Geography For Teens

"My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days of searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be". Parvana is alone. Her father is dead. A refugee in a land full of dangers, she must travel across Afghanistan to find her mother and sisters. As she travels, Parvana finds friends - a starving, orphaned baby; a strange, hostile boy; a solitary girl who darts in and out of the minefields to find food. Perhaps, with their help, she may one day be reunited with her family...

Just as Martine is settling into life on the wildlife game reserve, she is whisked away on a school trip. Her class is going on an ocean voyage to witness the Sardine Run, a spectacular natural phenomenon, off the coast of South Africa. What begins as an exciting adventure quickly turns perilous when a storm blows up and Martine and her classmates are thrown overboard into shark-infested waters. They are saved by a pod of dolphins, only to end up marooned on a deserted island.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story - Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Etienne St. Clair: Perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home.

John "Spud" Milton takes his first hilarious steps toward manhood in this delicious, laugh-out-loud boarding school romp, full of midnight swims, raging hormones, and catastrophic holidays that will leave the entire family in hysterics and thirsty for more!

Although less well known than his famous flight over the North Pole, Admiral Richard E. Byrd's adventures in Antarctica are just as remarkable. Wide-eyed youngsters will feel the excitement and danger as they learn about the isolated and tight little manned station where Byrd lived, separated from his crew; the temperatures that plunged to 60 degrees below zero; and Byrd's brush with death when a small stove he needed to keep warm - and stay alive - filled the air with carbon monoxide.

In August 1972, President Idi Amin declares that a message from God has come to him in a dream: all foreign Indians must be "weeded out" of Uganda in the next 90 days. Fifteen-year-old Sabine and her father, a successful businessman, are confident that their family will not be affected, since they are Ugandan citizens, but Sabine's fearful mother is certain that they will have to leave.

From Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Katherine Rundell comes an exciting new novel about a group of kids who must survive in the Amazon after their plane crashes. Fred, Con, Lila, and Max are on their way back to England from Manaus when the plane they're on crashes and the pilot dies upon landing. For days they survive alone, until Fred finds a map that leads them to a ruined city, and to a secret.

That was where she needed to be, in a field of purple flowers, where no one could bother her. She would sit there until the confusion left her head and the stink of the camp left her nostrils. Shauzia has a dream. She dreams of getting away from the refugee camp in Pakistan and travelling to France. There she knows she would find a better life, away from the war in her home country of Afghanistan...But escape is not so easy. Once she leaves the camp, she has no money, no food - and only her dog Jasper for company. But Shauzia is determined to find a new future for herself...

While attempting to solve the mystery of a stolen jewel, Seikei, a merchant's son who longs to be a samurai, joins a group of kabuki actors in 18th-century Japan.

Bick Kidd and his globe-trotting siblings Beck, Storm and Tommy may have completed their first treasure hunt after their father was lost at sea, but their kidnapped mother is still in the hands of nasty pirates. Their search for a rescue plan takes them down the Nile river in Africa, where they'll have to navigate everything from Egyptian pyramids in the desert to wet-and-wild jungles—not to mention life-threatening encounters with wilderness diseases, angry hippos and some seriously bad guys—in order to find the treasure and save the day.

Berlin, November 1943. With bombing raids commencing, the city is blanketed by explosions. Siblings Gerta and Max Hoffmann live a surprisingly carefree childhood amid the raids. Berlin is a city going about its business, even as it's attacked almost nightly. But one night, the air raid sirens wail, and the Hoffmanns' neighborhood is hit. A mortally wounded man comes to their door, begging to be let in. He asks for Karl Hoffmann, their father. Gerta and Max watch as Karl tries in vain to save the man's life.

Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burn down the school and threaten the teacher and students with death. As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man, and the Taliban target Yasmine’s Western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee.

Twelve-year-old Koby isn't like the other kids in her class. She lost her right foot in an accident four years ago, and she is keenly aware that her classmates don't know how to act around her. The only place she feels at home is in her small boat, where she can watch whales play in the ocean. When Koby discovers a stranded mother whale and her baby, she realizes that their survival depends on her ability to keep them breathing through the night. But she is alone, and help is nowhere in sight.

Fatima is a Hazara girl, raised to be obedient and dutiful. Samiullah is a Pashtun boy raised to defend the traditions of his tribe. They were not meant to fall in love. But they do. And the story that follows shows both the beauty and the violence in current-day Afghanistan as Fatima and Samiullah fight their families, their cultures, and the Taliban to stay together.

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting: on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

There are a lot of things Jamie hates about her life: her dark hair, her dad's Stone Age Charter of Curfew Rights, her real name – Jamilah Towfeek. For the past three years Jamie has hidden her Lebanese background from everyone at school. It's only with her email friend John that she can really be herself. But now things are getting complicated: the most popular boy in school is interested in her, but there's no way he would be if he knew the truth.

How did the lowly potato plant feed the poor across Europe and then cause the deaths of millions? How did the rubber plant enable industrialization? What is the connection between malaria, slavery, and the outcome of the American Revolution? How did the fabled silver mountain of 16th-century Bolivia fund economic development in the flood-prone plains of rural China and the wars of the Spanish Empire? Here is the story of how sometimes the greatest leaps also posed the greatest threats to human advancement.

Kek comes from Africa. In America, he sees snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He’s never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter - cold and unkind. In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she’s missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: A girl who is in foster care, an old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means “family” in his native language.

This book tells the stories of girls and boys from around the world and the challenges they have faced and overcome. It features over 29 tales of amazing young girls and boys who have achieved the unimaginable - from surviving a plane crash in the jungle to striking against climate change. There are tales of triumphing over illness and injury, and of overcoming bullying. Entries include Greta Thunberg, Boyan Slat and Phiona Mutesi, to name a few.