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Los Angeles! City of tanned shoulders! Smog-spewing, pay-per-viewing, sit-com maker for the world!

Del’s put in 17 years there, bouncing among foster homes. Smart, sharp-tongued, a master mimic, she’s fed up with her world and with being Del. So she’s faked her own death and is leaving both herself and L.A. behind until her escape lands her in an all-day traffic jam.

Fast-forward eight years. It’s opening night for the one-woman play she’s written and is starring in a show called Breakout, about a Los Angeles traffic jam. Wildly funny, she seems to be skewering workaholics, road ragers, pickup artists, and car culture in general. But readers will see what her audience can’t, that the show is a portrait of herself, of her hunger for her mother and her terror of rejection, her free-floating identity and yearning for connection.

Flashing between Del’s present and future, Breakout gives us a backstage pass into a young playwright’s psyche, letting us watch her life being transformed into a art, heartache into comedy, solitude into community, and anger gradually giving way to acceptance.

Despite coming from different backgrounds, fifth-graders Jess and Leslie develop a deep friendship. Together they create an imaginary place where they alone rule as king and queen. This Newbery Medal book is told with humor and sensitivity and is filled with the joy of friendship, the pain of losing it, and the hope of healing.

Simone is adopted. She’s always known it, but she’s never wanted to know anything about where she came from. She’s happy with her family just as it is. Then one day, Rivka calls, and Simone learns who her mother was; a 16-year-old, just like Simone. Who is Rivka? What does she want? Why is she calling now, after all these years? The answers lead Simone to deeper feelings of anguish and love than she has ever known and prompt her to question everything she has taken for granted about faith, the afterlife, and what it means to be a daughter.

It’s a routine case, or at least as routine as a cases get when you’re a twelve-year-old private detective who’s been sleuthing for just a few months: Steve Brixton must don a neon wetsuit and work undercover to retrieve a stolen surfboard. But when the assignment goes all wrong, Steve finds himself caught inside mysteries involving wild surfers, pirate smugglers, thick-necked goons, and a sixth-grader who can’t find his gym shorts.

Retired private detective and current seventh grader Steve Brixton has a new job: He takes out the trash for five bucks a week. But it’s hard to leave the old game behind, and on a train trip down the California coast, Steve and his best chum, Dana, are pulled into a mystery involving a fleet of stolen automobiles, a vanishing girl, and a phantom train car. Oh, and there might just be some romance…

Seventh-grader Steve Brixton is an avid reader of the Bailey Brothers series, and he’s about to get a chance to put the detective tactics he’s read so much about into practice. He’s out to solve a mystery being investigated by America’s most secret crime solving agency: the United States Department of Library Sciences. It will take all of Steve’s skills to navigate this story of intrigue and crime as he tracks down the missing quilt (yes, quilt) containing all of America’s secrets.

After saving the United States of America in The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, he has opened his own agency. Steve gets a call to solve the case of the Fairview diamond but it turns into an even bigger mystery. MacArthur Bart, author of Steve’s beloved Bailey Brothers series, has been kidnapped!! And there is only one 12-year-old detective who can find him. But not without the help of his best chum Dana and The Bailey Brothers Detective Handbook.

When a high school class starts having Friday afternoon open-mike poetry, the kids tell their life stories and worries in the poems included in this book. This is a great introduction to spoken word poetry and an inspiration to budding poets.

Twelve-year-old Sora and her eight-year-old brother, Youngsoo, must try to escape North Korea’s oppressive Communist regime and survive three hundred miles of warzone in winter in 1950.

In 1954, one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the twentieth Century aimed to end school segregation in the United States. The ruling was the culmination of work by many people who stood up to racial inequality, some risking significant danger and hardship, and of careful strategizing by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Award-winning author Susan Goldman Rubin tells the stories behind the ruling and the people responsible for it. Illustrated with historical photographs, this well-researched narrative account is a perfect introduction to the history of school segregation in the United States and the long struggle to end it. An epilogue looks at the far-reaching effects of this landmark decision, and shows how our country still grapples today with a public school system not yet fully desegregated. Detailed backmatter includes a timeline, primary source texts, and summaries of all mentioned court cases. An ALA Notable Children’s Book.

