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The Door of No Return
By Kwame Alexander
J ALE / Also available on Playaway and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
A novel in verse about a boy escaping slavers during the nineteenth century.
Elf Dog & Owl Head
By M.T. Anderson
J AND / Also available on CD and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Quarantined with his family as a global plague ravages the world, Clay retreats to the woods where he meets a special little dog who leads him on surreal adventures where choosing the wrong path could cause them both to lose their way forever.
The Curse of Eelgrass Bog
By Mary Averling
J AVE / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Dark secrets and unnatural magic abound when a twelve-year-old girl ventures into a bog full of monsters to break a mysterious curse.
The Boy Who Dared
By Susan Campbell Bartoletti
J BAR / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
In October 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people.
Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus
By Dusti Bowling
J BOW / Also available in large print and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Aven Green loves to tell people that she lost her arms in an alligator wrestling match, or a wildfire in Tanzania, but the truth is she was born without them. And when her parents take a job running Stagecoach Pass, a rundown western theme park in Arizona, Aven moves with them across the country knowing that she’ll have to answer the question over and over again. Her new life takes an unexpected turn when she bonds with Connor, a classmate who also feels isolated because of his own disability, and they discover a room at Stagecoach Pass that holds bigger secrets than Aven ever could have imagined. It’s hard to solve a mystery, help a friend, and face your worst fears. But Aven’s about to discover she can do it all … even without arms.
365 Days to Alaska
By Cathy Carr
J CAR / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
When eleven-year-old Rigel Harman’s parents divorce, she and her sisters must move from the Alaskan wilderness to suburban Connecticut, and while she yearns to return in a year, she eventually realizes she must move forward.
The Spirit Glass
By Roshani Chokshi
J CHO / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Corazon yearns to finally start training as a babaylan (a mystical healer and spirit guide) under her powerful guardian, Aunt Tina. As soon as her magic awakens, Corazon plans to bring her parents back from the dead and no longer have to rely on a soul key to allow visits with their ghosts for a few hours every Saturday night. But when a vengeful ghost steals Corazon’s precious key, the fragile balance between the human world and the spirit world is thrown out of whack. Aunt Tina reveals that if Corazon wants her magic to awaken, then she must lay the ghost to rest by fashioning a new soul key. With her rather bloodthirsty gecko companion, Saso, Corazon embarks on a quest through the spirit realms. But they must move quickly, for if the ghost gets through the spirit glass, all hope will be lost. Roshani Chokshi pays tribute to her Filipino heritage in this book that has all the magic, sparkle, and heart that made her Aru Shah series a fantasy classic.
Al Capone Does My Shirts
By Gennifer Choldenko
J CHO / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards’ families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.
Elijah of Buxton
By Christopher Paul Curtis
J CUR / Also available in large print and Ebook and an Eaudiobook
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American South, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family’s freedom.
Hide and Seeker
By Daka Hermon
J HER / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Something is wrong with twelve-year-old Zee, who has returned after a year’s absence; nobody knows where he was or what happened to him, but now he is distracted and violent, freaking out when he sees his friends, Justin, Nia, and Lyric, playing an odd game of hide-and-seek, and talking wildly about some danger that is approaching—and soon his friends are pulled into a shadowy world ruled by a monstrous, shape-shifting Seeker, forced to play a terrifying game of hide-and-seek where they will have to confront their worst nightmares in order to find their way home.
The Last Cuentista
By Donna Barba Higuera
J HIG / Also available on Playaway and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
A girl named Petra Peña wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra’s world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children—among them Petra and her family—have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet—and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity’s past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard—or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future.
Restart
By Gordon Kormon
J KOR / Also available in large print and on CD, and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Chase does not remember falling off the roof, in fact he does not remember anything about himself, and when he gets back to middle school he begins to learn who he was through the reactions of the other kids—trouble is, he really is not sure he likes the Chase that is being revealed, but can he take the opportunity amnesia has provided and restart his life?
Brother’s Keeper
By Julie Lee
J LEE / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Twelve-year-old Sora and her eight-year-old brother, Youngsoo, must try to escape North Korea’s oppressive Communist regime on their own in 1950. Includes historical notes, photographs of the author’s mother, glossary of Korean words, and timeline.
