Rating: 
(1 reviews)
Author: Joseph Stoutzenberger, Maurice O’Connell
Publisher: Harcourt Religion Pub
Sunshine
August 7, 2008 – 12:18 pm
Rating: 
(306 reviews)
Author: Robin McKinley
Publisher: Jove
Product Description
There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts. Vampires never entered her mind. Until they found her.
You Can Do It!
August 7, 2008 – 7:54 am
Rating: (16 reviews)
Author: Tony Dungy
Publisher: Little Simon Inspirations
Product Description
Tony Dungy’s little brother, Linden, is a third grader who is having a bad day at school. Linden is the youngest of the Dungy family and the least motivated because he hasn’t found “it.” In a family where everyone seems to have found their special talent, all Linden knows is that he wants to make people happy.
With encouragement from his parents, a helping hand from his older brother Tony, and inspiration from God, Linden learns that if he dreams big and has faith, he can do anything!
Vocabulary Workshop: Level G (Vocabulary Workshop)
August 7, 2008 – 3:27 am
Rating: (8 reviews)
Author: Jerome Shostak
Publisher: William H Sadlier
Artemis Fowl Book 1 (Promotional Edition) (Artemis Fowl (Quality))
August 6, 2008 – 9:59 pm
Rating: (8 reviews)
Author: Eoin Colfer
Publisher: Miramax
Product Description
Artemis Fowl combines the astuteness of Sherlock Holmes with the sang-froid of James Bond and the attitude of Attila the Hun. But even Artemis doesnt know what hes taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These arent the fairies of bedtime stories. These fairies are armed, and theyre dangerous. Artemis thinks hes got them just where he wants them, but then they stop playing by the rules
Among the Hidden (Shadow Children #1)
August 6, 2008 – 12:51 pm
Rating: 
(397 reviews)
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Publisher: Aladdin
Product Description
Luke has never been to school. He’s never had a birthday party, or gone to a friend’s house for an overnight. In fact, Luke has never had a friend.
Luke is one of the shadow children, a third child forbidden by the Population Police. He’s lived his entire life in hiding, and now, with a new housing development replacing the woods next to his family’s farm, he is no longer even allowed to go outside.
Then, one day Luke sees a girl’s face in the window of a house where he knows two other children already live. Finally, he’s met a shadow child like himself. Jen is willing to risk everything to come out of the shadows — does Luke dare to become involved in her dangerous plan? Can he afford not to?
Download Description
Luke has never been to school. He’s never had a birthday party, or gone to a friend’s house for an overnight. In fact, Luke has never had a friend. Luke is one of the shadow children, a third child forbidden by the Population Police. He’s lived his entire life in hiding, and now, with a new housing development replacing the woods next to his family’s farm, he is no longer even allowed to go outside. Then, one day Luke sees a girl’s face in the window of a house where he knows two other children already live. Finally, he’s met a shadow child like himself. Jen is willing to risk everything to come out of the shadows — does Luke dare to become involved in her dangerous plan? Can he afford not to?
Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon
August 5, 2008 – 9:54 pm
Author: Melissa Anelli
Publisher: Pocket
Amazon.com
Product Description:
***Featuring a Foreward by J.K. Rowling***
The Harry Potter Books Were Just the Beginning of the Story. . .
During the brief span of just one decade, hundreds of millions of perfectly ordinary people made history: they became the only ones who would remember what it was like when the Harry Potter saga was still unfinished. What it was like to seek out friends, families, online forums, fan fiction, and podcasts to get a fix between novels. When the death of a character was a hotter bet than the World Series. When the unfolding story of a boy wizard changed the way books are read for all time.
And as webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron, one of the most popular Harry Potter sites on the Internet, Melissa Anelli had a front row seat to it all. Whether it was helping Scholastic stop leaks and track down counterfeiters, hosting live PotterCasts at bookstores across the country, touring with the wizard rock band Harry and the Potters, or traveling to Edinburgh to interview J. K. Rowling personally, Melissa was at the center of the Harry Potter tornado, and nothing about her life would ever be the same.
The Harry Potter books are a triumph of the imagination that did far more than break sales records for all time. They restored the world’s sense of wonder, and took on a magical life of their own. Now the series has ended, but the story is not over. With remembrances from J. K. Rowling’s editors, agents, publicists, fans, and Rowling herself, Melissa Anelli takes us on a personal journey through every aspect of the Harry Potter phenomenon—from his very first spell to his lasting impact on the way we live and dream.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
August 5, 2008 – 6:50 pm
Rating: (79 reviews)
Author: Beverly Cleary
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Amazon.com
“Pb-pb-b-b-b. Pb-pb-b-b-b.” With these magic vocables, Ralph the mouse revs up a dream come true–his very own motorcycle. Living in a knothole in a hotel room, young Ralph has seen plenty of families come and go, some more generous with their crumbs than others. But when young Keith and his parents check in to the hotel, Ralph gets his first chance to check out. He has always fantasized about venturing beyond the second floor, maybe even outside. Curiosity overcomes caution, and Ralph must have a go at Keith’s toy motorcycle. Soon, the headstrong mouse finds himself in a pickle, when all he wanted was to ride a motorcycle. Lucky for him, the boy understands how it is. When he discovers Ralph in his thwarted attempt to abscond with the toy bike, Keith generously encourages the rodent to ride. He even teaches him the simple trick of starting the motorcycle: “You have to make a noise… pb-pb-b-b-b.” The subsequent situations Ralph motors into require quick thinking and grownup-sized courage. The team of Beverly Cleary and Louis Darling has been a great favorite for decades, introducing young chapter readers to Ramona, Beezus, Henry, and of course Ralph the mouse. (Ages 8 and older) –Emilie Coulter
Product Description
“Boy!” said Ralph to himself, his whiskers quivering with excitement. “Boy, oh boy!” Feeling that this was an important moment in his life, he took hold of the handgrips. They felt good and solid beneath his paws. Yes, this motorcycle was a good machine all right.
