destroy

The Toymaker’s Apprentice

Journeyman toymaker Stefan Drosselmeyer is recruited by his mysterious cousin, Christian, to find a mythical nut that will save Boldavia’s princess and his own kidnapped father from a fanatical Mouse Queen and her seven-headed Mouse Prince, who have sworn to destroy the Drosselmeyer family.

The Last Wild

In a world where animals no longer exist, twelve-year-old Kester Jaynes sometimes feels like he hardly exists either. Locked away in a home for troubled children, he’s told there’s something wrong with him. So when he meets a flock of talking pigeons and a bossy cockroach, Kester thinks he’s finally gone crazy. But the animals have something to say. And they need him. The pigeons fly Kester to a wild place where the last creatures in the land have survived. A wise stag needs Kester’s help, and together they must embark on a great journey, joined along the way by an overenthusiastic wolf cub, a military-trained cockroach, a mouse with a ritual for everything, and a stubborn girl named Polly. The animals saved Kester Jaynes. But can Kester save the animals?

To Hope And Back

Sol and Lisa are two children aboard the St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish passangers escaping Europe to save their lives.

The St. Louis, a luxury ocean liner, leaves Germany in 1939, taking its almost one thousand passangers to a safe haven across the ocean.  They will be making a fresh start in countries like Cuba and the United States, away from the Nazi regime that is trying to destroy them.

Lisa and her family have a large cabin in first class, while Sol and his parents are below in tourist class. They don’t know each other, but they share a mix of feelings: excitement to be crossing the ocean, hope for the future, and sadness at leaving everything they know behind.

Sol and Lisa’s optimism is threatened when the ship is not allowed to dock in Cuba.  What the children don’t know is that their chance for refuge is in jeopardy and a darker future might lie ahead for the jewish passangers on board.

The Deserter

To save the members of his tribe from being devoured by the beasts that share their primitive world, Stopmouth must make his way to the mysterious, futuristic world above, even though a virus is destroying the Upstairs and driving millions of refugees to seek shelter below.

Demolition

Illustrations and rhyming text show the enormous and powerful machines that are used to demolish a building so that a playground can be built.

Gugu’s House

Kukamba loves to visit her grandmother, Gugu. Though the village where Gugu lives is dry and dusty, her house is big and sprawling and unlike any other. The courtyard and walls are decorated with beautiful paintings and clay animals, all made by Gugu herself. Best of all, when Kukamba visits, she gets to help shape and paint some of the wonderful zebras, elephants, and birds that Gugu is always adding to the house. When the heavy rains come and her grandmother’s showpieces are destroyed, Kukamba is crushed. But the Gugu helps her see that an ending can also be a beginning, and art is not the only beauty the world has to offer.

The House of the Scorpion

The House of the Scorpion By Nancy Farmer is about Matthew who is a clone of El Patrón, a powerful drug lord of the land of Opium, which is located between the United States and Mexico. For six years, he has lived in a tiny cottage in the poppy fields with Celia, a kind and deeply religious servant woman who is charged with his care and safety. He knows little about his existence until he is discovered by a group of children playing in the fields and wonders why he isn’t like them. Though Matt has been spared the fate of most clones, who have their intelligence destroyed at birth, the evil inhabitants of El Patrón’s empire consider him a “beast” and an “eejit.” When El Patrón dies at the age of 146, fourteen-year-old Matt escapes Opium with the help of Celia and Tam Lin, his devoted bodyguard who wants to right his own wrongs. After a near misadventure in his escape, Matt makes his way back home and begins to rid the country of its evils.

The Day the World Exploded: The Earthshaking Catastrophe at Krakatoa

The almighty explosion that destroyed the volcano island of Krakatoa was followed by an immense tsunami that killed more than thirty thousand people. The effects of the waves were felt as far away as France, and bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. Today, one hundred and twenty-five years after the volcano erupted in one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known, the name Krakatoa is still synonymous with disaster.