FLY HOME

Jewel spends a lot of time over at the cliff.  It's the only place where she ever feels truly understood and not alone.  At home, her grandfather doesn't speak and her parents keep secrets.  Secrets about the day Jewel was born.  The day her brother went missing.  The day he thought he was a bird and tried to fly off of Jewel's cliff.  Her dad tells Jewel to stay away from the cliff and the duppies that are spirits and tricked Jewel's brother into trying to fly.  Her mother tells her father to stop filling Jewel's head with nonsense.  Jewel ignores them both and doesn't question their life.  Until the day Jewel meets John.  The boy who shares a name with her brother.  The boy her grandfather is convinced is a duppy.  The boy who may be able to help Jewel and her family share their secrets and learn to be a family once more.

Follow Jewel and her family on their journey of healing in Crystal Chan's book, Bird, for tweens in grades 6 and up.

EXPULSION BY APPLE

Sierra is the picture perfect student.  She is a member of the leadership club, sings in the school choir The Octaves, and has only received one B in her middle school career.  So why is she suddenly risking expulsion? She understands her school's Zero Tolerance policy.  No drugs, no weapons, no exceptions.  Except what happens when you accidentally take your mom's identical lunch bag to school and inside is a paring knife for her apple?  And you turn it in right away?  

For Sierra, this means a week-long in-school suspension which might lead to an expulsion.  This seemingly unfair act calls into question Sierra's sense of fairness and right and wrong. In Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills, Sierra learns that life and rules are not always black and white and people are not always what they seem on the outside.  For grades 6 and up.

THE LOVE YOU SAVE

NEWBERY WORTHY?

After one crazy summer with their mother, Cecile, in Oakland, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern fly back to Brooklyn and don't make it out of the airport without getting in trouble with Big Ma who is happy to see them but worried about their independence and "power to the people" mindset.  More than the Gaither girls has changed while they were in Oakland, though.  Pa's got a girlfriend, Uncle Darnell isn't the same as when he left for Vietnam, and the political air in Brooklyn and America is rapidly changing.  Not to mention the country is being swept away by this hot new music group, The Jackson Five.  While Delphine loves the tall one, Jermaine, her sisters are in love with the youngest Jackson named Michael.  Delphine tries to be the responsible one and reign the girls in, but no one wants to listen to a bossy older sister anymore.  How will the girls handle all this change?  How will their mother play a role in their lives all the way from Oakland without a telephone or any way to reach her other than letters?

Find out in Rita Williams-Garcia's sequal to One Crazy Summer, P.S. Be Eleven, which, through prose and letters tells the story of the Gaither girls growing up in Brooklyn in the late 60s/early 70s and Cecile's reminder to Delphine to stop growing up so fast and just be eleven.  Grades 6 and up.