The early years of a girl who grows into a writer has been recreated from family stories combined with memory and presented in verse. Born in February 1963 in Ohio, Woodson’s family soon moves to the South during turbulent years. The history of the writer, her family and a nation combine in rich, metaphorical language.

Fifteen-year-old Luther’s mother, The Sarge, rules an empire of halfway houses and slums. Luther himself is a much more ordinary guy, though he is caught between being a typical teen and being the Sarge’s son. Luther’s peculiar problems are resolved in a way that is sure to satisfy readers.

Young Bud runs away from the latest and worst foster home in search of his father. Though he doesn’t find his father, Bud (not Buddy) does find family, music, and more on his long trek across Michigan during the Depression. In this Newbery-winning novel, both humor and Bud’s naive voice make difficult issues accessible to younger readers.

Eddie’s father, two uncles, and best friend are all dead, and it’s a struggle for him not to end up the same way. Violence makes Fresno wallow in tears, as if a huge onion were buried beneath the city. Making an effort to walk a straight line despite constant temptations and frustrations, Eddie searches for answers — and discovers that his closest friends may actually be his worst enemies.

Meg Medina transports readers to a time when New York seemed balanced on a knife-edge, with tempers and temperatures running high: the infamous summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Seventeen-year-old Nora Lopez’s family life isn’t going so well, either. Before she turns eighteen and can strike out on her own, Nora will discover that the greatest dangers are often closer than we like to admit — and the hardest to accept.

In the final days of the Việt Nam War, Hằng takes her little brother, Linh, to the airport, determined to find a way to safety in America. In a split second, Linh is ripped from her arms — and Hằng is left behind in the war-torn country. Six years later, Hằng has made the brutal journey from Việt Nam and is now in Texas as a refugee. She doesn’t know how she will find the little brother who was taken from her until she meets LeeRoy, a city boy with big rodeo dreams, who decides to help her. Hằng is overjoyed when she reunites with Linh. But when she realizes he doesn’t remember her, their family, or Việt Nam, her heart is crushed. Though the distance between them feels greater than ever, Hằng has come so far that she will do anything to bridge the gap. Rip Van Winkle Award and NPR Best Books of 2019.

Can spiders learn? How do ants find their way home? Can bugs see color? All of these questions buzzed endlessly in Charles Henry Turner’s mind. He was fascinated by plants and animals and bugs. And even when he faced racial prejudice, Turner did not stop wondering. He constantly read, researched, and experimented. Author Janice Harrington and artist Theodore Taylor III capture the life of this inspiring scientist and educator in this nonfiction picture book, highlighting Turner’s unstoppable quest for knowledge and his passion for science. The extensive back matter includes an author’s note, time line, bibliography, source notes, and archival images. 

Greg Heffley thinks kids who don’t celebrate Christmas have it much better; they don’t have to behave between Thanksgiving and the time Santa comes! Greg’s concerns about his conduct, his family’s traditions, and possible trouble at school make for a memorable tale.

Using the immediacy of digital photography, a California high school teacher asked his students to document their school life with words and pictures.

When 12-year-old Edie wants to connect to her Native American heritage, she learns that her parents have kept much of her family history secret.

Tally is smart, compassionate, and she has a superpower: autism. Inspired by young coauthor Libby Scott’s own experiences with autism, this is an honest and moving middle-school story of friends, family, and finding one’s place.

Michael Shiner was born into slavery in Maryland but bought his freedom. He learned to read and write and thus detailed in his journal the history of Washington, DC. Insightful and accessible, this is a well-documented and handsomely presented look at history.

When Moose’s family moves to Alcatraz so his father can work as a guard and his sister can attend a special school in San Francisco, Moose has to leave his friends and his winning baseball team behind. Moose just wants to protect Natalie, live up to his parent’s expectations, and stay out of trouble, but on Alcatraz, trouble is never very far away.

Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be when you live on an island with a billion birds, a ton of bird crap, a few dozen rifles, machine guns and automatics and 278 of America’s worst criminals. And then there’s Moose Flanagan. Moose’s father works as a prison guard and his family lives on the east side of Alcatraz — not far from the mobster Al Capone.