Gone Wolf
By Amber McBride
J MCB / Also available on Playaway and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
In the future, a Black girl known only as Inmate Eleven is kept confined—to be used as a biological match for the president’s son, should he fall ill. She is called a Blue—the color of sadness. She lives in a small room with her dog, who is going wolf more often—he’s pacing and imagining he’s free. Inmate Eleven wants to go wolf too, she wants to know why she feels so Blue and what is beyond her small room. In the present, Imogen lives outside of Washington DC. The pandemic has distanced her from everyone but her mother and her therapist. Imogen has intense phobias and nightmares of confinement. Her two older brothers used to help her, but now she’s on her own, until a college student helps her see the difference between being Blue and sad, and Black and empowered.
Train I Ride
By Paul Mosier
J MOS / Also available as an Ebook
Traveling from California to Chicago after her mother dies of a drug overdose and her grandmother of lung cancer, thirteen-year-old Rydr meets other passengers on the train and attempts to accept her own situation.
Prairie Lotus
By Linda Sue Park
J PAR / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, half-Chinese Hanna and her white father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves.
Daughter of the Deep
By Rick Riordan
J RIO / Also Available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
In this story inspired by Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Ana Dakkar, a freshman at Harding-Pencroft Academy, a five-year high school that graduates the best marine scientists, naval warriors, navigators, and underwater explorers in the world, makes astounding discoveries about her heritage and puts her leadership skills to the test against deadly enemies from a rival school.
Holes
By Louis Sachar
J SAC / Also available in large print, on Playaway and DVD, and as an Ebook and Eaudiobook
As further evidence of his family’s bad fortune, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a stressful correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
By Mildred Taylor
J TAY / Also available on CD and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
A black family living in Mississippi in during the depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand.
Maizy Chen’s Last Chance
By Lisa Yee
J YEE / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Eleven-year-old Maizy Chen visits her estranged grandparents, who own and run a Chinese restaurant in Last Chance, Minnesota; as her visit lengthens, she makes unexpected discoveries about her family’s history and herself.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Jukebox
By Nidhi Chanani
J GN CHA
A mysterious jukebox, old vinyl records, and cryptic notes on music history are Shaheen’s only clues to her father’s abrupt disappearance. She looks to her cousin, Tannaz, who seems just as perplexed, before they both turn to the jukebox which starts…glowing? Suddenly, the girls are pulled from their era and transported to another time! Keyed to the music on the record, the jukebox sends them through decade after decade of music history, from political marches to landmark concerts. But can they find Shaheen’s dad before the music stops?
When Stars Are Scattered
By Victoria Jamieson
J GN JAM / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
Omar and his younger brother Hassan live in a refugee camp, and when an opportunity for Omar to get an education comes along, he must decide between going to school every day or caring for his nonverbal brother in this intimate and touching portrayal of family and daily life in a refugee camp.
Parachute Kids
By Betty C. Tang
J GN TAN / Also available on CD and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
After their two-week family tour of Los Angeles, ten-year-old Feng Li Lin and her older brother and sister learn they will remain in California while their parents return to Taiwan, forcing them to navigate a new school, a new language, bullies, racism, and the pressures of running a household.
NONFICTION READS
The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary
Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity
By Nicholas Day
J 364.1 DAY / Also available on Playaway and as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone! Travel back to an extraordinary period of revolutionary change: turn-of-the-century Paris. Walk its backstreets. Meet the infamous thieves—and detectives—of the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the Mona Lisa—the most famous painting in the world should never have existed at all.
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II
By Candace Fleming
J 940.5486 FLE / Also available as an Ebook and an Eaudiobook
“You are to report to Station X at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, in four days time … That is all you need to know.” This was the terse telegram hundreds of young women throughout the British Isles received in the spring of 1941, as World War II raged. Bletchley Park was a well-kept secret during World War II, operating under the code name Station X. The critical work of code-cracking Nazi missives that went on behind its closed doors could determine a victory or loss against Hitler’s army. Amidst the brilliant cryptographers, flamboyant debutantes, and absent-minded professors working there, it was teenaged girls who kept Station X running. Some could do advanced math, while others spoke a second language. They ran the unwieldy bombe machines, made sense of wireless sound waves, and sorted the decoded messages. They were expected to excel in their fields and most importantly: know how to keep a secret.