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Odysseus just wants to get home to his wife and son after being away for more than ten years fighting in the Trojan War. On his journey (odyssey) back, he encounters all manner of obstacles including a cyclops, temptresses, ghostly spirates, pirates, and a six-headed monster.Looking for companion text? Waiting for Odysseus by Clemence McLaren traces Odysseus’s journey through the eyes of the women in his life: his wife Penelope, the seductive Circe, the goddess Pallas Athene, and his childhood nurse Eurycleia.

How much would you allow someone else to suffer so that you could be happy? When the residents of Omelas, a place with no sadness, come of age, they are forced to make the decision: live happily but with the knowledge of someone’s extreme suffering or leave their beloved city.

This book creates an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

A novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook.

A lyrical biography of a Cuban slave who escaped to become a celebrated poet. Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own.

The Power Of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit.

In this epic debut fantasy, inspired by Renaissance France, an outcast finds herself bound to a disgraced lord and entangled in his plot to overthrow the king.

When Harry Reasoner thrust a microphone at an angry mob, and yelled “I don’t care what you’re going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it!” he spoke for all the reporters and photographers, black and white, north and south, who played a critical role in bringing the reality of the Civil Rights movement into the living rooms and consciousness of the American public.

The ivory-billed woodpecker is thought to be extinct, but some disagree. Hoose documents the scientific and bird-watching communities’ attempts to find this lost species and save its habitat in the Southern United States.

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy.

In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many. 

Set in a world where reading is unheard-of, Sefia makes use of a mysterious object to track down who kidnapped her aunt Nin and what really happened the night her father was murdered.

Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming 13-year-old boy with autism, it is a one-of-a-kind memoir that provides a window into how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds. It is a “… wise, beautiful, intimate and courageous explanation of autism as it is lived every day by one remarkable boy.”

In this adaptation of Jeanne Theoharis’ award-winning biography of Rosa Parks for young people, Theoharis and Brandy Colbert reveal the story of a lifelong freedom fighter whose activism began two decades before her historic stand that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and continued for 40 years after. Because Rosa Parks was active for 60 years, in the North as well as the South, her story provides a broader and more accurate view of the Black freedom struggle across the twentieth century. 

This novel recreates the biblical life of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, from her birth in Mesopotamia through her death in Egypt. She is a minor character in the Bible, but the author has broadened her story. 

A remarkable history with elements of both In the President’s Secret Service and The Butler, The Residence offers an intimate account of the service staff of the White House, from the Kennedys to the Obamas.

America’s First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. In her runaway bestseller, former White House correspondent Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain on the world’s most famous address. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First Family.

There are two secrets Evelyn Serrano is keeping from her Mami and Papi: her true feelings about growing up in her Spanish Harlem neighborhood, and her attitude about Abuela, her sassy grandmother who’s come from Puerto Rico to live with them. Then, like an urgent ticking clock, events erupt that change everything. Through it all, Evelyn learns important truths about her heritage and the history makers who shaped a nation. Infused with actual news accounts from the time period, Sonia Manzano, best known as the beloved Maria from Sesame Street, has crafted a gripping work of fiction based on her own life growing up during a fiery, unforgettable time in America, when young Latinos took control of their destinies.

After an apocalyptic catastrophe, a father and his young son embark on a grim and perilous quest following the road to the sea.

After his sister is murdered, Ruben and his older brother Cole go to reclaim her body, and discover the truth about her death. The violence isn’t for the squeamish, but teens will enjoy this story that reads like a movie.

This collection of more than 100 poems that honestly and artfully confront topics ranging from poverty and motherhood to Van Gogh and Mandela is presented in Tupac Shakur’s own handwriting on one side of the page, with a typed version on the opposite side. 

Several recent college graduates go to an archaeological dig in rural Mexico. What follows is a suspense-filled, horrific nightmare in the jungle. Will any of them return? 

This posthumously published memoir tells of young Sara’s resistance to anti-Semitism while growing up in Romania. For a while, she was able to escape the Nazis by her blonde hair and blue eyes but eventually was caught and sent to Ravensbruck, a German concentration camp for female prisoners.

A collection of stories from nations and cultures across our two continents — the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it — from the Andes all the way up to Alaska. Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories. 

In many ways, Jason Peele is like any other teenager. He hits the books, hangs with his friends, flirts with girls, and omits the full truth of his life from his Aunt Audrey and Uncle Steve, who have raised him since his parents died. But there’s one way that Jason Peele is very different: when he dreams at night, it isn’t about girls; it’s about David Bowie. At sixteen-years-old, Jason is just beginning to understand that he might be gay.