Sydney Taylor's beloved All-of-a-Kind Family series chronicles a Jewish immigrant family at the beginning of the twentieth century. The richly drawn characters, based on Taylor's own life, include five sisters--Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, Gertie--and their mischievous brother, Charlie. The second book in the series, this YA classic presents a vivid and humorous portrait of life at the turn of the century, as WWI approaches, a single uncle finds love, and a new friendship blooms among latkes and the library.
Born in 1904 on New York's Lower East Side, Sydney Taylor was one of the first authors of children's books centered on Jewish characters, and is especially known for the immensely popular All-of-a-Kind Family series. The Sydney Taylor Book Award is given each year by the Jewish Association of Libraries to a book for young people that authentically portrays the Jewish experience.
Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie are back In the fourth entry in the All-of-a-Kind Family series--set right after the first book--Charlie is growing up. Ella gets a big role in the Purim play, Henny gets into trouble at school and runs away from home, Sarah gets her ears pierced, Charlotte has a scary kitchen accident, and Gertie finally is old enough to have a book of her own. Life is never dull for this one-of-a-kind family
Born in 1904 on New York's Lower East Side, Sydney Taylor was one of the first authors of children's books centered on Jewish characters, and is especially known for the immensely popular All-of-a-Kind Family series. The Sydney Taylor Book Award is given each year by the Jewish Association of Libraries to a book for young people that authentically portrays the Jewish experience.
In the fifth and final book in the All-of-A-Kind Family series, Ella, the eldest child of the family, has been offered a stage career by a Broadway talent scout. While Ella wants to sing more than anything else in the world, she finds herself torn between Jules, her beloved fianc who has just returned from World War I, and what's sure to be a tough uphill climb to stardom. Once again, the loving all-of-a-kind-family provides the support needed for Ella to make the right decision.
Born in 1904 on New York's Lower East Side, Sydney Taylor was one of the first authors of children's books centered on Jewish characters, and is especially known for the immensely popular All-of-a-Kind Family series. The Sydney Taylor Book Award is given each year by the Jewish Association of Libraries to a book for young people that authentically portrays the Jewish experience.
In the book that spawned the beloved movie The Parent Trap, nine-year-old Lisa from Vienna--bold, with a head of curls--meets Munich's buttoned-up Lottie at summer camp. Soon, a newspaper clipping tells the tale: they're identical twins, Lisa living a colorful, big-city life with her father while Lottie keeps house with their gentle mother. Why have their parents separated? And how can they get to the bottom of the mystery? They decide to switch hairstyles, manners, and addresses--and that is where the adventure begins.
Erich K stner (1899-1974), a German author, was well known for his poetry and prose. He received wide acclaim for his much-loved books for children, Emil and the Detectives and Lisa and Lottie.
An absorbing historical romance.-Booklist
Constance is an engaging, high-spirited heroine . . . A fine historical novel written with verve and fresh imagination.-Horn Book
Runner-up for the National Book Award for Children's Literature in 1969, Constance is a classic of historical young adult fiction, recounting the daily life, hardships, romances, and marriage of a young girl during the early years of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
From the author of the beloved All-Of-A-Kind Family books comes a timeless story of a family's struggles and triumphs in early twentieth century Eastern Europe. Mama and her two young daughters, Szerena and Gisella, never thought they would be without Papa for five long years. Ever since he left their small farm in Czechoslovakia for America, they have been waiting for him to send for them. In the meantime, with the help of family and neighbors, Mama and the girls work on the farm. While Szerena wishes for a papa like everyone else, Gisella can't remember their father, and wishes he had not gone away without them. Finally, the big day arrives, and Mama and the girls leave for America to reunite with Papa. What will it be like to travel on a train and a ship? And what will happen when at last they see Papa? A delightful evocation of Jewish life in the old world, A Papa Like Everyone Else is the perfect companion to the seminal All-Of-A-Kind Family books.
