Apartheid is crumbling. Nelson Mandela has just been released from prison. And Spud Milton?thirteen-year-old, prepubescent choirboy extraordinaire?is about to start his first year at an elite boys-only boarding school in South Africa. Cursed with embarrassingly dysfunctional parents, a senile granny named Wombat, and a wild obsession for Julia Roberts, Spud has his hands full trying to adapt to his new home. Armed with only his wits and his diary, Spud takes readers of all ages on a rowdy boarding school romp full of illegal midnight swims, raging hormones, and catastrophic holidays that will leave the entire family in total hysterics and thirsty for more.Winner of South Africa's Booksellers? Choice Award 2006

    For Ellie, ballet isn't just a dream, it's become a way of life. She's danced for almost as long as she can remember and started ballet lessons when she was four. Now Ellie is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime-a chance to audition for a spot to dance with the Royal Ballet. But Ellie knows that even if she won a place, it would mean moving to London and leaving her ill-stricken mother behind with no one to care for her. When the day of the audition finally arrives, Ellie must decide between pursuing her dreams or sacrificing her goals of joining the Royal Ballet to be with her mother. What will Ellie do?

    This collection contains Making Waves, where Mel must save Brice from pirates in the Caribbean; Budding Star, where Mel rescues a Japanese pop idol from another dimension; and Keeping it Real, where Mel visits her old school only to discover it is in dire trouble.

    A journey inside a well-known therapeutic school traces the transformation of four teenagers as they struggle through an intensive program of academics, wilderness survival, and group therapy.

    These schools, located off-reservation, took Native children from their families and tribes for years at a time in an effort to “kill” their tribal cultures, languages, and religions. In Learning to Write “Indian,” Amelia V. Katanski investigates the impact of the Indian boarding school experience on the American Indian literary tradition through an examination of turn-of-the-century student essays and autobiographies as well as contemporary plays, novels, and poetry.Many recent books have focused on the Indian boarding school experience. Among these Learning to Write “Indian” is unique in that it looks at writings about the schools as literature, rather than as mere historical evidence.