Philip's varsity basketball -- a team that's poised to make all-city. There is only one slot to fill on the roster, and the team chooses hot-shot transfer student Noah Travers for its second string. But Noah's ambitions are bigger -- he wants, and expects, to play starting center.When starting-center Luke mysteriously faints before a game, and Theo suddenly quits the team, everyone suspects Noah is at the root of the trouble -- everyone except Corey. Corey can't believe anyone would be malicious enough to drug one player and force another off the team.But as each player is sabotaged and the trust among the teammates disintegrates, Corey can no longer ignore the obvious. The all-city championship is too important, and he must find out the truth before he becomes the next target.

    This makes the town sheriff's 11-year-old son, Ben, more than a little nervous, and when the outlaw's coffin washes out of its grave in a flood the next spring, strange things begin to happen.

    Shumway and her daughter, Isadora. Although Uncle Bud secretly knows the aliens are after one of his inventions, everyone is surprised when the space aliens capture seven of Vern Hollow's residents and take them into outer space on a wild adventure. . . . (more)

    In fact, Cuss loves languages, period: unlike his older brothers, who left school after sixth grade to work in the coal mines, he likes reading about as much as he likes goofing around with his friends - or planning the great grape heist of Roslyn. But when bootleggers stir up trouble and force his big brothers to skip town, Cuss feels the weight of family responsibility dropping onto his shoulders. How can he hold on to his dream to stay in school - and still do the honorable thing by his ma and little brother?

    She meets an ancient dragon—the last of his kind—and discovers a secret about the gold that litters the creature's den and why dragons throughout time have hoarded the sparkling treasure. The dragon helps Kat escape the endless caverns, but not before Kat greedily takes a piece of gold for herself. Feeling guilty, Kat decides to return it, but before she can do this she drops it in front of a group of visitors, and a media frenzy ensues. Soon the mining town is filled with gold seekers. In order to save the dragon and his gold, Kat and her brother must venture back into the mine to warn him. But will they get there in time? This fast-paced, beautifully told modern fantasy tale by children's book illustrator Troy Howell will keep readers spellbound.

    Allegheny Indians murder her father and brother, burn their Pennsylvania home to the ground, and take Regina captive. Only her mother, who is away from home, is safe. Torn from her family, Regina longs for the past, but she must begin a new life. She becomes Tskinnak, who learns to catch fish, dance the Indian dance, and speak the Indian tongue. As the years go by, her new people become her family . . . but she never stops wondering about her mother. Will they ever meet again?"A first-person narrative based on the true story of a young woman held by Indians from 1755-1763, related with all the impact of a hard-hitting documentary . . .Wonderful reading." (School Library Journal)"I Am Regina is an enthralling and profoundly stirring story, historical fiction for young people at its very finest." (Elizabeth George Speare, Newbery Award-winning author of The Witch of Blackbird Pond)

    The beginning of everything!For Maggie Mayfield, turning eleven means she's one year closer to college. One year closer to voting. And one year closer to getting a tattoo. It's time for her to pull herself up by her bootstraps (the family motto) and think about more than after school snacks and why her older sisters are too hot for their own good. Because something mysterious is going on with her cool dude Dad, whose legs have permanently fallen asleep, and Maggie is going to find out exactly what the problem is and fix it. After all, nothing's impossible when you're future president of the United States of America, fifth grade science fair champion, and a shareholder in Coca-Cola, right?

    So Ying-Ying, their grandmother, tells them a tale from long ago. On the night of the Moon Festival, when Ying-ying was a little girl, she encountered the Moon Lady, who grants the secret wishes of those who ask, and learned from her that the best wishes are those you can make come true yourself. This haunting tale, adapted from Amy Tan's best-seller The Joy Luck Club and enhanced by Gretchen Schields's rich, meticulously detailed art, is a book for all to treasure.

    His off speed pitch is enough to bowl a kid backward, and his fast ball is pure smoke. There isn't anything he can't throw, from sliders, change-ups, and sinkers to a mean curve ball that breaks at just the right moment. He's pitched no-hitters and perfect games. To Paul, pitching is what you live for and why you live.Lately, though, Paul hasn't been allowed to do much of anything, much less play ball. He's got leukemia, and it's put him into the hospital several times already. His parents are so worried, they've forbidden him to play the game he loves so much. They're afraid that if Paul strains himself his illness may come back a final time...and maybe even take his life.But Paul is a winner. His team needs him, and he won't give up without a fight. Paul Mather is determined to pitch every inning...to keep playing baseball, and to keep hanging tough, no matter what the odds.

