Difficult Teens

Isabel has one rule: no dating. It's easier. It's safer. It's better...for the other person. She's got issues. She's got secrets. She's got rheumatoid arthritis. But then she meets another sick kid. He's got a chronic illness Isabel's never heard of, something she can't even pronounce. He understands what it means to be sick. He understands her more than her healthy friends. He understands her more than her own father, who's a doctor.

Carolyn Mackler's Printz Honor book - starring the unforgettably funny, body-conscious Virginia Shreves - returns in this 15th anniversary edition featuring text updates and never-before-heard material from the author. Fifteen-year-old Virginia feels like a plus-sized black sheep in her family, especially next to her perfect big brother Byron. Not to mention her best friend has moved, leaving Virginia to navigate an awkward relationship with a boy alone. In order to survive, Virginia decides to follow a "Fat Girl Code of Conduct", which works, until the unthinkable causes her family's facade to crumble.

Carlos Fuentes doesn't want any part of the life his older brother, Alex, has laid out for him in Boulder, Colorado. He wants to keep living on the edge, and carve his own path - just like Alex did. Unfortunately, his ties to a Mexican gang aren't easy to break, and he soon finds himself being set up by a drug lord. When Alex arranges for Carlos to live with his former professor and his family to keep him from being sent to jail, Carlos feels completely out of place.

Turn back the clocks! Your sweet child has morphed into a teen. And it's no longer just a messy bedroom or an attitude with a capital "A" causing concern. There's a whole new range of issues on the horizon. What if your daughter texts a naked picture to a "boyfriend" ...which he then forwards to the entire class? What if your son becomes increasingly withdrawn...Or your child is being bullied online? Would you know what to do? You could read a whole book on teen psychology - but who has the time!

Jamais la jeune Koya n'aurait imaginé être propulsée à des milliers de kilomètres hors de son pays natal dans l'inquiétant pays de là-bas, comme disait sa grand-mère. Elle quitte le douillet village haut perché d'Incapirca au cœur de l'Équateur, brise tous ses repères avec pour seul soutien le souvenir des yeux pétillants de la vieille abuela et de son énergie féroce. Elle suit la trace des volcans andins, le long de la formidable cordillère, qui, à chaque instant, lui rappelle les légendes de son village.

Summer means beach time to Christy. But her best friend, Katie, has a different idea - let's be camp counselors! Christy warms to the plan until Katie announces at the last minute that she has to back out. Christy takes on the challenge and soon finds she is bewildered and overwhelmed by her fifth-grade girls, who have boundless energy for anything except what Christy wants them to do.

When her best guy friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, 16-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it. Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice.

Jack and Christy have been best friends for over seven years. They play basketball and tennis together, they swim and skate together - even if Chris is better than Jack at everything. But now it’s the summer before high school, and not everything is fun and games. Always a tomboy, Chris is suddenly turning into a world-class beauty. She even puts on some makeup. All the boys are falling for her, including Jack. Yet does he really love her, or is he just afraid of losing the friendship they’ve enjoyed for so long?

Macy grew up unwanted, unloved, and alone. By his teens he had quit school and begun stealing. In and out of juvie, Macy is a shoplifter, a car thief, and, by age eighteen, a murderer. Danny grew up physically disabled, raised by his grandmother, and a loner. Now sixteen, he finds solace in taking photographs, particularly of monarch butterflies, and thinking about Leah, the most beautiful girl in town.

In August 1972, President Idi Amin declares that a message from God has come to him in a dream: all foreign Indians must be "weeded out" of Uganda in the next 90 days. Fifteen-year-old Sabine and her father, a successful businessman, are confident that their family will not be affected, since they are Ugandan citizens, but Sabine's fearful mother is certain that they will have to leave.

Eleven-year-old Delphine and her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern travel to Oakland to meet their mother, Cecil, who abandoned their family years earlier. But even when Cecil gets them to her house, she shows no interest and seems to view them as nothing but a nuisance.

Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also delivers pizzas part-time. One night, Kayla, another delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza, goes out with an order and never comes back. To Gabie's horror, she learns that the man who called in the fake pizza order had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working that night. Was Kayla’s fate really meant for Gabie? Obsessed with finding Kayla, Gabie teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together they set out to prove Kayla isn’t dead - and to find her before she is.

A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex's is a compelling story of a more profound hunger - that of a child for his parents' love and care.

Written with the voice and rhythm of the street that only first-hand knowledge can provide, Shark Bait will attract young adult patrons to your library the way The Outsiders did a generation ago. In this gritty and realistic audiobook, 12-year-old Mokes is torn between obeying his father, the police chief in a small Hawaiian town, and hanging out with his trouble-seeking friends.

On February 22, 1853, 15-year-old Niels Nelson is prepared to be executed on Gallows Hill. The master carpenter comes to measure Niels for his coffin. The master baker bakes bread for the spectators. The messenger posts the notice of execution in the town square. The poet prepares his best pen to record the events as they unfold. A fly, Niels' only companion in the cell, buzzes. A dog hovers by his young master's window. A young girl hovers, too, pitying the boy. The executioner sharpens his blade.

When Janie first realized she was the missing child on the milk carton, her whole world fell apart. At first, she wondered if the parents she loved so much had actually kidnapped her, but it turns out that they were only trying to protect her. Now that the mystery of Janie's kidnapping has been unraveled, she is caught on the horns of a huge dilemma.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, cofounder of the notorious Crips gang, is a death-row inmate. But in his two decades of incarceration, Williams has also become a respected author and activist whose dedication to ending gang warfare in the lives of inner-city children has earned him a 2001 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. In this award-winning book, which has drawn praise from educators, government leaders, and families alike. Williams describes the brutal reality of being an inmate.

Jarra never wanted to be a celebrity. All she ever wanted was to gain some respect for the people left on Earth: the unlucky few whose immune system prevents them from portaling to other planets. Except now she's the most famous Earth girl in the universe - but not everyone in the universe is happy about it, nor the fact that she has found love with a norm. Jarra's actions have repercussions that spread further than she ever could have imagined, and political unrest threatens to tear apart the delicate balance of peace between humanity's worlds.

It’s been three years since the Virgil County High School Massacre. Three years since my best friend, Sarah, was killed in a bathroom stall during the mass shooting. Everyone knows Sarah’s story - that she died proclaiming her faith. But it’s not true. I know because I was with her when she died. I didn’t say anything then, and people got hurt because of it. Now Sarah’s parents are publishing a book about her, so this might be my last chance to set the record straight. Except Sarah’s martyrdom is important to a lot of people, people who don’t take kindly to what I’m trying to do.

In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man - a bioengineered war beast named Tool - who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses.