New fears for fourth-grader Calvin include a school bully named Tito and the return of his estranged father, rock star Little Johnny Coconut.
Calvin Coconut: Rocket Ride
Fear
The Dead Family Diaz
Angelito Diaz is afraid of walking among the Living on the Day of the Dead, especially with his older sister, Estrellita, teasing him, but once in the Land of the Living, he quickly makes a new friend.
Never Fall Down
Cambodian child soldier Arn Chorn-Pond defied the odds and used all of his courage and wits to survive the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 1
The Scariest Thing Of All
Pip the rabbit may be little. But the list of things he’s afraid of is very, very large. Life the gobbler…or the wood troll…or the leggy wiggler! Until one day, Pip gets lost in the woods and is forced to face his fears. What is the Scariest Thing of All? And can little Pip stand up to it?
From the beloved author and illustrator of No Matter What comes a reassuring and gentle tale of finding bravery in the most unexpected place–inside yourself.
A Troublesome Boy
Teddy can’t believe how fast his life has changed in just two years. When he was twelve, his father took off, and then his mother married Henry, a man Teddy despises. But Teddy has no control over his life, and adults make all the decisions, especially in 1959. Henry decides that Teddy should be sent to St. Ignatius Academy for Boys, an isolated boarding school run by the Catholic church.
St. Iggy’s, Teddy learns, is a cold, unforgiving place — something between a juvenile detention center and reform school. The other boys are mostly a cast of misfits and eccentrics, but Teddy quickly becomes best friends with Cooper, a wise-cracking, Wordsworth-loving kid with a history of neglect. Despite the priests’ ruthless efforts to crack down on the slightest hint of defiance or attitude, the boys get by for a while on their wits, humor and dreams of escape. But the beatings, humiliation and hours spent in the school’s infamous “time-out” rooms, and the institutionalized system of power and abuse that protects the priests’ authority, eventually take their toll, especially on the increasingly fragile Cooper.
Then one of the new priests, Father Prince, starts to summon Cooper to his room at night, and Teddy watches helplessly as his friend withdraws into his own private nightmare, even as Prince targets Teddy himself as his next victim.
Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World
Humans of all eras and cultures have lived with fear: of becoming jaguar prey, of being besieged by Vikings, or of nuclear holocaust. Folktales help us transform this fear into action, into solutions, into hope. Kathleen Ragan has scoured the globe and collected these 64 tales that respond to fear in its wide variety of incarnations. From the old Japanese woman who tricks the tengu monster to the bluebird that uses the Chinook wind to teach her mother compassion, Outfoxing Fear is a collection of positive, even utopian, folktales arranged thematically around topics such as the nature of fear and courage, the importance of laughter, and the need for hope.
Meena
The children of Fly Street fear and taunt their neighbor Meena, thinking she is a witch, but when they meet her granddaughter and taste her cherry pie, they learn the truth.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume IV, Issue 4
In the Small, Small Night
Kofi can’t sleep in his new home in the United States, so his older sister Abena soothes his fears about life in a different country by telling him two folktales from their native Ghana about the nature of wisdom and perseverance.
Trafficked
A seventeen-year-old Moldovan girl whose parents have been killed is brought to the United States to work as a slave for a family in Los Angeles.
Feathers and Fools
Long ago and far away, in a rambling garden beside a clear blue lake, two flocks of birds began to fear each other for their differences. The fear grew, and soon the birds became enemies, hoarding great quantities of weapons for protection–until panic struck and the chance for peace seemed lost forever.