'Luminous, empowering, and full of heart-healing truths, this is a novel that belongs on every shelf.'-Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award winning author
For fans of Crenshaw and When You Trap a Tiger comes the extraordinary tale of a headstrong girl and the magical dictionary she hopes will explain the complicated feelings she can't find the right words for-or erase them altogether.
Zia remembers the exact night the Shadoom arrived. One moment she was laughing with her best friends, and the next a dark room of shadows had crept into her chest. Zia has always loved words, but she can't find a real one for the fear growing inside her. How can you defeat something if you don't know its name?
After Zia's mom announces that her grouchy Greek yiayia is moving into their tiny apartment, the Shadoom seems here to stay. Until Zia discovers an old family heirloom: The C. Scuro Dictionary, 13th Edition.
This is no ordinary dictionary. Hidden within its magical pages is a mysterious blue eraser shaped like an evil eye. When Zia starts to erase words that remind her of the Shadoom, they disappear one by one from the world around her. She finally has the confidence to befriend Alice, the new girl in sixth grade, and to perform at the Story Jamboree. But things quickly dissolve into chaos, as the words she erases turn out to be more vital than Zia knew.
In this raw, funny, and at times heartbreaking middle grade debut, Bree Barton reveals how-with the right kind of help-our darkest moments can nudge us toward the light.
Coretta Scott King Honor winner Brenda Woods introduces Zoe-an endearing eleven-year-old who's afraid her real life will never be as exciting as her imaginary one. Zoe Reindeer has a very big imagination, but in real life she considers herself "just Zoe"-not measuring up to her too-perfect older sister and her smarty-pants little brother. Truthfully, though, she'd rather just blend in with the plants at the family business, Doc Reindeer's Exotic Plant Wonderland. That is until a tall astronomer from Madagascar comes into the nursery looking for a Baobab tree, and starts a ball rolling that makes Zoe long for real adventures, not just imaginary ones. When her family is suddenly forced to relocate, they find themselves heading to a place reindeer have never gone before-and to Zoe, it feels like her first real adventure is finally beginning.
B has spent the last few months bunking with the Angels, a group of teens dedicated to eradicating the evil dead from the face of the earth, beginning with the undead roaming the abandoned wreckage that was once London. But the Angels' mission is a bit more complicated than that, and B takes to the streets of a very changed London to decide: is it a mission really to be believed? But instead of answers, B finds a horror beyond imagining.
B Smith has been reunited with the murderous maniac clown, Mr. Dowling. To her shock and consternation, he's desperate to make B his partner in crime. Mr. Dowling disgusts her, but B thinks she can see a way to control him and maybe even save the world. But it will involve a sacrifice far greater and more surreal than any she has contemplated before...
B's first mission with the Angels --sentient, do-gooder zombies-- went horribly wrong when vicious members of the Ku Klux Klan attacked New Kirkham, a stronghold of precious human survivors. B is not about to let the racist thugs persecute innocent people, but while saving the town, one of B's oldest friends is kidnapped by the Klan.
The Angels are prepared to do what it takes to save him, but B will have to make some very hard decisions about loyalties--to old friends, to the Angels, and to new families and old.
After being betrayed and captured by the most heinous survivors of the human race, B Smith lands back in the clutches of a fiend she had hoped to never see again, someone who is intent on making her suffer in the most tortuous ways. Discovering the fate of loved ones from B's past adds to the agony and calls into question just how much B is willing to sacrifice in the name of justice.
After learning the dark secrets hidden in Mr. Dowling's twisted mind, B is on the run. She escapes the clown's clutches and weaves her way through London's abandoned Underground, only to find that Mr. Dowling has laid siege to the Angels' base in County Hall. And when B learns of the history between Mr. Dowling and someone she trusted, she realizes that she can't rely on anyone--B, and B alone, is the only one who can save humanity.
The final thrilling installment of Darren Shan's Zom-B series is sure to knock you dead!B Smith has escaped from the murderous clown Mr. Dowling, only to find herself trapped by someone she had once thought of as an ally. As B learns more about the twisted history of the zombie virus, she prepares to make a final stand against her enemies--even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice.
B Smith and the other Angels are relieved to finally receive their first mission - to safely escort a group of human survivors from the zombie-infested streets of London to New Kirkham, a barricaded safe haven in the country. But after battling through crowds of undead monsters, B discovers that the survivors of the town don't necessarily represent the best of humanity. And when evil influences make their way to New Kirkham, unearthing demons from B's past, the humans will be forced to choose between being honorable and being safe.
Darren Shan continues his adventures of a teenage zombie trying to right the wrongs of a flawed human life, exploring the morality and ills of society through the lens of an apocalypse gone wrong--and a terrifying hell on earth reigning.
In this inventive, fast-paced novel, New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi takes on hard-hitting themes--from food safety to racism and immigration--and creates a zany, grand-slam adventure that will get kids thinking about where their food comes from.
The zombie apocalypse begins on the day Rabi, Miguel, and Joe are practicing baseball near their town's local meatpacking plant and nearly get knocked out by a really big stink. Little do they know the plant's toxic cattle feed is turning cows into flesh-craving monsters! The boys decide to launch a stealth investigation into the plant's dangerous practices, unknowingly discovering a greedy corporation's plot to look the other way as tainted meat is sold to thousands all over the country. With no grownups left they can trust, Rabi and his friends will have to grab their bats to protect themselves (and a few of their enemies) if they want to stay alive...and maybe even save the world.
In the finale to the acclaimed trilogy, upheaval in Zora Neale Hurston’s family and hometown persuade her to leave childhood behind and find her destiny beyond Eatonville.
For Carrie and her best friend, Zora, Eatonville—America’s first incorporated Black township—has been an idyllic place to live out their childhoods. But when a lynch mob crosses the town’s border to pursue a fugitive and a grave robbery resuscitates the ugly sins of the past, the safe ground beneath them seems to shift. Not only has Zora’s own father—the showboating preacher John Hurston—decided to run against the town’s trusted mayor, but there are other unsettling things afoot, including a heartbreaking family loss, a friend’s sudden illness, and the suggestion of voodoo and zombie-ism in the air, which a curious and grieving Zora becomes all too willing to entertain.
In this fictionalized tale, award-winning author Victoria Bond explores the end of childhood and the bittersweet goodbye to Eatonville by preeminent author Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960). In so doing, she brings to a satisfying conclusion the story begun in the award-winning Zora and Me and its sequel, Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground, sparking inquisitive readers to explore Hurston’s own seminal work.
