Fifteen-year-old Sarah tracks on a blog her efforts to meet her “New Blog Resolutions,” especially to be happy again by the anniversary of “The Incident,” despite her father’s impending remarriage to the Monster, her mother’s unhappiness, and huge fluctuations in her own popularity.
School
Sam Tells Stories
When Sam changes schools, he tells some pretty amazing stories about himself but after a few days, when he confesses that he is just boring, regular Sam, he finds that he still has friends–and a talent that makes him more interesting.
Going to School in India
Every school day millions of children go to school. In India “school” can be city classrooms, mountain fields, desert tents, and glowing temples. Lessons are taught in just as many different ways. This book depicts 12 different types of learning situations.
Naked Bunyip Dancing
This novel in verse follows the school year of Australian students in classroom 6C, as their unconventional teacher encourages them to discover their own strengths and talents and perform in a memorable concert.
Hello, America
The year is 1951 and eighteen-year-old Elli and her mother arrive in New York City. Finally they can leave behind bitter Holocaust memories and become real Americans! From office filing all day, to the challenge of night school, to interpreting the intentions of Alex, a handsome and persistent doctor, Elli soon finds learning English is only half as hard as “making it” in this new world. Against a backdrop of soda shops, skyscrapers, and subways, acclaimed author Livia Bitton-Jackson fuses old-world tradition and modern dreams, in this vivid kaleidoscope of immigrant America.
I’m Being Stalked by a Moonshadow
As his odd parents fight the regional environmental health officer about their dung-covered house and his melodramatic younger brother demands attention, fourteen-year-old Australian Seth Parrot simply seeks the muscular woman of his dreams.
The Year Nick Mcgowan Came To Stay
Seventeen-year-old Rachel Hill is the girl most likely to succeed. And the girl most likely to have everything under control . . . that is, until her dad invites Nick McGowan, the cutest boy at school, to live with them. Rachel worries that this could only be a recipe for disaster, but her best friend Zoe thinks it’s the perfect opportunity for lurve. Sparks start to fly for all the wrong reasons. Nick finds Rachel spoiled and uptight and Rachel dismisses Nick as lazy and directionless. But a secret from Nick’s past draws them together and makes the year Nick McGowan came to stay one that Rachel will never forget.
Someone Named Eva
On the night Nazi soldiers come to her home in Czechoslovakia, Milada’s grandmother says, “Remember, Milada. Remember who you are. Always.” Milada promises, but she doesn’t understand her grandmother’s words. After all, she is Milada, who lives with her mama and papa, her brother and sister, and her beloved Babichka. Milada, eleven years old, the fastest runner in school. How could she ever forget?Then the Nazis take Milada away from her family and send her to a Lebensborn center in Poland. There, she is told she fits the Aryan ideal: her blond hair and blue eyes are the right color; her head and nose, the right size. She is given a new name, Eva, and trained to become the perfect German citizen, to be the hope of Germany’s future—and to forget she was ever a Czech girl named Milada.Inspired by real events, this fascinating novel sheds light on a little-known aspect of the Nazi agenda and movingly portrays a young girl’s struggle to hold on to her identity and her hope in the face of a regime intent on destroying both.
Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution
Moying Li is twelve-years-old when Cultural Revolution sweeps China. In 1966 Moying, a student at a prestigious language school in Beijing, seems destined for a promising future. Everything changes when student Red Guards begin to orchestrate brutal assaults, violent public humiliations, and forced confessions. After watching her teachers and headmasters beaten in public, Moying flees school for the safety of home, only to witness her beloved grandmother denounced, her home ransacked, her father’s precious books flung onto the back of a truck, and Baba himself taken away. From labor camp, Baba entrusts a friend to deliver a reading list of banned books to Moying so that she can continue to learn. Now, with so much of her life at risk, she finds sanctuary in the world of imagination and learning.This inspiring memoir follows Moying Li from age twelve to twenty-two, illuminating a complex, dark time in China’s history as it tells the compelling story of one girl’s difficult but determined coming-of-age during the Cultural Revolution.
The Outcasts
A much-anticipated school trip to England’s West Country turns into a life-changing adventure for five high school misfits when they fall into another dimension while exploring the house in which they are staying.