This witty, refreshing treatise from a celebrated author and seasoned teacher is a passionate defense of reading—just for the joy of it. Drawing on his experiences as a child, a parent, and an inner-city teacher in Paris, Daniel Pennac reflects on the power of story and reminds us of our right to read anything, anywhere, anytime, so long as we are enjoying ourselves. Foreword and illustrations by Quentin Blake.
In her first novel since winning the Newbery Medal, Katherine Applegate delivers an unforgettable and magical story about family, friendship, and resilience.
Jackson and his family have fallen on hard times. There’s no more money for rent. And not much for food, either. His parents, his little sister, and their dog may have to live in their minivan. Again. Crenshaw is a cat. He’s large, he’s outspoken, and he’s imaginary. He has come back into Jackson’s life to help him. But is an imaginary friend enough to save this family from losing everything?
Crenshaw proves in unexpected ways that friends matter,
Madam, Will You Talk blends biting description with sheer terror as only Mary Stewart can. Charity Selborne, a lovely war widow, and her irreverent artist friend, Louise Cray, arrive in the South of France expecting a conventional holiday. The vistas of Provence delight them, and Charity is pleased to meet a young man of thirteen who is having trouble with his dog. He introduces himself and Charity is charmed—until she senses a terrible maturity behind his grave eyes, and shortly hears the rumors about his father. From this point on the tension mounts steadily until it reaches the breaking point.
Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with
twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—
and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a
strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has
never known the identity of his father—a mystery
that his wife insists he must solve to move forward
with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the
mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband,
Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There,
in the midst of a fierce blizzard, Kit and Jasper confront memories of the
bittersweet decade when their families were joined.
Broke and knocked up, Mattie Wallace has got all
her worldly possessions crammed into six giant
trash bags and nowhere to go. Try as she might,
she really is turning into her late mother, a broken
alcoholic who never met a bad choice she didn’t
make.
When Mattie gets news of a possible inheritance left
by a grandmother she’s never met, she jumps at this one last chance to turn
things around. Leaving the Florida Panhandle, she drives eight hundred
miles to her mother’s birthplace—the tiny town of Gandy,
From the author of the widely acclaimed debut
novel Seating Arrangements, winner of the Dylan
Thomas Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book
Prize for First Fiction: a gorgeously written, fiercely
compelling glimpse into the passionate, political
world of professional ballet and its magnetic hold
over two generations.
Astonish Me is the irresistible story of Joan, a
ballerina whose life has been shaped by her relationship with the worldfamous
dancer Arslan Rusakov, whom she helps defect from the Soviet
Union to the United States.
