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  The Ballad of Knuckles McGraw

  Lois J. Peterson

  After Kevin's mother abandons him, he takes refuge in his fantasy of becoming a cowboy, but his reality is a foster home and grandparents he doesn't know.

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  The Big House

  Carolyn Coman

  When Ivy and Ray's parents are sent to jail, and they are left in the custody of their parent's accusers, they decide to look for evidence that will "spring" their parents.

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  The Boy on Cinnamon Street

  Phoebe Stone

  A story about a wounded girl and the boy who won't give up on her. 7th grader Louise should be the captain of her school's gymnastics team - but she isn't. She's fun and cute and should have lots of friends - but she doesn't. And there's a dreamy boy who has a crush on her - but somehow they never connect. Louise has everything going for her - so what is it that's holding her back? Phoebe Stone tells the winning story of the spring when 7th grader Louise Terrace wakes up, finds the courage to confront the painful family secret she's hiding from - and finally get the boy.

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  The Cardboard Kingdom

  Chad Sell

  Welcome to a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary boxes into colorful costumes, and their ordinary block into cardboard kingdom. This is the summer when sixteen kids encounter knights and rogues, robots and monsters—and their own inner demons—on one last quest before school starts again. In the Cardboard Kingdom, you can be anything you want to be—imagine that! The Cardboard Kingdom was created, organized, and drawn by Chad Sell with writing from ten other authors: Jay Fuller, David DeMeo, Katie Schenkel, Kris Moore, Molly Muldoon, Vid Alliger, Manuel Betancourt, Michael Cole, Cloud Jacobs, and Barbara Perez Marquez. The Cardboard Kingdom affirms the power of imagination and play during the most important years of adolescent identity-searching and emotional growth.

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  The Cook's Family

  Laurence Yep

  As her parents' arguments become more frequent, Robin looks forward to the visits that she and her grandmother make to Chinatown, where they pretend to be an elderly cook's family, giving Robin new insights into her Chinese heritage.

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  The Cruel Prince

  Holly Black

  Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him--and face the consequences. In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. As civil war threatens, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

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  The Dagger Quick

  Brian Eames

  Twelve-year-old Christopher "Kitto" Wheale, a clubfooted boy seemingly doomed to follow in the boring footsteps of his father as a cooper in seventeenth-century England, finds himself on a dangerous seafaring adventure with his newly discovered uncle, the infamous pirate William Quick.

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  The Detective's Assistant

  Kate Hannigan

  In 1859, eleven-year-old Nell goes to live with her aunt, Kate Warne, the first female detective for Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Nell helps her aunt solve cases, including a mystery surrounding Abraham Lincoln, and the mystery of what happened to Nell's own father. Includes author's note and bibliographic references.

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  The Education of Little Tree

  Forrest Carter

  Little Tree is an 8-year-old Cherokee boy, who, during the time of the depression, loses his parents and goes to live with his mountain dwelling grandparents and learns the wisdom of the Cherokee way of life.

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  The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

  Shaun David Hutchinson

  Convinced he should have died in the accident that killed his parents and sister, sixteen-year-old Drew lives in a hospital, hiding from employees and his past, until Rusty, set on fire for being gay, turns his life around. Includes excerpts from the superhero comic Drew creates.

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  The Game of Love and Death

  Martha Brockenbrough

  In Seattle in 1937 two seventeen-year-olds, Henry, who is white, and Flora, who is African-American, become the unwitting pawns in a game played by two immortal figures, Love and Death, where they must choose each other at the end, or one of them will die.

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  The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

  Mackenzi Lee

  Henry "Monty" Montague was bred to be a gentleman. His passions for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men, have earned the disapproval of his father. His quest for pleasures and vices have led to one last hedonistic hurrah as Monty, his best friend and crush Percy, and Monty's sister Felicity begin a Grand Tour of Europe. When a reckless decision turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt, it calls into question everything Monty knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

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  The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

  Heidi W. Durrow

  After a family tragedy orphans her, Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., moves into her grandmother's mostly black community in the 1980s, where she must swallow her grief and confront her identity as a biracial woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

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  The Girl Who Thought in Pictures

  Julia Mosca

  Describes the life and accomplishments of the animal scientist and designer of cruelty-free livestock facilities, from her early life and autism diagnosis through her journey to become a livestock expert.

