Introduces black holes, describing their physical features, how they were discovered, what causes them, and where they exist in space.
The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town.
After their father’s death, Emily and Navin move with their mother to the house of her deceased great-grandfather. Before long, a sinister creature lures their mother through a door in the basement. Desperate, the children follow her into an underground world inhabited by demons, robots, and talking animals.
Since the death of his mother, Tobin's family and school life have been in disarray. After he starts raising chickens with seventh-grade classmate Henry, everything starts to fall into place.
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American South, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.
Garth Hale is as good as dead...The only problem is he's still alive. When Garth Hale is accidentally zapped into the ghost world by Frank Gallows, a washed-up ghost wrangler, he discovers that he has special powers.
An anthology of very short, scary stories by an assortment of authors and illustrators including Chris Raschka, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos, and Lane Smith.
After a plane crash, Brian spends 54 days in the wilderness learning to survive with only a hatchet given him by his mother. Read more in The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and Brian’s Hunt.
Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's daring and often hilarious attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site. If you like this book, you might enjoy Flush and Scat by the same author.
Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can read fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service. The magic continues in Inkspell.
Left an orphan after the influenza epidemic in British East Africa in 1918, thirteen-year-old Rachel is tricked into assuming a deceased neighbor's identity to travel to England, where her only dream is to return to Africa and rebuild her parents' mission hospital.
Eighth-grade football hero Wallace Wallace is sentenced to detention attending rehearsals of the school play. He becomes wrapped up in the production and begins to suggest changes that improve not only the play but his life as well.
An illustrated introduction to comparative religion, discussing Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism.
Living near the water on Maryland's Eastern Shore, thirteen-year-old Brady and his best friends become entangled in a tragedy that tests their friendship and their ideas about right and wrong.
Recounts the 1820 sinking of the whaleship "Essex" by an enraged sperm whale and how the crew of young men survived against impossible odds. Based on the author's adult book In the Heart of the Sea.
Recounts the adventures of Mibs Beaumont, whose thirteenth birthday has revealed her "savvy"—a magical power unique to each member of her family—just as her father is injured in a terrible accident.
Ten-year-old Ernest lives a boring existence in Paris with his grandmother until a lively girl named Victory enters his class at school.
Allie Kimball learns that middle school is populated with three kinds of people: “glommers,” “norks,” and worst of all, “squashes”—crushes that make you feel like your heart has been stepped on. Allie copes with the help of her soccer team and new friends.
Three years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is trying hard to keep his life on track; but when his old pal X-Ray shows up with a tempting plan to make some easy money scalping concert tickets, Armpit reluctantly goes along. (This is a companion novel to Holes, the 1999 Newbery Medal winner.)
From sixth grade through tenth, Raina copes with a variety of dental problems that affect her appearance and how she feels about herself.
In this story about the perils of popularity, the courage of nonconformity, and the thrill of first love, an eccentric student named Stargirl changes Mica High School forever.
An intense, personal story by a pioneer in scientific field observation. Goodall presents her long involvement with the chimpanzees of Gombe, describing the amazing discoveries she has made over 40 years.
When homeschooled farm girl Piper McCloud reveals her ability to fly, she is quickly taken to a secret government facility to be trained with other exceptional children, but she soon realizes that something is very wrong and begins working with brilliant and wealthy Conrad to escape.
After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.
After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.
An old hound that has been chained up at his hateful owner's run-down shack, and two kittens born underneath the house, endure separation, danger, and many other tribulations in their quest to be reunited and free.
During the 1967 school year, all of Holling Hoodhood’s seventh-grade classmates go either to Catechism or Hebrew School on Wednesday afternoons. Holling stays in Mrs. Baker’s classroom reading the plays of William Shakespeare and learning much of value about the world he lives in.
Tells the tale of the sinking of the Titanic using the narratives of the witnesses and survivors to the disaster.
When Will Burrows and his friend Chester embark on a quest to find Will's archaeologist father, who has inexplicably disappeared, they are led to a labyrinthine world underneath London, full of sinister inhabitants with evil intentions toward "Topsoilers" like Will and his father.
After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.