One night, Astrid’s mom takes her and her best friend to a roller derby, and this sets off a course of events that changes Astrid’s life. Astrid becomes obsessed with everything roller derby and decides to join roller derby camp the summer before entering junior high. This decision leads to some major problems with her…
News from Youth Services - Page 35 of 50
Auma’s Long Run by Eucabeth Odhiambo
Auma's Long Run transports the reader to a Kenya where people are just discovering and coming to grips with the AIDS epidemic. Auma, unlike most of her classmates, looks beyond a career as a farmer or wife and dreams of being a doctor. It's part of why she works to understand why so many people…
Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald
Theodora “Theo” Tenpenny knows a lot about artwork. Her grandfather was an artist and worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then, he passed away and left her a note telling her to “look under the egg.” What egg? Did he mean the painting that hangs in his art studio? It…
Real Friends by Shannon Hale
Growing up can be rough: sometimes your friends move away, sometimes your friends aren’t as kind as they should be, and sometimes you just feel out of place. Shannon Hale writes about how she viewed the world while she was in elementary school. Like most kids, she had trouble with her sibling and friends. As…
I Will Always Write Back by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda
Starting as an assignment for school, Caitlin is a middle school student in the United States who decides to write to Martin in Zimbabwe. They learn about each other's lives and become friends long after the assignment has been completed. As Caitlin realizes that Martin and his family are in increasing danger in their country,…
The Gathering by Dan Poblocki
Looking for a chapter book that sends cold shivers up your spine? Look no further than The Gathering, the first book in the “Shadow House” series by Dan Poblocki. Five children from across the U.S. are lured to the mysterious Larkspur House under false pretenses. Is it a music academy? Is it the residence of…
Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
A cross country move, secret puzzles, mysterious clues, bumbling bad guys, and a race to find the answers all equals one action filled book! In the Book Scavenger, Emily and her new friend James race around San Francisco as they solve clues and decode secret messages. It all started when Emily and James found a mysterious…
Margaret and the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing by Dean Robbins
Margaret Hamilton grew up wondering why more women weren’t deciding to be doctors or scientists. So, she decided to study hard. Margaret loved mathematics and learning about the universe. As she got older, she discovered computers and made the decision to program them. All of her hard work eventually led to her working for NASA!…
Making it Right by Marilee Peters
Let’s talk about real life superheroes! When bad things happen, we can’t call Batman or the Avengers, but there are things we ourselves can do. Making it Right, by Marilee Peters, explains how the criminal justice system, which makes rules on how to deal with crime, was developed and how it works today. Most of…
A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Imagine that someone builds a wall in the middle of the night separating your town into different sides. You have to stay on the side you are on and never get to visit the other side. That is exactly what happened when the Berlin Wall was built to separate the West from the East. Gerta,…