    But there is more to his death than meets the eye… 16-year-old Frances Leventhal, half Japanese, half Jewish American, can't bear to look at herself in the mirror. She has hidden from herself and everyone around her for years, and now that her brother Daniel has committed suicide by taking a massive heroine overdose, she can't help thinking that it's all her fault. If she hadn't been so caught up in her own insecurities, maybe she would have noticed her brother's pain. It's time to stop hiding – to reach out to Daniel's friends at their private school, where they were both scholarship pupils. Daniel had been deeply involved in Unity Service, the charitable group famed across the country for its work through schools, and Frances is determined to join the group and somehow make amends.But something's not right about Unity, and soon Frances finds herself in the middle of a puzzle too ominous to ignore. Exactly what are the Unity members trying to conceal? This time, Francis isn't hiding. The memory of her brother is at stake.

    It was a secret quest to vanquish evil. The Game is now a hazy memory as Dani looks up from the floor of the isolation room at Riverwood Clinic. God, how did she get here? She remembers the vodka and pills.Slowly Dani emerges from the painful effects of substance abuse, and begins to adapt to life at Riverwood, a psychiatric treatment facility for "teens with problems."As she recovers from her physical trauma, Dani must confront a deeper emotional trauma, which at the moment she can neither explain nor recognize. There's the cool aloofness of her mother. Her father's abusive perfectionism. Kelly's refusal to answer her letters. Fragmented memories of the last Game. She can't fit all the pieces together."The Game" is an extraordinary story of betrayal, anger, guilt, confusion and dread, and their brutal effects on the mind. It also a tribute to the healing effects of compassion and friendship, and to the strength we can summon, even in our weakest moments.

    Their manager was Bessie Setzer, but every one called her Mother Bagel, and the team grew to love her and even Spencer, Brother Bagel, their coach. Which was fine for everyone but Mark Setzer. For him it made problems. Because with a mother as manager and a brother as coach, he felt he had lost his right to be awful on the field and had gained a lot of sticky situations. Then, in addition to worrying about his performance on the baseball team, be had to worry about his performance at his Bar Mitzvah and about his friend, Hersch, who had moved to another part of town and found another best friend. Practicing in the relative privacy of The Projects, where there were some very good and very interesting players, helped Mark's game. It took more than that to help the rest, though. And there were some tough moments before Mark felt competent to handle the social situations and moral decisions his position demanded of him.

    What do you do when your home country treats you like an enemy? This memorable and powerful novel in verse, written by award-winning author Mariko Nagai, explores the nature of fear, the value of acceptance, and the beauty of life. As thought-provoking as it is uplifting, Dust of Eden is told with an honesty that is both heart-wrenching and inspirational.

    Her school life is full of whispers and lies — Hélène weighs 216; she smells like BO. Her loving mother is too tired to be any help. Fortunately, Hélène has one consolation, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Hélène identifies strongly with Jane’s tribulations, and when she is lost in the pages of this wonderful book, she is able to ignore her tormentors. But when Hélène is humiliated on a class trip in front of her entire grade, she needs more than a fictional character to allow her to see herself as a person deserving of laughter and friendship.Leaving the outcasts’ tent one night, Hélène encounters a fox, a beautiful creature with whom she shares a moment of connection. But when Suzanne Lipsky frightens the fox away, insisting that it must be rabid, Hélène’s despair becomes even more pronounced: now she believes that only a diseased and dangerous creature would ever voluntarily approach her. But then a new girl joins the outcasts’ circle, Géraldine, who does not even appear to notice that she is in danger of becoming an outcast herself. And before long Hélène realizes that the less time she spends worrying about what the other girls say is wrong with her, the more able she is to believe that there is nothing wrong at all.This emotionally honest and visually stunning graphic novel reveals the casual brutality of which children are capable, but also assures readers that redemption can be found through connecting with another, whether the other is a friend, a fictional character or even, amazingly, a fox.

    Duty. Danger. Fear. Canada's past comes alive through the eyes of young men caught up in the danger, drama and excitement of defining historical events. Written by some of Canada's finest authors, I Am Canada is a new series that offers riveting action-packed stories sure to engage and inspire young readers. From the creators of the bestselling Dear Canada series, the I Am Canada books will include an images and documents section, map, glossary, historical notes and About the Author pages. The facts are vetted by some of Canada's best historians Prisoner of Dieppe By Hugh Brewster A young soldier's gritty account of "the bloodiest nine hours in Canadian military history"- the tragic Dieppe raid of WWII. Alistair "Allie" Morrison lets his friend Mackie talk him into enlisting for WWII, even though he's only 18. After months of endless training Allie is eager for battle. But his first action is not just any battle . . . it's the disastrous raid on the German-held port of Dieppe. Almost a thousand Canadian soldiers died that day. In the resulting chaotic evacuation, Allie and Mackie are captured as POWs and sent to Stalag VIIIB in Germany. Still shell-shocked from their fighting, the soldiers struggle to maintain their courage; and some, like Mackie, are determined to plot an escape and outwit their captors, at any cost.