Everyone knows the story of the pied piper right? How a mysterious man came into town and lured away all the rats by playing his pipe. But the townspeople refused to pay him, so he stole away all the children that night and they were never seen again. Right? But this book tells a different story. One you never expected.
A powerful book about the tough and gritty existence on the edge of the border, where everyone dreams of better lives that are only available to a very few through even fewer routes.
Maybe lives on the streets with a tribe of homeless teens. These kids are runaways and throwaways, they have no place to go except cold city streets and have no family other than each other. They are abused, abandoned, and forgotten by society, every day they struggle to survive against the cold, hunger, and constant danger. But now there is a new girl, Tears, a 12 year old whose mother didn’t believe she had been abused by her stepfather.
Will knows one way to grieve, dictated by the rules passed down for generations: no crying; no snitching; always get revenge. His uncle and father have already been victim to the cyclic system created by these rules, and last night his brother joined them. Will is desperately heartbroken, so he follows the one path given him by the rules: he grabs his brother's gun and heads for the elevator.
I despised cheerleaders when I was a teenager. They were the ones who bullied my outcast friends and me. They were so—well—cheery. Didn't they notice that the world all around us is falling apart? I’m much older and somewhat wiser now, so I understand that it’s dumb to assume that all members of a group of people are the same. I comprehend that just because the particular cheerleaders I knew in high school were mean doesn't mean that all cheerleaders are mean. I mean, I try to stay open-minded. Still, cheerleaders. Blech. How superficial, boring, and dumb.
Hurricane Harvey in the news raises the relevance of this novel to a category five. The fact that we're bringing Julie Murphy--one of the best contemporary realistic fiction authors in the country--to town for a Meet the Author visit means you must put this book on your radar. I listened to the audio version. It's fantastic. The narrator is a perfect fit for Ramona's voice.
Aristotle is angry. And wondering. And confused. Dante is laid back. And smart. And confused. These two boys, opposites, with nothing in common, begin to spend more time together, becoming fast friends. The friendship that they discover is the kind that has the power to morph and change lives - and lasts a lifetime. And Aristotle becomes sad - then happy. And realizes things. And Dante gets angry - then hurt. And realizes things. This is a remarkable coming-of-age novel about two Mexican-American boys as they battle through the uncertain, calamitous front of life.
People deal with grief, fear, anger, and other difficult emotions in many ways. One of those ways is humor. That's Mara. Her telling of her story is hilarious. With a cynical, skeptical, acerbic, over-the-top wit of the best social-commentary-humorists, she shares how she spent her senior year of high school dealing with the very real possibility that she might just spontaneously combust.
Cadence is part of the incredibly wealthy and distinguished Sinclair family. She has been spending the summer on a private island with a group of her four friends. She has amnesia. She can’t remember their revolution. She can’t remember the accident. Everyone is keeping a secret from her, how can she remember the truth?
Nineteen years after the end of the Harry Potter series, Harry is still struggling to put the past behind him and be a good father to his 3 children as well as work at the ministry of magic. His youngest son, Albus, is struggling too, with the burden of a family legacy he never asked for. But as darkness lurks still in the wake of Lord Voldemort’s destruction, father and son must learn to accept their differences and disappointments to defeat it.