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  The Great Big Book of Families

  Mary Hoffman

  Features illustrations and descriptions of different types of families and how their lives are similar and different.

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  The Key to Every Thing

  Pat Schmatz

  For eleven-year-old Tash, Cap’n Jackie isn’t just the elderly next-door neighbor — she’s family. When she disappears, only Tash holds the key that might bring her back.Tash didn’t want to go to camp, didn’t want to spend the summer with a bunch of strangers, didn’t want to be separated from the only two people she has ever been able to count on: her uncle Kevin, who saved her from foster care, and Cap’n Jackie, who lives next door. Camp turns out to be pretty fun, actually, but when Tash returns home, Cap’n Jackie is gone. And Tash needs her — the made-up stories of dolphin-dragons, the warm cookies that made everything all right after a fight, the key Cap’n Jackie always insisted had magic in it. The Captain always said all Tash had to do was hold it tight and the magic would come. Was it true? Could the key bring Cap’n Jackie back?

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  The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls

  Jessica Spotswood

  Told through four viewpoints, sisters Des, Bea, Kat, and Vi, aged nineteen to fifteen, are each transformed, especially in how they see one another, in the last summer before Bea leaves for college.

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  The Last to Let Go

  Amber Smith

  When her mother is arrested for killing Brooke's abusive father, Brooke must confront the shadow of her family's violence and dysfunction.

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  The Little Lame Prince

  Rosemary Wells

  Cruel Osvaldo rules El Cordoba - keeping the people poor and unhappy. The true heir to the throne, Francisco, has been banished to a tower. Orphaned and crippled when he was very young, Francisco grows up unaware that he should be king. But one day he discovers his true idenity.

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  The Mailbox

  Audrey Shafer

  When twelve-year-old Gabe tries to hide his uncle's death from the local authorities, he is not prepared for what happens when this secret is discovered.

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  The Man from the Other Side

  Uri Orlev

  Living on the outskirts of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, fourteen-year-old Marek and his grandparents shelter a Jewish man in the days before the Jewish uprising.

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  The Marvels

  Brian Selznick Selznick

  In 1766, a boy, Billy Marvel, is shipwrecked, rescued, and goes on to found a brilliant family of actors that flourishes in London until 1900--and nearly a century later, Joseph Jervis, runs away from home, seeking refuge with his uncle in London, and is captivated by the Marvel house, with its portraits and ghostly presences.

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  The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

  Ashley Herring Blake

  When Sunny St. James receives a new heart, she decides to set off on a New Life Plan: 1) do awesome amazing things she could never do before; 2) find a new best friend; and 3) kiss a boy for the first time. Her New Life Plan seems to be racing forward, but when she meets her new best friend Quinn, Sunny questions whether she really wants to kiss a boy at all. With the reemergence of her mother, Sunny begins a journey to becoming the new Sunny St. James

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  The Miseducation of Cameron Post

  Emily M. Danforth

  Set in rural Montana in the early 1990s, Emily M. Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a powerful and widely acclaimed YA coming-of-age novel in the tradition of the classic Annie on My Mind. Cameron Post feels a mix of guilt and relief when her parents die in a car accident. Their deaths mean they will never learn the truth she eventually comes to: that she's gay. Orphaned, Cameron comes to live with her old-fashioned grandmother and ultraconservative aunt Ruth. There she falls in love with her best friend, a beautiful cowgirl. When she's eventually outed, her aunt sends her to God's Promise, a religious conversion camp that is supposed to "cure" her homosexuality. At the camp, Cameron comes face to face with the cost of denying her true identity.

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  The Naming of Tishkin Silk

  Glenda Millard

  The first book in the Kingdom of Silk series. Griffin has a secret in his heart that nobody else knows - until he meets Layla., a princess with a daisy-chain crown.