Book Finder

This book opens a window into nonverbal autism through dozens of short, autobiographical essays each offering new insights into autism symptoms, effective and ineffective treatments, and the inner emotional life of a severely autistic boy. In his essays, author Ido Kedar, a brilliant 16-year-old with autism, challenges what he believes are misconceptions in many theories that dominate autism treatment today while he chronicles his personal growth in his struggles to overcome his limitations.

In southeastern Nigeria, twelve-year-old Mnamdi is determined to avenge his police chief father, who was murdered while trying to rid the town of criminals, but Nnamdi feels powerless until he receives a magical object which gives him superpowers.

Life in Mexico is a death sentence for Emiliano and his sister Sara. To escape the violent cartel that is after them, they flee across the border, seeking a better life in the United States and hoping that they can find a way to bring their pursuers to justice. Sara turns herself over to the authorities to apply for asylum. Emiliano enters the country illegally, planning to live with their father. But now Sara is being held indefinitely in a detention facility, awaiting an asylum hearing that may never come, finding it harder every day to hold on to her faith and hope. Life for Emiliano is not easy either. Everywhere he goes, it’s clear that he doesn’t belong. And all the while, the cartel is closing in on them. Emiliano sets off on a tense and dangerous race to find justice, but can he expose the web of crimes from his place in the shadows?

Award-winning author Francisco X. Stork’s powerful follow-up to Disappeared takes an unsparing look at the asylum process and the journey to find a new life in the US.

An achingly poignant tale for learning about immigration and current global issues. This book is fiction, but it is based on a very real and terrible journey. There are young people who have lived this, and it is a story those young people want us to know about.

A journalist explores the pristine “Emerald City,” the American government’s enclave in the middle of war-torn Baghdad.

Lucy was raised by foster parents after her own mother became mentally ill, foster parents who may know more about her past than they’ve shared. Lucy must solve a puzzle, found in the song Scarborough Fair, to break a curse and save her own sanity. Werlin, known mysteries and thrillers, gives this story a unique touch of fantasy.

This fact- and fun-filled look at female contributions to the American Revolution provides a serious but lighthearted introduction to a range of known and unknown women. Affable illustrations include thought and speech bubbles.

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically re-frames US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. 2015 Recipient of the American Book Award.

Balancing epic and intensely personal stakes, this story is a gritty, fast-paced adventure about two brothers caught up in a magical war generations in the making. Growing up in New York, brothers Emil and Brighton always idolized the Spell Walkers — a vigilante group sworn to rid the world of specters. While the Spell Walkers and other celestials are born with powers, specters take them, violently stealing the essence of endangered magical creatures. Brighton wishes he had a power so he could join the fray. Emil just wants the fighting to stop. Brotherhood, love, and loyalty will be put to the test, and no one will escape the fight unscathed.

Black seventeen-year-old Evie Thomas has given up on love. But after finding Instructions for Dancing in a Little Free Library, she gains the ability to see the romantic fates of others and is led by the book to a romance of her own. 

In a terrifying, futuristic United States where Muslim-Americans are forced into internment camps, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin must lead a revolution against complicit silence.

Find out why joggers never smile, learn what happens when you mess with a mummy, and meet some frighteningly intelligent insects.

This fictionalized account of the real Iqbal Masih is told through the voice of Fatima, a young Pakistani girl whose life is changed by Iqbal’s courage.

When young Iqbal is sold into slavery at a carpet factory, his arrival changes everything for the other overworked and abused children there. It is Iqbal who explains to them that despite their master’s promises, he plans on keeping them as his slaves indefinitely. But it is also Iqbal who inspires the other children to look to a future free from toil.

Perhaps his difficult childhood helped create the brilliant scientist (but rude man) he became. A complete portrait of Newton and his contributions to science are presented in a conversational text punctuated with droll illustrations.

In danger of being evicted from the motel he lives in with his alcoholic mother and little sister, ten-year-old Isaiah Dunn discovers a love of poetry after finding his late father’s journal. 

Jack and his family are moving to North Carolina now that his father has joined the navy. In school there, nine-year-old Jack falls hopelessly in love with his new teacher. Told through Jack’s crisp, often funny, sometimes poignant narration in a format that emulates a journal, this is the prequel for the Jack series.

According to his new motto, “A Writer’s Job Is to Turn His Worst Experiences Into Money,” Jack Henry is going to be filthy rich even before he gets out of junior high, for his life is filled with the worst experiences imaginable. In the course of the few months Jack is humiliated by a gorgeous synchronized swimmer, gets a tattoo the size of an ant on his big toe, flubs an IQ test and nearly fails wood shop, and has to dig up his dead dog not once but twice. And that’s not the half of it.

It is the summer after sixth grade and Jack and his offbeat family have relocated to Barbados. But even in a tropical paradise, Jack is plagued by misadventure.

We know a lot about Kennedy’s political career and untimely death, but little has been written for younger readers about his childhood. Kennedy was both a sickly child and a mischievous one.

Inspired by the author’s childhood diaries, this collection of Jack Henry stories depicts a fifth-grade year to end all fifth-grade years. Living in a Miami rental home with a busy railroad track running a stone’s throw from the backyard, Jack is plagued by a know-it-all older sister, a bizarre Francophile teacher, a series of crazed cats, a slightly off-kilter father, a tapeworm, and a pair of escaped convicts — to name just a few of his antagonists.

Sara Louise Bradshaw knows that she should be proud of her beautiful twin Caroline. But how can she? Ever since they were born, Caroline has done nothing but take from Louise: their parents’ – and only – friend. For once in her life, Louise wants to experience the kind of happiness that has always come so easily to Caroline. But in order to do that, she must first figure out who she is, and then make a place for herself outside her sister’s shadow.

“I never thought one small lady from Japan could make such a big difference in my life, but she did.” So begins Rinko’s story about the time that Aunt Waka came to visit. From Mama’s new business to Papa’s new courage in standing up to Depression-era discrimination against the Japanese, Rinko can barely keep up with the way that everyone in the house (herself included) is changing. Rinko and her relatives are unforgettable characters whose stories are told with an easy familiarity, warmth, and gentle humor.

Jasper and his pals Lily and Katie journey to a mysterious land that time forgot… .Delaware!?

Experience the explosion of color and movement of jazz as you pulsate with its beat in a vibrant series of poems and paintings. This father-and-son team explores a variety of jazz forms in an unforgettable book.

In 2008, the first Odyssey Award for distinguished children’s/young adult audiobook was presented to this read-along title. This package brings together the illustrations of the book with the featured Jazz music.