Originally published in 1982, Domestic Arrangements is the story of a fourteen-year-old New York teen named Tatiana, an unintentional ingénue who becomes notorious for filming a nude scene for a major movie. Tatiana's newfound fame--which includes interviews, magazine covers, and publicists--is set against the backdrop of an increasingly adult personal life, as her parents file for divorce, her sister becomes increasingly jealous of her sibling's success, and she must choose between her teenage boyfriend and new, older loves. A stunning example of Norma Klein's fearless take on the complexities of adolescence, Domestic Arrangements is an indelible portrait of a girl on the cusp of adulthood, learning to balance the challenges of life in the spotlight with love, family, and friendship. This edition features a brand new introduction by Norma's long-time friend, renowned children's author Judy Blume.
Norma Klein was best known for young adult works that dealt with family problems, childhood and adolescent sexuality, as well as social issues like racism, sexism, and contraception. Her first novel, Mom, the Wolf Man and Me (1972), was about the daughter of an unmarried, sexually active woman. Her subsequent works included Sunshine, It's Okay If You Don't Love Me, Breaking Up, and Family Secrets. Because of their subject matter, many of her books sparked considerable controversy, and a 1986 American Library Association survey found that nine of her novels had been removed from libraries. In an interview that same year with the New York Times, Klein said: I'm not a rebel, trying to stir things up just to be provocative. I'm doing it because I feel like writing about real life. She died in 1989 at the age of fifty.
Germany on the cusp of World War II. Hitler has risen to power, and the Jews are being taken away from their homes in the middle of the night, forced to wear yellow stars, their businesses smashed, their lives in ruins. In the middle of all this is Lilli Frankfurter, a half-Jewish girl on the cusp of adolescence, her life and family thrust into the midst of a danger she has only begun to understand.
In the stunning sequel to Isabel's War, Lila Perl, who completed this book just months before her death, brings wartime Germany, England, and America to life through Lilli's eyes. From Kristallnacht to hiding in her grandparents' attic to the Kindertransports that take her to an isolated farm in the English countryside, separated from her family, Lilli must repeatedly hide her identity in order to stay alive. In her final novel, Perl brilliantly evokes Lilli's desperate journey to America--as well as her brave quest back to Europe to find out if anything is left of her family.
Lila Perl published over sixty volumes of fiction and nonfiction for young readers during her long and distinguished career. In addition to the beloved Fat Glenda series, Perl twice received American Library Association Notable awards for nonfiction and was a recipient of the Sidney Taylor Award for Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story. Her penultimate novel, Isabel's War, was named a 2015 Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category, and was well reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Kirkus, among other places. She died in 2013 at the age of ninety-two.
Set in New Orleans, Louisiana, on the eve of World War II, Mischief and Malice is a brand new work from an iconic figure in young adult literature. Following the death of her Aunt Eveline, fourteen-year old Addie--who we first met in Berthe Amoss's classic Secret Lives--is now living with her Aunt Tooise, Uncle Henry, and her longtime rival cousin, Sandra Lee. A new family has just moved into Addie's former house, including a young girl who is just Addie's age. Meanwhile, Louis, the father of Tom, Addie's lifelong neighbor and best friend, suddenly returns after having disappeared when Tom was a baby. Between school dances, organizing a Christmas play, fretting about her hair, and a blossoming romance with Tom, Addie stumbles upon a mystery buried in the Great Catch All, an ancient giant armoire filled with heirlooms of her family's past, which holds a devastating secret that could destroy Louis and Tom's lives. Once again, Berthe Amoss has created an indelible portrait of a young girl coming of age in prewar New Orleans.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Berthe Amoss is the author and illustrator of twenty-eight children's and young adult books. Her picture book The Cajun Gingerbread Boy won a Children's Choice Award, and her YA novel The Chalk Cross was a finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe Award. She lives on the Gulf Coast in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
One morning, six-year old Sonny is awoken by his crying mother, who tells him that, come tomorrow morning, they are leaving to go to Gran'mom's house--without Sonny's father, Eddie. Later that morning, Sonny witnesses a fight between his parents, which revolves around his father having stayed out late the night before because his car had broken down. Eddie has apparently been neglecting his wife and son, devoting his free time instead to repairing his old car. In order to win back his wife, Eddie--with Sonny in tow--pays a visit to Madame Toussaint, an old lady knowledgeable in the ways of voodoo, who tells Eddie that the only way to save his marriage is by burning his car to the ground.
