Thursday, March 29, 2012

New YA and Children's Books

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu - Wendy Wan-Long Shang
Eleven-year-old aspiring basketball star and interior designer Lucy Wu is excited about finally having her own bedroom, until she learns that her great-aunt is coming to visit and Lucy will have to share a room with her for several months, shattering her plans for a perfect sixth-grade year.

Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip - Jordan Sonnenblick
After an injury ends former star pitcher Peter Friedman's athletic dreams, he concentrates on photography which leads him to a girlfriend, new fame as a high school sports photographer, and a deeper relationship with the beloved grandfather who, when he realizes he's becoming senile, gives Pete all of his professional camera gear.

Orchards - Holly Thompson
Sent to Japan for the summer after an eighth-grade classmate's suicide, half-Japanese, half-Jewish Kana Goldberg tries to fit in with relatives she barely knows and reflects on the guilt she feels over the tragedy back home.

Soul Searching: A Girl's Guide to Finding Herself - Sarah Stillman
Offers young women advice on how to be true to themselves and provides information on feng shui, aromatherapy, yoga, meditation, dream analysis, journaling, and other related topics.

Cold Cereal - Adam Rex
A boy who may be part changeling, twins involved in a bizarre secret experiment, and a clurichaun in a red tracksuit try to save the world from an evil cereal company whose ultimate goal is world domination.

The Fairy Ring, or, Elsie and Frances Fool the World - Mary Losure
Relates the story of two early-twentieth-century cousins who believed they saw real fairies, created photographs using paper cutouts when they were teased by adult family members, and inadvertently drew the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a fellow believer.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again - Frank Cottrell Boyce
Down on their luck, the Tooting family buys an old camper van and begins repairing it, but after installing an engine that once belonged to an extraordinary car, they are off to find other original parts, pursued by a sinister man who wants Chitty for himself.

The Case of the Deadly Desperados - Caroline Lawrence
In 1862 Nevada Territory, after finding his foster parents murdered and scalped, twelve-year-old Pinky Pinkerton, son of a railroad detective and a Sioux Indian, inherits a valuable deed and must hide from dangerous Whittlin Walt and his gang of desperados.

The Final Four - Paul Volponi
Four players at the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament struggle with the pressures of tournament play and the expectations of society at large.

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