E. Lockhart is the author of the highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller We Were Liars and the Ruby Oliver quartet (TheBoyfriend List, The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and Real Live Boyfriends), as well as Flyon the Wall and Dramarama. Her novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book, a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of a Cybils Award for Best Young Adult Novel.
Through a class poetry assignment, fifth-grader Lonnie reveals the house fire that killed his parents, his separation from his sister, his life in foster care, and his community’s struggle with poverty and racism.
Martin Conway hates his school and all of the snobbery there. When his grandmother dies and leaves him an old Forties radio, he mysteriously teleports back in time to the London Blitz and meets Jimmy who needs his help. Through a series of alternating story lines between the past and present, Martin helps expose various sins committed in both times.
More than just the story of the Pullman porters, this Coretta Scott King Award winner recounts the saga of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major black labor union. Organized just after the Civil War, the union brought together many freed slaves who had been hired by George Pullman to pamper the passengers in his sleeping cars. Seasoned with poetry, song, black-and-white historical photographs, and the personal reminiscences of porters and their wives, the text is full and engaging.
When rebel soldiers attack his village in Sudan, 11-year-old Salva flees the violence, beginning a dangerous walk toward a crowded refugee camp in Ethiopia, then on to new life in Rochester, New York. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Nya spends her days in Sudan looking for scarce supplies of fresh water for her family. Based on the true story of Sudanese “Lost Boys” who came to the U.S. in the mid-1990s.
Fifteen-year-old Will’s big brother has been shot and killed. According to the rules that Will has been taught, it is now his job to kill the person responsible. He easily finds his brother’s gun and gets on the elevator to head down from his eighth-floor apartment. But it’s a long way down to the ground floor. At each floor, a different person gets on to tell a story. Each of these people is already dead. As they relate their tales, readers learn about the cycle of violence in which Will is caught up.
As a 12-year-old growing up in Sierra Leone, Beah lived a life not unlike a typical American pre-teen, listening to hip hop and hanging out with friends. When civil war comes to his country, however, he is surrounded by death and is forced to survive by becoming a soldier, plied with cocaine and sent on killing sprees. The violence is frequent and not for the squeamish — the book was published for the Adult market — but teens love a tale of overcoming long odds.
