Book Finder

After fourteen-year-old Peak Marcello, the son of two famous, now-divorced, climbers, is arrested for scaling a New York City skyscraper, he’s left with two choices: Juvenile Detention or living with his long-lost father. Peak quickly learns that his father’s renewed interest in him has strings attached; he wants his son to be the youngest person to reach the Everest summit. For a climbing addict like Peak, tackling Everest is the challenge of a lifetime. But it’s also one that could cost him his life.

Banesville, located in the heart of the apple-growing area of upstate New York, is no longer the idyllic small town it once was. There are rumors of ghosts, of an abandoned house being haunted, and of people dying in suspicious ways. The townsfolk are beginning to live in fear. All of this is inflamed by the unscrupulous editor of the local newspaper. Hildy Biddle and the staff of the high school newspaper, The Core, must unveil the corruption that has infiltrated their town before it’s too late. 

It’s 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. This coming-of-age story is populated by a cast of vivid family characters and it explores the things that tear them apart and the things that bring them back together. The book includes an Author’s Note with photographs and additional background on World War II, Internment camps, and 1950s America.

Persepolis is an autobiography by Marjane Satrapi that depicts her childhood up to her early adult years in Iran and Austria during and after the Islamic Revolution. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. 

There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question: How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Phineas, a railroad construction foreman, was blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848 when a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain. Miraculously, he survived to live another eleven years and become a textbook case in brain science. At the time, Phineas Gage seemed to completely recover from his accident. But he was changed.

His case astonished doctors in his day and still fascinates doctors today. What happened and what didn’t happen inside the brain of Phineas Gage will tell you a lot about how your brain works and how you act human.

This work is a captivating account of how photography evolved from labor-intensive daguerreotypes in the mid-1800s to one of the most popular hobbies and respected art forms in the world today. Brimming with black-and-white and color photographs from throughout its multifaceted history, this volume not only documents technological developments, but also the phenomenal effect the craft has had upon journalism, industry, science, medicine, the military, and beyond. Featuring the accomplishments of pioneers such as Louis Daguerre, George Eastman, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Margaret Bourke-White, and others, Photography: An Illustrated History presents an engaging history of photography through some of the most spectacular images ever captured on film.

Pick Me Up is an encyclopedic non-fiction book primarily intended for children. With gorgeous full-color spreads and an edgy, vivid design, a title for the Internet generation covers facts on history, geography, science, and natural history, and includes a detailed index to make each subject simple to find.

A few days after her 13th birthday, Georgia receives an unexpected gift–a strange, formal letter, all typed up and signed anonymous–granting her free admission to the Brandywine River Museum for a whole year. And things begin to change.
An accessible novel in poems, Pieces of Georgia offers an endearing protagonist–an aspiring artist, a grieving daughter, a struggling student, a genuine friend–and the poignant story of a broken family coming together.

Tired of being singled out at her mostly-white private school as someone who needs support, high school junior Jade would rather participate in the school’s amazing Study Abroad program than join Women to Women, a mentorship program for at-risk girls.

This is the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

The year is 1862, and 12-year-old P.K. “Pinky” Pinkerton is on the run from Whittlin’ Walt and his gang of ruthless desperados. P.K. is determined to hold on to Ma’s last priceless possession: the deed to a large amount of land and silver mines in the Nevada Mountains. P.K. will have to be both clever and cunning to evade the band of outlaws. All this is seen through the eyes of P.K., a half-Lakota kid with Asperger Syndrome, which makes him chronically unable to interpret the intentions of people around him.

Have you ever tried to write a poem about a pizza? How about a pig? This book gives you the inside scoop on writing poetry and shows you how you can turn your own experiences and stories about your family, your pets, and your friends into poems,

Twelve-year-old Hanako and her family, reeling from their confinement in an internment camp, renounce their American citizenship to move to Hiroshima, a city devastated by the atomic bomb dropped by Americans at the end of World War II.

Summertime is filled with joy for a Black child―skateboarding and playing basketball―until his community is deeply wounded by a police shooting. As fall turns to winter and then spring, fear grows into anger, then pride and peace.

A powerful story about the extraordinary mind of a young nonverbal girl with autism, her passion for space exploration, and the bond between sisters.

How and when police use force, and what constitutes excessive force, is central to the debate over policing and race. This book examines use-of-force policies and training, militarization of police, the role of body cameras and video, officer accountability, and the future of policing.

A small mouse named Poppy overcomes a stronger adversary – an owl named Ocax – through determination and inner strength in this first installment of the popular Tales from Dimwood Forest series.

Jacob Todd, a British soldier wounded in World War II, falls in love with Geertrui, a Dutch teenager who hides him from his pursuers in 1944. Now his 17-year-old grandson, also named Jacob Todd, has traveled to Holland to visit the grave of the grandfather he never met. Upon arriving in Amsterdam, Jacob is not prepared for the perplexing experiences of the city, seeing Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, or for the shocking story that reveals family secrets. Two stories, Jacob Todd’s and Geertrui’s, from two different times are intertwined throughout the book and raise some very thought-provoking questions.

In middle school, words aren’t just words. They can be weapons. They can be gifts. The right words can win you friends or make you enemies. They can come back to haunt you. Sometimes they can change things forever.

When cell phones are banned at Branton Middle School, Frost and his friends Deedee, Wolf, and Bench come up with a new way to communicate: leaving sticky notes for each other all around the school. It catches on, and soon all the kids in school are leaving notes—though for every kind and friendly one, there is a cutting and cruel one as well.

In the middle of this, a new girl named Rose arrives at school and sits at Frost’s lunch table. Rose is not like anyone else at Branton Middle School, and it’s clear that the close circle of friends Frost has made for himself won’t easily hold another. As the sticky-note war escalates, and the pressure to choose sides mounts, Frost soon realizes that after this year, nothing will ever be the same.

In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, half-Chinese Hanna and her White father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves.

A winner of the Caldecott Award for Illustrators, Anita Lobel writes her memoir growing up in Krakow, Poland, during the Holocaust. She was only five when the Nazis invaded, and she is sent to live with their Catholic nanny in the country. Anita and her brother are eventually discovered and deported to a concentration camp where they live until the liberation. Art and books become her saving grace when she finally comes to America as a teenager.