Fiction for Tweens

Erin Law and her friends are damaged children because they have no parents. At least that's what Maureen, the woman who runs the orphanage, says. So Erin and two friends run away, down river on a raft. What they find on their journey is stranger than anything they could ever imagine.

Sliding into the Rabbit Hole... Would She Ever Return?
On the surface, Alice Laxton seems no different from any other college girl: bright, inquisitive, excited about the life ahead of her. But for years, a genetic time bomb has been ticking away. Because of Alice's near-genius intelligence, teachers and counselors have always made excuses for her "little idiosyncrasies." But during a stress-filled senior year at college, a new world of voices, visions, and unexplainable "knowledge" causes Alice to begin to lose her grip on reality.
As Alice's schizophrenia progresses, she experiences a disturbing religious "awakening," believing that God and angels and demons are speaking to her. When others attempt to intervene, Alice is subjected to a wide range of "treatments" even more frightening and painful than her illness.
Powerfully

During an annual family reunion at church, 12-year-old Esther Lea Ridley is drenched by a baptism of fire, marking the beginning of a healing crusade from church to church in the backwater towns of South Carolina. She shares her new gift with the needy and not so needy, but it is not until she confronts her own dreams of glory that she learns to use the calling for those she truly loves.

After her parent's divorce, Lily's younger brother, Michael, goes to live with his father. Then, one day Michael calls her from the Baltimore-Washington Airport where their father has abandoned him, and Lily wonders if she will be able to rescue herself from the bitterness and anger she feels.

Louie, a high school senior in a small Idaho town, learns about sportsmanship, love, and death as he matures into manhood.

As a newly arrived freshman at West Point, 17-year-old Andi finds herself gaining both confidence and self esteem as she struggles to get through the grueling six weeks of new cadet training known as the Beast.

New to town, Brent Bishop longs to stroll around school with the popular Brianna on his arm. But when Brianna begs him at a party full of schoolmates to stop hounding her, Brent's hopes are shattered. Trying to escape his humiliation, he attempts to destroy himself in a car crash -- and ends up killing Lea, an innocent teen unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Lea's mother asks one thing of Brent: that he create four whirligigs from a picture of Lea and set them up at the four corners of the United States. Lea's mother believes that by spreading the joy that whirligigs gave Lea as a child, Brent will keep Lea's spirit alive.

And so Brent goes off with an unlimited bus ticket and the tools he needs to memorialize Lea. On his journey, he rediscovers his own love of life, and he begins to realize how -- like the pieces that form the int

2007 Christy Award Winner - Young Adult
As a 13-year-old boy in the pre-Civil War South comes to terms with his father's involvement in the Underground Railroad and his mother's antipathy toward abolitionism, he realizes he cannot just sit idly by.

From the authors of "Snickers from the Front Pew": Griffin Smith's first interstate road trip unearths family weirdness, one messed-up guy, and one angry coyote.

Now repacked with totally fresh-looking new covers: two classic novels that tell the stories of two troubled girls--one who needs help but is afraid to ask for it, and the other desperately reaching out but in all the wrong places. Reissue.

This winner of the Coretta Scott King Award takes place in Heaven, an Ohio town where 14-year-old Marley has grown up. One day she discovers the people she calls Momma and Pops are not really her parents. She is forced to question all her assumptions about who she is, in this tale about the search for identity and the power of forgiveness.

Lawton's new teen fiction series is based on the reality television craze. When Alexanna O'Donnell wins a total fashion makeover on a hot new reality TV show, she returns from Hollywood sporting a polished, uptown look. As she deals with changes around her, the upheaval causes her to develop a plan for a soul-deep makeover.

Mikaelsen's award-winning tale of a juvenile offender's banishment at the hands of Native American Circle Justice now includes a reading group guide and questions, and an interview with the author.

Morris weaves an exciting fantasy novel for young adults--the first book in the "Seven Sleepers" series. Fifteen-year-old Josh Adams wakes from a 50-year sleep to find that he has escaped nuclear war--and that the genetically altered races of Earth now hail his awakening as the first fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.

Things used to be normal in Casper, Alabama. Charity Pittman was a regular fourteen-year-old, the perfect daughter, following in her preacher father's footsteps. But then Adrienne arrived, with her big-city ways and artsy ideas. Reverend Pittman thinks she's the devil incarnate. Charity thinks she's amazing.
But no one knows what to think of Adrienne when she claims she's seen Jesus.
In the heartening and humorous book that made the National Book Award shortlist, Han Nolan visits a small town that's praying for a miracle but heading for disaster.
Reader's guide and an interview with the author included.

So what do you do when your biology field trip takes a little detour--to heaven? If you're David James, the class clown, you demand an audience with God and challenge him to a debate. The prize? A ticket back to life. But David doesn't have a clue how a debate actually works, and so he teams up with Marie, a nerdy classmate who happens to be president of the Speech and Debate Club. Their efforts seem thwarted at every step, but David sticks it out with Marie and wonders, Will a goof-off have what it takes to beat God? -A wildly funny and action-packed debut novel -A contemporary novel with an odd assortment of characters in an even odder setting--heaven.

This is one of the Newbury Medalist's most acclaimed and popular novels: a fantasy epic about a young woman who uncovers the myth and takes on the persona of a legendary outlaw. It is the first novel of Voigt's successful Kingdom series, which also includes The Wings of a Falcon.

A family joins its reverend's flock at a mountain retreat to await the end of the world. But "this" world has only just begun for two teenagers with more attitude than faith. Why should the world end now when they've just fallen in love for the first time?