NCW Libraries

"Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. (Oh, and she'd also like to make it through seventh grade with her best friendships intact, learn to run track, and have a cute boy see past her giant forehead.) But in junior high, it's like all the rules have changed. Now she's suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she's not black enough. Wait, what? Shay's sister,...

"Join two unlikely friends, Chuck and Lenore, as they embark on a surreal journey of self-discovery and uncover the magic of seeing the world through someone else's eyes."--

The remarkable story of two cousins who must take a road trip across American in 1969 in order to let a teen know he's been drafted to fight in Vietnam. Full of photos, music, and figures of the time, this is the masterful story of what it's like to be young and American in troubled times.

One summer during the Financial Crisis, fourteen-year-old Karthik Raghavan makes deliveries for his father's ailing Indian grocery, but he is secretly cast in a play about the young Leonard Bernstein. Includes author's note.

Young wizard prince Xar, who has no magic, and warrior princess Wish, an outcast, team up on an adventure that brings them to witches long believed to be extinct.

"Juana's life in Bogotà, Colombia, is just about perfect. Every now and then a big problema comes along--like having to learn English or Juana's mami getting remarried--but things eventually settle down, and life goes back to feeling pretty perfect again. But then Mami springs two new sorpresas on Juana. One: Juana will be spending her school break going to skating camp instead of relaxing (even though she doesn't know how to skate!). Two: Mami...

Despite being teased by his classmates, Manolo continues to believe in unicorns and meets one of the magical creatures on his way home from school.

Best Friends Forever There are lots of children on Hill Street, but no little girls Betsy's age. So when a new family moves into the house across the street, Betsy hopes they will have a little girl she can play with. Sure enough, they do—a little girl named Tacy. And from the moment they meet at Betsy's fifth birthday party, Betsy and Tacy becoms such good friends that everyone starts to think of them as one person—Betsy-Tacy. Betsy and Tacy...

In winning a medal she is no longer there to receive, a tight-lipped little Polish girl teaches her classmates a lesson. Includes a note from the author's daughter, Helena Estes.

"From the award-winning screenwriter-director Darren Aronofsky and his screenwriting partner, Ari Handel, comes Monster Club. Their debut novel is the first book in a thrilling, new adventure series about growing up, letting go, and facing down your monsters. Like almost everything in eleven-year-old Eric "Doodles" King's life, King's Wonderland--the amusement park his great-great grandfather founded--was seriously damaged when a hurricane hit his...