July/August 2014
— A boy stands at the edge of a cliff, gathering courage to jump into the river below, then leaps and experiences the exhilarating plunge into cool water.
— Below, by Meg McKinlay, Candlewick Press: Massachusetts, 2013; $15.99 Anyone would think that if you drowned a town with five thousand swimming pools of water, it would be done and...
— A girl struggles with her family's move to Hawaii and her father's engagement, finding peace only when she discovers her mother's spirit remains with her.
— A child builds an elaborate fairy house with writing materials for messages, abandons belief when no note appears, missing signs that fairies visited but cannot write.
— A boy secretly befriends a field mouse his family considers a pest, then faces a moral crisis when his grandmother orders him to shoot it with his bow and arrow.
— A wolf's howl, an elephant's wail, a polar bear's lament become nature's collective plea for humans to stop destroying and start creating a world where all creatures can thrive.
— A boy's subway journey becomes a catalog of encounters — a homeless woman, street performers, a soul-reading stranger — each revealing the city's complex humanity.
— Sugar, by Jewell Parker Rhodes; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: New York, 2013; $16.99 Ten-year-old Sugar lives on the River Road Plantation in Mississippi in the early 1800s. Sugar...
— A girl receives a mysterious golden locket that only certain people can see, giving her courage to sing her first solo and later passing it to her sister.
— A girl abandons her best friend when she moves away, then learns about friendship and priorities when she helps an injured competitor during a cross-country race.