Love is in the air for the Casson family! Four hilarious, endearing tales unfold as Rose, Indigo, Saffy, and Caddy each tell their intertwining stories. Rose begins by showing how she does special with her Valentine\’s card for Tom in New York. Not to be outdone, Indigo has his own surprise in store for the Valentine,s Day disco at school. For her part, Saffy has an unusual date in a very, very dark graveyard, and is haunted by a balloon that almost costs her her best friend.But it is Caddy who dares everything — as she tells all about love at first sight when you have found the Real Thing. Unfortunately the Real Thing is not darling Michael. What is Rose going to do?
Siblings
The Demon’s Lexicon
Sixteen-year-old Nick and his family have battled magicians and demons for most of his life, but when his brother, Alan, is marked for death while helping new friends Jamie and Mae, Nick’s determination to save Alan leads him to uncover a devastating secret.
Fighting Ruben Wolfe
Cameron and Ruben Wolfe come from a family clinging to the ragged edge of the working class. To make money, the boys hook up with a sleazy fight promoter who sees something marketable in the untrained brothers¹ vulnerability. But the Wolfe brothers are fighting for more than tips and pay-off money. It soon becomes a fight for identity, for dignity, and for each other.
Thursday’s Child
A stunningly original voice in young adult fiction. Harper Flute believes that her younger brother Tin, with his uncanny ability to dig, was born to burrow. While their family struggles to survive in a desolate landscape during the Great Depression, the silent and elusive little Tin – “born on a Thursday and so fated to his wanderings” – begins to escape underground, tunneling beneath their tiny shanty. As time passes and fate deals the family an especially cruel hand, Harper’s parents withdraw emotionally, and her siblings bravely try to fill the void, while Tin becomes a wild thing, leaving them further and further behind. With exquisite prose, richly drawn characters, and a touch of magical realism, Sonya Hartnett tells a breathtakingly original coming-of-age story through the clear eyes of an observant child. It’s a loving and unsentimental portrait of family loyalty in the face of poverty and heartbreak, entwined with a surreal vision of the enigmatic Tin – disappearing into a mysterious labyrinth that reaches unimaginably far, yet remains hauntingly near.
The Braid
Two sisters, Jeannie and Sarah, tell their separate yet tightly interwoven stories in alternating narrative poems. Each sister–Jeannie, who leaves Scotland during the Highland Clearances with her father, mother, and the younger children, and Sarah, who hides so she can stay behind with her grandmother–carries a length of the other’s hair braided with her own. The braid binds them together when they are worlds apart and reminds them of who they used to be before they were evicted from the Western Isles, where their family had lived for many generations.
An author’s note describes the poetic form in detail.
Featured in Vol. I, Issue 4 of WOW Review.
Salt: A Russian Folktale
Ivan, the merchant’s third son, having patience and an eye for opportunity, barters the cargo of his ship for a princess and a fortune.
Please, Louise!
Jake’s little sister refuses to leave him alone, and so finally, in desperation, he wishes she was a dog, only to instantly regret his actions.
Falling From Grace
It was all meant to be just a game, but now Grace is missing and may not even be alive. During an elaborate game of hide-and-seek on the beach, twelve-year-old sisters Annie and Grace are caught in the rising tide, and Grace seems to have been swept away. In the midst of this, fourteen-year-old Kip is also in the wrong place at the wrong time. Finding Grace’s abandoned back-pack sets off a chain of events that lands Kip under police surveillance. As the search for Grace intensifies, suspicions grow. But can Kip piece everything together and clear his name before it’s too late for Grace? Told in Kip’s and Annie’s alternating voices, this spellbinding mystery looks at the choices young people make-and their consequences.
Life As It Comes
Sisters with nothing in common? That’s Mado and Patty.
Studious and responsible, 15-year-old Mado is the family brain. Patty, on the other hand, is a carefree 20-year-old party girl who lives on her own and has plenty of boyfriends. The two are following divergent paths . . . until their parents die in a car accident and a family court judge reluctantly appoints Patty as her sister’s guardian.
Now these two improbable siblings face the challenges of growing up together—but it’s Mado who quickly assumes the big sister’s role. And it’s not a role she particularly wants—especially after Patty announces that she’s several months pregnant. . . .
Anne-Laure Bondoux writes with insight, humor, and poignancy about the bonds between sisters—and the challenges of everyday life.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 2
The Crow: The Third Book Of Pellinor (Pellinor Series)
As this enthralling epic nears its climax, the young heroine’s brother discovers his own hidden gift — and the role he must play in battling the Dark.
Hem is a weary orphan whose struggle for survival ends when he is reunited with his lost sister, Maerad. But Maerad has a destiny to fulfill, and Hem is sent to the golden city of Turbansk, where he learns the ways of the Bards and befriends a mysterious white crow. When the forces of the Dark threaten, Hem flees with his protector, Saliman, and an orphan girl named Zelika to join the Light’s resistance forces. It is there that Hem has a vision and learns that he, too, has a part to play in Maerad’s quest to solve the Riddle of the Treesong. As THE CROW continues the epic tale begun with THE NAMING and THE RIDDLE, Alison Croggon creates a world of astounding beauty overshadowed by a terrifying darkness, a world where Maerad and Hem must prepare to wage their final battle for the Light.