Family

Darius Bell and the Glitter Pool

The Bell family’s ancestors were showered with honors, gifts and grants of land. In exchange, they have bestowed a Gift, once every 25 years, on the town. The Gifts have ranged from a statue to a bell tower with stained-glass windows, but now it is Darius’s father’s turn – and there is no money for an impressive gift. It looks as though a wheelbarrow full of vegetables is the best they can do. Darius is determined to preserve the family honor, and when an earthquake reveals something glorious, he thinks he’s found the answer.

How To Make a Bird

It’s dawn, on an empty road in the countryside. Empty, except for the girl in the long, red evening gown, standing next to a bicycle, and looking back at the home she’s about to leave. Mannie’s ready to start a new life and forget the terrible things that have happened here, but there are questions that need to be answered before she can let go. Questions about her elegant but unstable mother, her brother who’s always overshadowed her, and his friend Harry Jacob, who just might be Mannie’s boyfriend. And her only clue is an unfamiliar address in Melbourne, written on a scrap of paper found in her brother’s room. As she makes her journey to the city, the mystery of this vulnerable, quirky girl is revealed piece by piece in her search for a way to become whole again. With rare sensitivity and a poetic voice that is unmistakably her own, Martine Murray tells a story about growing up and listening to your heart.

No and Me

The international award-winning story of two girls from different backgrounds, united in friendship Parisian teenager Lou has an IQ of 160, OCD tendencies, and a mother who has suffered from depression for years. But Lou is about to change her life—and that of her parents—all because of a school project about homeless teens. While doing research, Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou bravely asks her parents if No can live with them, and is astonished when they agree. No’s presence forces Lou’s family to come to terms with a secret tragedy. But can this shaky, newfound family continue to live together when No’s own past comes back to haunt her? Winner of the prestigious Booksellers’ Prize in France, No and Me is a timely and thought-provoking novel about homelessness that has far-reaching appeal.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 1

A Small Free Kiss in the Dark

Skip, an eleven-year-old runaway, becomes friends with Billy, a homeless man, and together they flee a war-torn Australian city with six-year-old Max and camp out at a seaside amusement park, where they are joined by Tia, a fifteen-year-old ballerina, and her baby.

The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy

An alcoholic mother, a distracted father, a best friend who spends all his time with his new “girlfriend,” and three relentless schoolyard bullies: Prinny Murphy’s past, present, and future certainly are “tense.” Adding to her misery, she still can’t read well enough to escape from remedial lessons with the dour Mrs. Dooks. But when a kindly substitute teacher introduces her to LaVaughn’s inner-city world in the free verse novel, Make Lemonade, Prinny discovers that life can be full of possibilities – and poetry.  

Oops!

In a distinctive oversize package, Oops! follows a family through the streets of Paris as they try to get to the airport for their vacation. Back at their apartment, their house-sitting aunt slips on some soap, setting off a chain reaction of events that create some extreme roadblocks for the family’s trip. A movie shoot, a parade, policemen, rampaging bears, aliens, and much more collide in this remarkable new picture book adventure. The book includes a gatefold page at the end that explains in detail the train of chaos on the previous pages. 

The Legend Of La’ieikawai (A Latitude 20 Book)

The twins La’ieikawai and La’ielohelohe are separated at birth but remain linked by their great beauty and a series of unscrupulous admirers and fickle husbands. Eventually the sisters are reunited with the help of a colorful cast of characters, including a man-eating lizard, a “cosmic” spider, and a giant bird, and find happiness at last in each other’s company. This timeless ka’ao, or legend, of long ago is lovingly retold and illustrated here by renowned Island artist and storyteller Dietrich Varez.

Queen of Hearts

Marie-Claire Coté is fifteen-head-strong and full of life. It’s 1941, Canada is two years into World War II, and workers are scarce. So Marie-Claire pitches in on the family farm, tries to keep up with her school-work, and listening to stories told by her fun-loving hard-living uncle, Gérard. But the whole family is taken aback Gérard is diagnosed with tuberculosis and even more shocked when Marie-Claire and her younger brother and sister are all stricken with the disease and are sent to “chase the cure” at a nearby sanatorium located in the rolling hills of southern Manitoba. Marie-Claise fights her illness and longs for privacy in a place where there is none. She desperately wants to ignore the other “TB exiles” around her, especially her frail but irritatingly cheerful roommate Signy, who seems determined to become best friends. And then there’s fellow patient Jack Hawkings, the nineteen-year-old musician with the heart-stopping smile. Soon she discovers that the sanatorium is a world unto itself–a world in which loss can be survived, and friendship, and love can be found in unexpected places.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 3

A Bottle In The Gaza Sea

Seventeen-year-old Tal Levine of Jerusalem, despondent over the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, puts her hopes for peace in a bottle and asks her brother, a military nurse in the Gaza Strip, to toss it into the sea, leading ultimately to friendship and understanding.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3