National Network for Equitable Library Service

Reg and Keely are twins. Keely loves painting and bugs. Reg loves rocks. Keely sings crazy rhymes. Reg plays softball. Shawna and Burt are their friends. In this series of linked stories, the children’s deep involvement with their daily activities never falters, from a bug walk, through incidents flying a kite and dividing labor at clean up time, to a chance to swim in the river on a hot summer's day.

Allie’s life has just taken a turn for the worse. Not only do her parents fight all the time, but now she thinks she might be pregnant. She hooks up with her old friend Razz, a professional skateboarder, and goes on the road. Razz is ranked number one but his rivalry with Slammer is heating up, and Razz and Allie head for home, right into the path of a fierce tornado. To survive in the horror and destruction that follow the storm, Allie has to call on an inner strength she didn’t know she had.

Jason is on outsider. A recent immigrant from China, he lives in a close-minded town with his mother and younger brother. Trying hard to fit in, Jason falls in with the wrong crowd and ends up in trouble with the police. Jason finds he needs to fight to belong. Does he have what it takes to make this new place his home?

When a division one coach comes to their smaller school to bring the football program up to contender status, Moose and the rest of the players on the team are pumped. Coach Barnes has new ideas and a vision for the future, nothing is too good for his players. With a new training regimen, everything seems to be on a winning track. But when Moose and others are offered steroids, tempers start to fray and the teammates have to decide whose side they are on.

In The White Horse Talisman, Chantel, Adam, Holly and Owen must help Equus, the great white horse, find his mate and foal and regain his magical talisman. But as the horse rises, so does the dragon. The age-old battle between good and evil threatens the bond between Chantel and Adam and endangers the quest. This is fantasy as its best, a story that raises hairs on the back of the neck and sends satisfying chills up and down the spine, a story that, while clearly drawn from the rich world of make believe, feels truer than true.

When softhearted handyman Cedric O'Toole agrees to help Barry Mitchell renovate his farmhouse, he finds himself facing old fears. Not only did Mitchell bully Cedric all through school, but his life has been troubled ever since. Now, just out of prison, he's broke and his parents have gone missing, leaving a cloud of suspicion hanging over his head. But when Barry warns him not to touch the boarded-up door in the cellar, the ever-curious Cedric can't resist. The small storage room, obviously unused in years, contains jars of preserves, barrels of dried apples and a pile of small bones.

When an osprey nest atop an electrical pole catches fire, the whole town of Waterton loses power. Being a park warden's daughter, Jenna (whom everyone calls Cricket) is there at the scene, where she finds three abandoned baby ospreys. Caring for the chicks proves to be challenging for Cricket. The birds are noisy, hungry and very picky eaters. But when she discovers that the power company is building a new anti-nesting device on the electrical pole, Cricket has an even bigger problem. How will she reunite the baby birds with their parents without a place for them to build a nest?

Gerri waits outside all night to audition for Big Time, her favorite TV singing competition. She believes she has a shot at success, but when she's insulted by one of the judges and kicked out of the competition, she thinks she'll probably never sing again. After a teacher at her school asks her to join a choral club, Gerri reluctantly gets involved. Even though she can't read music and she doesn't know the other kids, she finds herself enjoying the group and learning a lot about music.

Gulliver Dowd is finally on the verge of unraveling the mystery behind his sister’s murder when the man who is supposed to give him the scoop, NYPD Detective Sam Patrick, is gunned down on the Coney Island Boardwalk. As Dowd delves into Patrick’s accidental shooting, he uncovers a pattern of corruption and deceit involving organized crime and the police. But there are tough choices to be made. Just how much is Gulliver willing to sacrifice in order to find out why his sister was murdered and to unmask the killer? The answers aren’t found in the moon or the stars, but on the boardwalk.

When eleven-year-old Darren Dirkowitz’s evil stepbrother (code name: Waldo) gets hold of Darren’s tippity-top-secret spy journal, he threatens to expose it to the entire Preston Middle School student body. Unless, that is, Darren starts doing his dirty work for him. Now Darren’s got to use the oh-so-cloak-and-daggery skills he’s honed in his secret alternate life as Dirk Daring, Secret Agent to spy on kids at school. Naturally, he also sets up a separate, sneaky surveillance program to unearth Waldo’s own secrets.