the wind. Devastated that his friend is no longer with him, Bruno is lonely until next winter’s hibernation. When he wakes again, he discovers that an amazing surprise sprouted while he slept.
Finding himself in a land peopled with fairy tale characters, James attempts to help Princess Dulcibel who is destined to marry a toad after her ball falls into the well.