Girl Child

After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie’s family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed wilderness of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy after a terrible accident leaves her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie. Ellie is a girl who takes matters into her own hands, and determined to help her father she will make her way to the top of the mountain in search of healing secrets....

Forget cute fairies in pretty dresses. In the world of Aluvia, most fairies are more like irritable, moody insects, and almost everyone views the fairy keeper mark as a gift. But not 14-year-old Sierra. She hates being a fairy keeper, but the birthmark is right there on the back of her neck. It shows everyone she was born with the natural ability to attract and even control the tiny fairies whose nectar is amazingly powerful.

During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out. Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish mother's insistence, Mattie flees the city with her grandfather. But she soon discovers that the sickness is everywhere, and Mattie must learn quickly how to survive in a city frantic with disease.

On a cold winter night, Iris and her best friend, Daniel, sneak into a clearing in the woods to play in the freshly fallen snow. There, Iris finds the crumbling gravestone of a young girl, Avery Moore. Immediately, strange things start to happen to Iris. She feels the pull of the abandoned grave, calling her back to the clearing. Iris and Daniel start to research the area for a school project. They discover that Avery's grave is actually part of a neglected and forgotten Black cemetery, dating back to a time when White and Black people were kept separate in life - and in death.

The land was theirs, but so were its hardships. Strawberries - big, ripe, and juicy. Ten-year-old Birdie Boyer can hardly wait to start picking them. But her family has just moved to the Florida backwoods, and they haven't even begun their planting. "Don't count your biddies 'fore they're hatched, gal young un!" her father tells her. Making the new farm prosper is not easy.

Twelve-year-old Rowan is destined to be Queen; her twin brother, Rhydd, to be Royal Monster Hunter. Rowan would give anything to switch places, but the oldest child is always next in line, even if she is only older by two minutes. She resigns herself to admiring her monster hunting aunt's glorious sword and joining her queen mother for boring diplomatic teas. But tragedy shatters the longstanding rule, and Rowan finds herself hunting the most dangerous monster of all: a gryphon.

From the Waterstones Book Prize shortlisted author of A Boy Called Hope and The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair. Mabel has a suitcase full of worries - it turned up just after her dad disappeared and before her mum started dating Gavin. She worries about big things and little things and shoves them into her suitcase until it’s so full it might explode....

For seventh-grader Mila, it starts with some boys giving her an unwanted hug on the school blacktop. A few days later, at recess, one of the boys (and fellow trumpet player), Callum, tells Mila it's his birthday, and asks her for a "birthday hug." He's just being friendly, isn't he? And how can she say no? But Callum's hug lasts a few seconds too long, and feels...weird. According to her friend, Zara, Mila is being immature and overreacting. Doesn't she know what flirting looks like? But the boys don't leave Mila alone.

I know you. I know you in a way you can’t even imagine. I have been searching for you in the years since you wrote that letter - the letter that told me you were looking for me too. But now that I’ve found you, I don’t know if I can say the terrible truth of what I am. It would ruin your perfect life. It would hurt your beautiful daughter. So, I hesitate - bide my time, for now.

On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work—Chernobyl—has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person.

It's a dream come true for Megan, who's jet-setting to Paris for Fashion Week with Gigi. Meanwhile, back in Concord, Mrs. Wong decides to run for mayor, so Emma and Stewart team up to make her campaign a success. Jess and Cassidy are also hoping for victories - Jess in the a cappella finals with the MadriGals, and Cassidy in the national hockey championships with her teammates. In the midst of it all, the girls - along with their Wyoming pen pals, who drop in for a visit over spring break - dive into Charlotte Brontë's classic Jane Eyre.

For most of her 12 years, Astrid has done everything with her best friend, Nicole. But after Astrid falls in love with roller derby and signs up for derby camp, Nicole decides to go to dance camp instead. And so begins the most difficult summer of Astrid's life as she struggles to keep up with the older girls at camp, hang on to the friend she feels slipping away, and cautiously embark on a new friendship. As the end of summer nears and her first roller derby bout (and junior high!) draws closer, Astrid realizes that maybe she is strong enough to be a roller girl.

Dear diary... The good news: Bess, George, and I are on a train bound for Denali National Park, gazing at majestic Mount McKinley as we speed along. It's truly awesome! The bad news: Someone - a creepy passenger or a disgruntled employee? - is still causing major trouble on the Arctic Star cruise ship, and now that we're sightseeing on land, the danger has followed. Whoever it is has got even me in their sights - but I've been working undercover, so I have no idea how anyone discovered I'm a detective.

Nikki's diary is up to the month of April, and springtime is sure to bring more wacky adventures with Nikki and her friends, Chloe, Zoey, and Brandon!

In her debut children's book, Rebecca Solnit reimagines a classic fairy tale with a fresh, feminist Cinderella and new plot twists that will inspire young listeners to change the world. In this modern twist on the classic story, Cinderella, who would rather just be Ella, meets her fairy godmother, goes to a ball, and makes friends with a prince. But that is where the familiar story ends. Instead of waiting to be rescued, Cinderella learns that she can save herself and those around her by being true to herself and standing up for what she believes.

The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a fairly typical all-girls school - that is, it would be if every school taught advanced martial arts in PE and the latest in chemical warfare in science, and students received extra credit for breaking CIA codes in computer class. The Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses, but it's really a school for spies.

Grace is a worker in the new Industrial Revolution town, Lowell, MA. Despite only being 14 years old, she hopes to send extra money to help her poor family. To do so, she must work 12 hours a day in a factory helping machines wind thread. Learn about her life as a textile mill worker in the 1830s and the working conditions that she and her fellow workers endured in order to stay employed.

Covered by vines and hidden by trees, the old gatehouse on the edge of the woods has been abandoned for years. But when Trixie and her pal Honey explore it, they discover more than just dust and spiderwebs inside. The two girls find a huge diamond stuck in the dirt floor! Could a ring of jewel thieves be hiding out in Sleepyside?

She's a tomboy. He's the boy next door. With three older brothers, Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, has always been more comfortable calling the shots on a basketball court than flirting with the opposite sex. So when her police officer dad demands she get a summer job to pay for the latest in a long line of speeding tickets, she's more than a little surprised to find herself working at a chichi boutique and going out with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game.

Michele Borba has been a teacher, educational consultant, and parent for 40 years - and she's never been more worried than she is about this current generation of kids. The high-achieving students she talks with every day are more accomplished, better educated, and more privileged than ever before. They're also more stressed, unhappier, and struggling with anxiety, depression, and burnout at younger and younger ages - "we're like pretty packages with nothing inside," said one young teen.