This unforgettable story leads the reader through an eventful day on a Southern sugarcane plantation, and shows, through the eyes of a child, what life was like in the rural South of the 1940s. This new edition of A Long Day in November features Ernest J. Gaines's original introduction, as well as the black-and-white illustrations that accompanied the first edition of the book.
Ernest J. Gaines's 1993 novel A Lesson Before Dying won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and was an Oprah Book Club pick. Gaines has been a MacArthur Foundation fellow, awarded the National Humanities Medal, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier. He lives in Oscar, Louisiana.
Fourteen-year-old Terri has lived with her father since the death of her mother in a car accident when she was four. Father and daughter move often, the reason for which becomes clear when Terri finds out that her mother is not dead, and that she was kidnapped by her father when her parents were getting a divorce.
Set in New Orleans, Louisiana, on the eve of World War II, Mischief and Malice is a brand new work from an iconic figure in young adult literature. Following the death of her Aunt Eveline, fourteen-year old Addie--who we first met in Berthe Amoss's classic Secret Lives--is now living with her Aunt Tooise, Uncle Henry, and her longtime rival cousin, Sandra Lee. A new family has just moved into Addie's former house, including a young girl who is just Addie's age. Meanwhile, Louis, the father of Tom, Addie's lifelong neighbor and best friend, suddenly returns after having disappeared when Tom was a baby. Between school dances, organizing a Christmas play, fretting about her hair, and a blossoming romance with Tom, Addie stumbles upon a mystery buried in the Great Catch All, an ancient giant armoire filled with heirlooms of her family's past, which holds a devastating secret that could destroy Louis and Tom's lives. Once again, Berthe Amoss has created an indelible portrait of a young girl coming of age in prewar New Orleans.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Berthe Amoss is the author and illustrator of twenty-eight children's and young adult books. Her picture book The Cajun Gingerbread Boy won a Children's Choice Award, and her YA novel The Chalk Cross was a finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe Award. She lives on the Gulf Coast in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
In the world of children's literature, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret are widely recognized as epoch-making. They have been received by young readers, year after year, with excitement and love. Nobody's Family is Going to Change--the story of an African American family in New York in the 1970s--shares the vigorous sense of comedy and unflinching fidelity to the real world that has made Fitzhugh's other books into classics.
Though to Brenda Belle Blossom's mother he is just that boy . . . tying those beer cans to the Christmas tree, sixteen-year-old Adam is really the son of a famous movie star who hobnobs with royalty while jetting all over the world. Smarty Brenda Belle Blossom, horrified by fuzz on her upper lip, cracks jokes to avoid the bummer of her teeny Vermont hamlet and ladylike mother. When Adam is expelled from his last boarding school, he washes up in Vermont to stay with his irascible, alcoholic grandfather, and meets Belle at the drug store. Soon they are going steady, calling each other darling, and dedicated to helping other misfits achieve Nothing Power--until Brenda realizes there's more to the ordinary Adam than it seems.
M.E. Kerr is the winner of the 1993 Margaret Edwards Award for her lifetime achievement in writing books for young adults. She has been described by the New York Times Book Review as one of the grand masters of young adult fiction. She lives in Long Island, New York.
After falling asleep in a park, fourteen-year old Zan awakens to find herself transported back in time to the forest world of a band of prehistoric cave dwellers. Adopted by the group, she learns their language and customs, exults in their triumphs, and shares in their grief. However, the society's wise woman has her doubts about Zan, who she believes has brought misfortune with her. In mortal danger, Zane is able to return to her own time--an eleven-month absence which was only a few hours back home.
Norma Fox Mazer (1931-2009) was an American author and teacher best known for her books for young adults. Among the honors Mazer earned for her writing were a National Book Award nomination, a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award (for Saturday, The Twelfth of October), and a Newbery Medal.