Book Finder

Aided by an army of beachcombers, oceanographer Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer tracks trash in the name of science. From sneakers to hockey gloves, Curt monitors the watery fate of human-made cargo that has spilled into the ocean. The information he collects is much more than casual news; it is important scientific data that is used to understand and protect our ocean.

Kirsten’s parents are fighting and her best friend has suddenly joined the popular crowd. Walker is the only black student at his new private school and his single mom watches over him like a hawk. What happens when Kirsten’s and Walker’s worlds collide?

Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, shares his remarkable story of growing up in South Africa with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child to exist. But he did exist — and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government. In a country where racism barred blacks from social, educational, and economic opportunity, Trevor surmounted staggering obstacles and created a promising future for himself thanks to his mom’s unwavering love and indomitable will. 

Tristan, in mourning for his best friend Eddie, attempts to recover Eddie’s story journal and finds himself on a mission to save a world populated with people he knows from stories—African American folk heroes and West African gods.

World War II may be ending, but for 19-year-old bomber pilot, Henry Forester, the conflict still rages. Shot down over France, Henry endured a dangerous trek to freedom, relying on civilians and Resistance fighters to stay alive. But back home in Virginia, Henry is still reliving air battles with Hitler’s Luftwaffe and his torture by the Gestapo. Mostly, Henry can’t stop worrying about the safety of those who helped him escape — especially one young French boy, Pierre, who, because of Henry, may have lost everything.

Author Andy Turnbull describes his ice-road adventures in an 18-wheeler bound for isolated Inuit villages in the Arctic Circle. Maps, historical detail, and great photography bring this remote region to life.

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester.

But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder. 

As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed eleven times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this illustrated memoir, she shows today’s young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.

As the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor has inspired young people around the world to reach for their dreams. But what inspired her? For young Sonia, the answer was books! They were her mirrors, her maps, her friends, and her teachers. They helped her to connect with her family in New York and in Puerto Rico, to deal with her diabetes diagnosis, to cope with her father’s death, to uncover the secrets of the world, and to dream of a future for herself in which anything was possible.

Justice Sotomayor shares that love of books with a new generation of readers, and inspires them to read and puzzle and dream for themselves. 
 

When Monique gets into a prestigious ballet training program and Rasheeda is left behind to help her deeply religious and strict aunt at their close-knit church, the thirteen-year-old best friends spend the summer without each other to lean on for support.

Black identical twins Francine and Maureen Carter are best friends, but as they start middle school, one is more ready than the other to grow as individuals.