World Family

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley.

A young boy wakes up to the sound of the sea, visits his grandfather's grave after lunch, and comes home to a simple family dinner, but all the while his mind strays to his father digging for coal deep down under the sea. With curriculum connections to communities and the history of mining, this beautifully understated and haunting story brings a piece of history to life. The ever-present ocean and inevitable pattern of life in a maritime mining town will enthrall children and move adult listeners.

This book covers fascinating origin stories of 55 everyday items that were invented by accident; that is, the inventor did not expect to make the product when the product was discovered. Not only will this book share amazing stories about everyday products, but it will also inspire you. We all encounter things that go wrong, and this book reminds us that when life gives lemons, we can make lemonade. (Seriously, pink lemonade was made by accident—listen to the story inside.) Each story is written to encourage kids and adults to be curious and be inspired to create.

Berlin, 1943: Ava Müller is a proud supporter of the German war effort, working for Joseph Goebbels alongside her father, a high-ranking official in the Reich. With her sister Hanna, a nurse, braving bombing raids to save lives, they are a model Nazi family. Until Ava discovers her parents and Hanna are secretly working for the resistance… Returning to their country home, Ava is shocked to find her childhood friend Eliana Goldman and her family hidden in the attic.

At 18, Alexandra Wickham is presented to King George V and Queen Mary in an exquisite white lace and satin dress her mother has ordered from Paris. With her delicate blond looks, she is a stunning beauty who seems destined for a privileged life. But fate, a world war, and her own quietly rebellious personality lead her down a different path. By 1939, Europe is on fire and England is at war. From her home in idyllic Hampshire, Alex makes her way to London as a volunteer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. But she has skills that draw the attention of another branch of the service.

Drawing on her lifelong journey to know her family's history, leading Christian activist Lisa Sharon Harper recovers the beauty of her heritage, exposes the brokenness that race has wrought in America, and casts a vision for collective repair.

The golden traditions of Christmas—gifts, wreaths, stockings, carols, mistletoe, and more—infuse your celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. And, in ways you may not realize, they also point you to the birth of Christ. Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas reveals the people, places, and events that shaped the best-loved customs of this merriest of holidays.

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.

Hi'i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its contributions to hula and her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii, but there’s a lot she doesn’t understand. She’s never met her legendary grandmother and her mother has never revealed the identity of her father. Worse, unspoken divides within her tight-knit community have started to grow, creating fractures whose origins are somehow entangled with her own family history.

Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny didn't think the old trunk in their house held anything interesting. But an unusual statue they find inside leads them to the Reddimus Society, a secret guild dedicated to returning lost treasures to where they belong. Now the Aldens must help their new friends by traveling across the country with the statue and six mysterious boxes! Can the Boxcar Children keep these seven treasures out of the wrong hands?

It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents, aunties and uncles, they’ve learned to live their own lives alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women. Staying over at a boyfriend's place is disguised as a best friend’s sleepover, and tiredness can be blamed on studying instead of partying. With growing older and the stakes of love and life growing higher, the delicate balancing act between rebellion and religion is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

Old Keb Wisting is somewhere around ninety-five years old (he lost count awhile ago) and in constant pain and thinks he wants to die. He also thinks he thinks too much. Part Norwegian and part Tlingit Native ("with some Filipino and Portuguese thrown in"), he's the last living canoe carver in the village of Jinkaat, in Southeast Alaska. When his grandson, James, a promising basketball player, ruins his leg in a logging accident and tells his grandpa that he has nothing left to live for, Old Keb comes alive and finishes his last canoe, with help from his grandson.

Rachele Luzzato is twelve years old when she learns that her father is gravely ill. While her family plans for her upcoming bat mitzvah, Rachele finds herself cast as the Madonna in her school’s Christmas play. Caught between spiritual poles, struggling to cope with her father’s mortality, Rachele feels as if the threads of her everyday life are unraveling.

L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters - Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude.

It’s spring 1919, and the Great War has ended. New life flourishes on the red cliffs of the Northern Isles of Scotland—sea pinks and primrose, puffins and guillemots. But this windswept corner of the world harbors a dark secret. Rose Van Etten has always reveled in danger and defiance. When the war started, she went from racing cars to driving ambulances and learned of an insidious spy ring from a dying soldier. Now that the war is over, she ventures to Scotland in search of the truth.

As a hospice nurse, Zara Mitchell has already seen more death than most people will experience in a lifetime. So when her older sister asks her to help care for their ailing grandmother, Zara agrees - despite strained family relationships. Though pale and tired, Nonna has lost none of her sharp mind. She’s fixated on finding something long forgotten, and she immediately puts Zara to work cleaning out the attic. Amid the tedium of sifting through knickknacks and heirlooms, Zara also reconnects with a man she’s attracted to but whose complicated past makes romance seem impossible.

Jameela lives with her mother and father in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that there is no school in their poor, war-torn village and that Jameela lives with a birth defect that has left her with a cleft lip, she feels relatively secure, sustained by her faith and the strength of her beloved mother, Mor. But when Mor suddenly dies, Jameela's father impulsively decides to seek a new life in Kabul. He remarries, a situation that turns Jameela into a virtual slave to her demanding stepmother.

In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguirre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family. More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives alone and shunned on the edge of town.

It is 1938 in China and, as a young wife, Meilin’s future is bright. But with the Japanese army approaching, Meilin and her four year old son, Renshu, are forced to flee their home. Relying on little but their wits and a beautifully illustrated hand scroll, filled with ancient fables that offer solace and wisdom, they must travel through a ravaged country, seeking refuge. Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood.

Frances and Ginger Park, authors of both children's books and young adult novels, based this inspiring and deeply affecting tale on their own mother's childhood. Winner of the International Reading Association Award, My Freedom Trip features a courageous girl named Soo who makes a desperate bid for freedom by journeying from North Korea to South Korea. Her father awaits across the border, but to achieve her new life, Soo must leave her mother behind.