WE'RE NOT IN BROOKLYN ANYMORE!

First they visited their long-lost mother in Oakland in One Crazy Summer, they returned to life with their father in Brooklyn in P.S. Be Eleven, and now the Gaither girls are back--this time visiting their paternal relatives in rural Alabama--in Gone Crazy in Alabama, the third and final installment of the series from award-winning author Rita Williams-Garcia. 

Much like the previous two novels, Williams-Garcia paints an all-at-once funny, poignant, and unflinchingly realistic look at life in the 1960s for these three young black girls and their family. As their father reminds 12-year-old Delphine and her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern while he's telling them to be on their best behavior, "the South's not like Bed-Stuyvesant and you can't get more southern than Alabama." 

And truer words have never been spoken: they get their milk and butter from a cow, the best entertainment is hearing their great-grandmother and great-aunt tell conflicting stories about their decades-long feud, and, perhaps most notably, they experience the very real presence of the KKK. But when a potentially deadly storm strikes, things get even more real as Vonetta goes missing after a fight with her sisters. Will the Gaither girls and their family ever be the same after their time in the deep South? 

This historical fiction novel really tells it like it was, and will make a gripping read for 5th to 8th graders, whether or not they've already enjoyed the previous two books in the series. 

THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING THE PAST

Thirteen-year-old Margaret O’Malley’s world is turned upside down when the corrupt Judge Biggs sentences her father to death for burning down a Victory Fuels building and killing a person trapped inside. Margaret knows that her father did not do it, and that his sentencing was in retaliation for uncovering a secret that Victory Fuels wanted to keep hidden at any cost. Desperate to save his life, Margaret decides to do the thing that she knows she shouldn’t – use the O’Malley gift to go back in time to change the events that made Lucas Biggs into the man who sentenced an innocent man to die. But Margaret will discover that changing the past means more than changing history, and that no one is beyond saving - from themselves or others.

Saving Lucas Biggs is a page-turner with lots of mystery, action, history, and a touch of science fiction, and will appeal to boys and girls in grades 5 and up.

WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE IS NOT WHO YOU ARE

That's what Laura Ebony found out during a two week forced stay with her grandmother.  Although she wants to be a fashion model and popular, she's more of an outsider, called Larda by her classmates and the popular girls.  She thought all that would changed this year until she finds out that her class will be going on a field trip to her family's "slave shack". A shack to Laura's mind that has nothing but bad memories and now the whole class will know about her family's horrible past.  

The Laura Line by Crystal Allen turns in another engaging coming of age story weaving in history, genealogy, self esteem and even baseball.  For readers in grades 5th -8th.