She promised her mama she’d keep them safe. It’s been six months since Mama died, and Chanda is struggling to raise her little brother and sister. Determined to end a family feud, she takes them to her relatives’ remote rural village. But across the nearby border, a brutal civil war is spreading. Rebels led by the ruthless General Mandiki attack at night, stealing children. All that separates Chanda from the horror is a stretch of rugged bush and a national park alive with predators. Soon, not even that. Before she knows it, Chanda must face the unthinkable, with a troubled young tracker as her unlikely ally. Chanda’s Wars is the unforgettable story of a teenager who risks everything to save her brother and sister. Epic in its sweep, intimate in its humanity, here is a gripping tale of family intrigue, love and courage, forgiveness and hope.
Death
My Letter to the World and Other Poems
Presents illustrated versions of well-known poems written by one of America’s most renowned poets.
The Secret Legacy
Rigoberta Menchu returns to the world of childhood. The novel’s seven-year-old heroine, Ixkem, is chosen to tend to the prized cornfields once her grandfather has passed away. But Ixkem isn’t sure she can accept this great responsibility. Out in the fields, she discovers a legion of tiny people, no bigger than bananas. They are nahuales — secret animal spirits — and when they take Ixkem into the underworld where they live, she regales them with tales of the surface. What they offer in return helps Ixkem to accept both her grandfather’s wishes for her and the fact that she must soon wish him goodbye. This moving story is rich with emotion and Mayan folklore, perfect to captivate any young reader.
Marwe: Into the Land of the Dead
Marwe lives in a village where food is scarce. She tries to be obedient, but it’s hard to spend every day working in the field. When her carelessness ruins the village’s crops, she’s too scared to face her angry family and runs away to the strange Land of the Dead. Marawe knows she doesn’t belong there. But can she find the right sort of courage to return to the land of the living.
The Walls Of Cartagena
Calepino was blessed with good fortune. After his mother died giving birth to him on a slave ship, he was taken in by a wealthy woman who gave him every advantage. Then on his thirteenth birthday, Father Pedro, a devout priest, asks Calepino to assist him with the slaves coming into Cartagena. Soon he’s fighting seasickness, living in squalor, and cursing every minute. That all begins to change when he meets Mara and Tomi, a mother and son who remind him of his own past.
When Tomi and Mara are sold to a cruel man, Calepino is more determined than ever to find a way to save them. Will this be his chance to change someone else’s fortune, or will he put them all in more peril?
Richly detailed and researched, Julia Durango’s gripping first novel brings to life what it means to be truly free.
A Parcel of Patterns (Plus)
“A parcel of patterns brought the plague to Eyam. A parcel sent up from London to George Vicars, a journeyman tailor, who was lodging with Mrs. Cooper in a cottage by the west end of the churchyard.
So begins Mall Percival’s account of how her village of Eyam struggled against the plague. George Vicars dies on September 6, 1665, and by the end of October, twenty-five more townsfolk have been buried. As the deaths continue, the villagers, including Mall, begin to panic–helpless to fight off the disease. Uncertain as to how it is contracted and passed from one person to another, Mall forces herself to make a sacrifice that radically changes her life–she decides to stops seeing Thomas Torre, a man from another village, the man she hopes to marry. In June of 1966, at their minister’s urging, the entire village makes a pact to protect those who live in the surrounding countryside by staying within the boundaries of Eyam. Although Mall longs to see Thomas, she remains steadfast in her resolution, until one day Thomas runs into the center of Eyam, knowing that he will not be allowed to leave, yet fearing that Mall has died. Mall and Thomas marry, but their happiness is short-lived. Finally, in October of 1666, the pestilence subsides. Mall, overwhelmed by grief and sorrow, decides to write a chronicle of all she has witnessed in Eyam, hoping that it will set her free.
Ways to Live Forever
1. My name is Sam. 2. I am eleven years old. 3. I collect stories and fantastic facts. 4. I have leukemia. 5. By the time you read this, I will probably be dead. Living through the final stages of leukemia, Sam collects stories, questions, lists, and pictures that create a profoundly moving portrait of how a boy lives when he knows his time is almost up.
Cold Skin
A page-turning read about father-son relationships and the many ways of being a man. Eddie doesn’t want to be in school; he wants to work in the mines. But his dad won’t go down in the coal pits, and he won’t let his sons go either. Nothing much happens in the town of Burruga, except for fights at the pub. Then one Friday night a girl is found dead by the river, and every man in town comes under suspicion. Eddie is drawn into secrets and a bitter struggle for revenge.
The Fetch
Calder is a Fetch, a death escort, the first of his kind to step from HeavenAfter 350 years as a Fetch, or death escort, Calder breaks his vows and enters the body of Rasputin, whose spirit causes rebellion in the Land of Lost Souls while Calder struggles to convey Ana and Alexis, orphaned in the Russian Revolution, to Heaven.
Gemini Summer
In the quiet of Hog’s Hollow, each member of the River family pursues a dream. Old Man River sets out to build a fallout shelter in case the war in Vietnam “brings the end of everything;” his wife Flo, who collects Gone with the Wind dolls, attempts to pen her own Southern saga; Beau, their older son, suffers from “space fever” and aspires to be an astronaut. As for Danny, the younger River boy, well, he just dreams of having a dog. Then in the spring of 1965 tragedy befalls the Rivers–a tragedy that makes the Old Man wish he’d never started building the shelter, stops Flo from finishing her bestseller, and leaves Beau grounded rather than airborne. But the tragedy does finally bring a dog into Danny’s life. And not just any old dog. Danny comes to believe that the mixed-breed stray embodies the spirit of someone he dearly loves. He won’t allow anyone to separate him from the dog, not even after it bites the neighborhood bully and the police are sent to take it away. Together Danny and his dog run off, heading toward Cape Caneveral, where the Gemini missions blast off from, and where dreams come true.