Family Library

Gypsy Beaumont has always been a whirly-twirly free spirit, so as her thirteenth birthday approaches, she hopes to get a magical ability that will let her fly, or dance up to the stars. Instead, she wakes up on her birthday with blurry vision...and starts seeing flashes of the future and past. But when Momma and Poppa announce that her very un-magical, downright mean Grandma Pat has Alzheimer's and is going to move in with them, Gypsy's savvy - along with her family's - suddenly becomes its opposite.

Sometimes a busy businessmouse like me needs a nice, relaxing vacation. But every time I tried to get away, disaster struck! By the time I finally tore myself away from The Rodent's Gazette, all the good trips were booked up. I found myself stuck in a flea-ridden old hotel, sharing a room with a bunch of Gerbil Scouts!

Curses aren't real. At least, that's what twelve-year-old, half-Hawaiian Anna Leilani Kama'ehu thinks when she listens to her grandmother's folktales about sacred flowers and hexes. Anna's friends back home in Colorado don't believe in legends either; they're more interested in science and sports—real, tangible things that stand in total contrast to Anna's family's loopy cultural traditions.

When Emily and Jess Volnik's family inherits a remote, crumbling Scottish castle, they also inherit the Boggart - an invisible, mischievous spirit who's been playing tricks on residents of Castle Keep for generations. Then the Boggart is trapped in a rolltop desk and inadvertently shipped to the Volniks' home in Toronto, where nothing will ever be the same - for the Volniks or the Boggart. In a world that doesn't believe in magic, the Boggart's pranks wreak havoc. And even the newfound joys of peanut butter and pizza and fudge sauce eventually wear thin for the Boggart. He wants to go home....

When a blue-haired boy (Ryan) meets a pink-haired boy (Avery) at a dance—a queer prom—both feel an inexplicable but powerful connection. Follow them through their first ten dates as they bridge their initial shyness and fall in love—through snow storms, groundings, meeting parents (Avery's) and not (Ryan's), cast parties, heartbreak, and every day and date in between.

Eugenia Lincoln is a practical person with no time for gee-gaws, whoop-de-whoops, or frivolity. When an unexpected package containing an accordion arrives at her house, she is determined to have nothing to do with it. But her plans to sell the accordion, destroy the accordion, and give the accordion away all end in frustration. How can Eugenia stop being tormented by this troublesome package? Might she discover that a bit of unforeseen frivolity could be surprisingly...joyous?

Eleven-year-old Adam loved to travel throughout 13th-century England with his father, a wandering minstrel, and his dog, Nick. But when Nick is stolen and his father disappears, Adam suddenly finds himself alone.

The summer after junior year of high school looks bleak for Alton Richards. His girlfriend has dumped him to hook up with his best friend. He has no money and no job. His parents insist that he drive his great-uncle Lester to his bridge club four times a week and be his cardturner—whatever that means. Alton’s uncle is old, blind, very sick, and very rich.

Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair.... Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

Kacey is the new girl in Broken Falls. When she moved in with her father, she stepped into a brand-new life. A life with a stepbrother, a stepmother, and, strangest of all, an adoring younger half sister. Kacey's new life is eerily charming compared with the wild highs and lows of the old one she lived with her volatile mother. And everyone is so nice in Broken Falls - she's even been welcomed into a tight new circle of friends. Bailey and Jade invite her to do everything with them.

Twelve-year-old Nova is eagerly awaiting the launch of the space shuttle Challenger - it's the first time a teacher is going into space, and kids across America will watch the event on live TV in their classrooms. Nova and her big sister, Bridget, share a love of astronomy and the space program. They planned to watch the launch together. But Bridget has disappeared, and Nova is in a new foster home. While foster families and teachers dismiss Nova as severely autistic and nonverbal, Bridget understands how intelligent and special Nova is, and all that she can't express.

Time has stopped. It's been June 23, 2020, for nearly a year as far as anyone can tell. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the worldwide crisis. Not everyone is on board though. Javelin-throwing prodigy Truda Becker is pretty sure her "Solution Time" class won't solve the world's problems, but she does have a few ideas what might. Truda lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father protects every day by nailing it into hundreds of progressively larger boxes.

Grave-robbing. What kind of monster would do such a thing? It's true that Leonardo da Vinci did it, Shakespeare wrote about it, and the resurrection men of 19th-century Scotland practically made it an art. But none of this matters to Joey Crouch, a 16-year-old straight-A student living in Chicago with his single mom. For the most part, Joey's life is about playing the trumpet and avoiding the daily humiliations of high school. Everything changes when Joey's mother dies in a tragic accident and he is sent to rural Iowa to live with the father he has never known....

Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories. It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them—everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes.

When Ben Harp sees his teacher's watch crawling across the hallway, he thinks he must be dreaming. But no, he’s just seen his first Sneak—an interdimensional mischief-maker that can borrow the form of any ordinary object. He figured this school year would be bad—his best friend moved away, the class bully is circling, and he’s stuck doing a group project with two similarly friendless girls, Charlotte and Akemi. Still, he wasn’t expecting aliens!

In this new take on Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery The Mysterious Affair at Styles, iconic detective Hercule Poirot is recast as a brilliant, brash teen girl named Holiday, and narrated by her childhood friend Linden, an athlete-scholar who fits right in at his elite prep school—all the while hiding some secrets of his own.

Spread some Christmas cheer with Nate the Great in this holiday adventure! Young listeners are introduced to the detective mystery genre, perfect for the Common Core. Kids can problem-solve with Nate, using logical thinking to solve mysteries! Annie's dog is unhappy. When Fang is unhappy, everyone is unhappy. Especially Nate the Great. So Nate agrees to sniff out Fang's mysteriously missing Christmas mail. It's cold and snowy. But Nate the Great and his dog, Sludge, will try to solve this holiday case in time for Fang to have a crunchy, munchy Christmas.

Leroy Ninker is a small man with a big dream: he wants to be a cowboy, but for now he's just a thief. In fact, Leroy is robbing the Watsons' kitchen right this minute! As he drags the toaster across the counter ( screeeeeech) and drops it into his bag ( clannngggg), little does he know that a certain large pig who loves toast with a great deal of butter is stirring from sleep.

Meet Daisy Winters. She's an offbeat 16-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part-time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who's nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her to join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond. While the dashing young Miles has been appointed to teach Daisy the ropes of being regal, the prince's roguish younger brother kicks up scandal wherever he goes, and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride.

Princess for president. Student body president, that is. It's all the fault of Princess Mia's power-mad best friend and campaign manager, Lilly, who nominates her in the first place. This is not how Mia imagined kicking off her sophomore year, even if Grandmere thinks ruling her high school makes good practice for ruling Genovia someday.