A surfing competition, some serious skateboarding and several puzzling mysteries are the ingredients for an awesome beach vacation. While Rhys is totally focused on winning the Junior Surf Championship, Toby just wants to win his dare with Rhys. But things have a habit of not working out as planned, and the boys learn that it doesn’t pay to assume anything, about anyone, ever!
Friendship
Perfect Crane
A lonely Japanese magician gains friends through the paper crane that he brings to life but then must set free.
The Voices Of Silence
Before she knows it, everything in thirteen-year-old Flora Popescu’s life has changed. Her parents, her best friend Alys, and the restricted life she has always known in their Bucharest tower block are distanced from her – and Daniel, the mysterious new boy at school, seems to be the cause. Flora likes him, but why can’t everybody else trust him too? She thinks of her father’s words: “People like us can’t afford the luxury of new friends.” Then, just as she is making sense of her divided loyalties, Flora discovers that only she alone can save her father’s life.
The Little Humpbacked Horse: A Russian Tale
A young peasant, with the help of his faithful horse, captures magical beasts, marries the woman he loves, and becomes Tsar of Russia.
First Snow, Magic Snow
A little girl made from the magical first snow lives with a lonely man and his wife through the winter, and when she disappears in the spring, the couple set out in search of her.
Everyone Needs A Friend
Jack the wolf doesn’t mind living alone, but he does get lonely on long winter nights. Then one day Walter the dormouse comes for a visit. Walter is fun to be around, but he certainly does have some annoying habits! Can Jack get over them, or will this be the end of their friendship?
Broken Memory
Hiding behind the old sofa, five-year-old Emma does not witness the murder of her mother, but she hears everything. And when the assassins finally leave, the young Tutsi girl somehow manages to stumble away from the scene, motivated only by the memory of her mother’s last words: “You must not die, Emma!” Taken in by an old Hutu woman, Mukecuru, Emma is still haunted by nightmares long after the war ends. When the country establishes gacaca courts to allow victims to face their tormenters in their villages, Emma is uneasy and afraid. But through her growing friendship with a young torture victim and the gentle encouragement of an old man charged with helping child survivors, Emma finds the courage to return to the house where her mother was killed and begin the journey to healing.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 4
Cruisers
Zander and his friends, Kambui, LaShonda, and Bobbi start their own newspaper, The Cruiser, as a means for speaking out, keeping the peace, and expressing what they believe. When the school launches a mock Civil War, Zander and his friends are forced to consider the true meaning of democracy and what it costs to stand up for a cause. The result is nothing they could have expected, and everything they could have hoped for. Zander Scott and his friends, Kambui, LaShonda, and Bobbi are in trouble. Even though they’re students at DaVinci, one of the best Gifted and Talented schools in Harlem, their grades are slipping, and Mr. Culpepper, the Assistant Principal and Chief Executioner, is ready to be rid of them. When the school starts a unit on the Civil War, and kids split up into Union and Confederate sympathizers, Zander and his crew are given a charge to negotiate a peace between both sides before the war actually breaks out. That’s when Zander comes up with the idea to launch an alternative school newspaper called The Cruiser. What he and his friends learn is that their writing has power to keep the peace, but that words can be weapons, too. Soon everyone at DaVinci is forced to consider the true meaning of democracy and what it costs to stand up for a cause.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 4
The Grand Plan To Fix Everything
Eleven-year old Dini loves movies—watching them, reading about them, trying to write her own—especially Bollywood movies. But when her mother tells her some big news, it does not at all jive with the script of her life she has in mind. Her family is moving to India…and, not even to Bombay, which is the center of the Bollywood universe and home to Dini’s all-time most favorite star, Dolly. No, Dini is moving to a teeny, tiny village she can’t even find on a map. Swapnagiri. It means Dream Mountain and it only looks like a word that’s hard to pronounce. But to that open-minded person who sounds the name out, one letter at a time, it falls quite handily into place: S-w-a-p-n-a-g-i-r-i. An honest sort of name, with no surprise letters waiting to leap out and ambush the unwary. That doesn’t mean there aren’t surprises in Swapnagiri like mischievous monkeys and a girl who chirps like a bird—and the biggest surprise of all: Dolly. So now, Dini is hard at work on a new script, the script in which she gets to meet the amazing Dolly. But, life is often more unpredictable than the movies and when Dini starts plotting her story things get a little out of control. This is a joyful, lively Bollywood inspired story is full of colorful details, delicious confections and the wondrous, magical powers of coincidence. Uma Krisnaswami will have you smiling from ear to ear.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume IV, Issue 4
The Ancestor Tree: 9
Saddened by the death of their special friend, the very old man who told them stories and jokes, the village children decide to go against custom and plant a tree for him in the Forest of the Ancestors.