Petty Crimes

Author	Winifred Conkling
ISBN	1582463379

Sylvia never expected to be at the center of a landmark legal battle; all she wanted was to enroll in school.

Aki never expected to be relocated to a Japanese internment camp in the Arizona desert; all she wanted was to stay on her family farm and finish the school year.

The two girls certainly...

Author	Nancy Osa
ISBN	0385732333

Violet Paz has just turned 15, a pivotal birthday in the eyes of her Cuban grandmother. Fifteen is the age when a girl enters womanhood, traditionally celebrating the occasion with a quinceañero. But while Violet is half Cuban, she’s also half Polish, and more importantly, she feels 100% American....

Author	John H. Ritter
ISBN	0698119312

Tyler's temper is out of control. If he isn't careful, he'll blow his chances of making the All-Star team and being noticed by a scout. But Tyler's coach, a Vietnam War veteran, has seen anger destroy enough people. He knows that if Tyler is ever going to fulfill his dreams, he'll have to learn to fight his...

Author	Ann Jaramillo
ISBN	1596431547

Miguel's life is just beginning. Or so he thinks. Fifteen-year-old Miguel leaves his rancho deep in Mexico to migrate to California across la linea, the border, in a debut novel of life-changing, cliff-hanging moments.
But Miguel's carefully laid plans change suddenly when his younger sister...

Author	Darrien Lee
ISBN	1933967714

This week I have started reading '16 Going on 21' by Darrien Lee. So far this book is really intense it jumps straight into the action. Denim and Dré have been friends since they were three years old and it is clear how much they love each other. The only thing in their way is Denim's annoying and overbearing...

Author

Janet McDonald

Raven never expected to be a mother at sixteen. Is she going to be just another high school dropout, a project girl with few prospects? Could be, except Raven has ambition. Still, when is she going to find the time to finish school? Then her older sister tells her about a spelling bee that promises the winner...

Author	Elizabeth Partridge
ISBN	0670035351

Before Springsteen and before Dylan, there was Woody Guthrie. With "This Machine Kills Fascists," scrawled across his guitar in big black letters, Woody Guthrie brilliantly captured in song the experience of twentieth-century America. Whether he sang about union organizers, migrant workers,...

Author	David Klass
ISBN	0590485911

When he joins a predominantly black "Teen Dream Team" that will be representing the United States in an international basketball tournament in Rome, Jimmy Doyle makes some unexpected discoveries about prejudice, racism, and politics. In this award-winning novel, a young basketball star confronts...

Author	Yxta Maya Murray
ISBN	0802135641

Locas tells a violent and poignant story set in the heart of the rough L.A. neighborhood Echo Park. Lucia and Cecilia are the girlfriend and sister of the rising young loco whose gun trade is about to explode into the big business of drugs. When their world starts to split apart under the vicious pressure...

Author	Peter Johnson
ISBN	0061988901

For fans of Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee, Gary D. Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars, and Jack Gantos's Joey Pigza Books comes a hilarious and poignant slice-of-life novel from critically acclaimed author and poet Peter Johnson.

When an author comes to speak to his class in a rundown area of Providence,...

Author	Monica Brown
ISBN	0892392355

"My name is Marisol McDonald, and I don't match. At least, that's what everyone tells me."

Marisol McDonald has flaming red hair and nut-brown skin. Polka dots and stripes are her favorite combination. She prefers peanut butter and jelly burritos in her lunch box. And don't even think of asking...

Author	Sally Murphy
ISBN	0763648213

At school, Pearl is a group of one, and at home her beloved granny is fading. A poignant gem of a tale about independence, grief, and finding your place.

Pearl likes to write poems, but despite the insistence of her teacher, Ms. Bruff, Pearl's poems don't rhyme, and neither does she. She wishes...

Author	Amy Hest
ISBN	0763636959

The joys and trials of fourth grade - and of life with her father now that her mother is gone - play out in charming letters from Annie to her dog, Leo.

Annie Rossi never, ever thought her father would let her have a dog. But now that he’s finally given in, she’s found the perfect ear for the stories...

Author	Laurence Yep
ISBN	0590208330

Despite its brevity (49 pages, plus the afterword and bibliography), this novella is emotional, compelling and educational. It explains the events of August 6, 1945, when the United States from the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The language is simple and easy to understand....

Author

Sally Grindley

Dear D.J. Lucas,
My uncle bought me one of your books for Christmas. It's called Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Boy? I want to be a writer. I want to write a story now. Please will you help me?
Love from Max

And so begins Max's funny correspondence with his favorite author, the world-famous...

Author	Cherríe L. Moraga
ISBN	0931122740

"Heroes and Saints & Other Plays" is Chicana playwright Cherr e Moraga's premiere collection of theatre. Included are: "Shadow of a Man," winner of the 1990 Fund for New American Plays Award; "Heroes and Saints," winner of the Dramalogue, the PEN West, and the Critics Circle awards, as well as the...

Author	Clark Taylor
ISBN	0811801233

With a beat reminiscent of hip hop or rap music, a well known nursery rhyme is brilliantly transformed into a powerful poem about the tragic problem of illegal drugs and its victims. From the harvesting of the coca plants to dealers and gangs to the innocent crack babies born everyday, cocaine's journey...

Author	Sanyika Shakur
ISBN	0802118712

The follow up to his best-selling memoir Monster, Sanyika Shakur’s T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. is a vicious, heart-wrenching and true-to-life novel about an LA gang member that masterfully captures the violence and depravity of gang life. Shakur’s protagonist is Lapeace, the leader of the Eight Tray...

Author	Ferrol Sams
ISBN	0140251820

From the bestselling author of eight novels, including Run with the Horsemen.

Each of these novella-length tales focuses on an epiphany--a revelation born of an unlikely interchange. A quixotic old doctor who loves poetry and battles bureaucracy talks with his new patient, an ex-con whose...

Author	Pat Hutchins
ISBN	0688131026

Pat Hutchins creates an adorable tale of a young boy who is given a short grocery list to remember: six farm eggs, a cake for tea, a pound of pears and bacon. He and his furry companion make the trek to the market, along the way trying to remember the items on the list. He runs into trouble when he mixes up the...

Author	Babygirl Daniels
ISBN	1601621833

This story takes place in the projects of Detroit. A girl named Latina Smith was put into some CRAZY drama. She already had a tough life because he mother had a BAD drug addiction. One day after chilling with Mike (Her crush since middle school), They seen two men drop a duffle bag onto the roof next to the...

Author	Walter Dean Myers
ISBN	0440967848

When Lonnie Jackson leaves Harlem for a basketball scholarship to a midwestern college, he know he must keep his head straight and his record clean. That's the only way he'll have a chance of making it to the pros someday.



But his street smarts haven't prepared him for the pressures...

Author	Art Rodriquez
ISBN	0967155509

East Side Dreams is the debut memoir of Art Rodriguez, a Latino American who survived growing up on the rough side of life, often at odds with his dictatorial father. Rodriguez spent time as an inmate of the California Youth Authority—a prison system for young lawbreakers. This book reflects on the...

Author

Mario Ramos

This book was on our "New Shelf" at work. I had to pick it up. This is a story about a wolf who is very full of himself. He thinks he is the best looking animal in the forest. He comes across Little Red Riding Hood and asks her who is the most handsome creature in the woods? She says that it is him. Mr. Wolf then meets...