Ralph the mouse ventures out from behind the piney knothole in the wall of his hotel-room home, scrambles up the telephone wire to the end table, and climbs aboard the toy motorcycle left there by a young guest. His thrill ride does not last long. The ringing telephone startles Ralph, and he and the motorcycle take a terrible fall - right to the bottom of a metal wastebasket. Luckily, Keith, the owner of the motorcycle, returns to find his toy. Keith rescues Ralph and teaches him how to ride the bike. Thus begins a great friendship and many awesome adventures. Once a mouse can ride a motorcyle … almost anything can happen!
The Lost Colony (Artemis Fowl, Book 5)
August 5, 2008 – 3:31 pm
Rating: (126 reviews)
Author: Eoin Colfer
Publisher: Miramax
Product Description
Ten thousand years ago, humans and fairies fought a great battle for the magical island of Ireland. When it became clear to the fairy families that they could never win, they decided to move their civilization underground and keep themselves hidden from the humans. All the fairy families agreed on this, except the eighth family, the demons. The demons planned to lift their small island out of time until they had regrouped and were ready to wage war on the humans once more. However, the time spell went wrong, and the island of Hybras was catapulted into Limbo, where it has remained for ten thousand years. Now the tainted time spell is deteriorating and demons are being sucked back into the present space and time. The fairy council is concerned about this and is monitoring any materializations. But when the spells deterioration accelerates, the materializations become unpredictable. Even the fairy scientists cannot figure out where the next demon will pop up. But someone can. Artemis Fowl, teenage criminal mastermind, has solved temporal equations that no normal human should be intelligent enough to understand. So when a confused and frightened demon pops up in a Sicilian theater, Artemis Fowl is there to meet him. Unfortunately, he is not the only one. A second, mysterious party has also solved the temporal equations, and has managed to abduct the demon before Artemis can secure him. Once again, Artemis will have to pair up with his old comrade, Captain Holly Short, to track down the missing demon and rescue him, before the time spell dissolves completely and the lost demon colony returns violently to Earth.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 1: The Long Way Home
August 5, 2008 – 2:34 pm
Rating: (37 reviews)
Author: Joss Whedon, Andy Owens
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Product Description
Since the destruction of the Hellmouth, the Slayers - newly legion - have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt. But not everything’s fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. Meanwhile, one of the “Buffy” decoy slayers is going through major pain of her own. Buffy creator Joss Whedon brings Buffy back to Dark Horse in this direct follow-up to season seven of the smash-hit TV series. The bestselling and critically acclaimed issues #1-5 are collected here for the first time, as are their covers by Jo Chen and Georges Jeanty.
The Plague of Doves: A Novel
August 5, 2008 – 1:10 pm
Rating: (28 reviews)
Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper
Product Description
Louise Erdrich’s mesmerizing new novel, her first in almost three years, centers on a compelling mystery. The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of mixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives.
Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina’s grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich’s narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities’ collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel’s final pages.
The Plague of Doves is one of the major achievements of Louise Erdrich’s considerable oeuvre, a quintessentially American story and the most complex and original of her books.
Encylopedia of Immaturity (Klutz)
August 5, 2008 – 1:06 pm
Rating: (12 reviews)
Author: Editors of Klutz
Publisher: Klutz
Product Description
How to never grow up, the complete guide.
Harriet the Spy
August 5, 2008 – 12:48 pm
Rating: (143 reviews)
Author: Louise Fitzhugh
Publisher: Yearling
Amazon.com
Ages 8-12. Thirty-two years before it was made into a movie, Harriet the Spy was a groundbreaking book: its unflinchingly honest portrayal of childhood problems and emotions changed children’s literature forever. Happily, it has neither dated nor become obsolete and remains one of the best children’s novels ever written. The fascinating story is about an intensely curious and intelligent girl, who literally spies on people and writes about them in her secret notebook, trying to make sense of life’s absurdities. When her classmates find her notebook and read her painfully blunt comments about them, Harriet finds herself a lonely outcast. Fitzhugh’s writing is astonishingly vivid, real and engaging, and Harriet, by no means a typical, loveable heroine, is one of literature’s most unforgettable characters. School Library Journal wrote, “a tour de force… bursts with life.” The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books called it “a very, very funny story.” And The Chicago Tribune raved, “brilliantly written… a superb portrait of an extraordinary child.”
Product Description
Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together?
Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines
August 5, 2008 – 9:48 am
Rating: (82 reviews)
Author: Nic Sheff
Publisher: Ginee Seo Books
Product Description
Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and Ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise. In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking, and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself. It’s a harrowing portrait — but not one without hope.
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 4: Unstoppable
August 3, 2008 – 11:59 am
Rating: (7 reviews)
Author: Joss Whedon
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Product Description
Strap yourselves in, folks! It’s Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s final arc on Astonishing X-Men! After the shocking and brain-smashing events of recent issues, the X-Men are off to protect the Earth from its destruction at the hands of the Breakworld. And when it’s all over, nothing will ever be the same! No, really, we mean it! Whedon and Cassaday prove they are more than Astonishing: They are unstoppable! Collects Astonishing X-Men #19-24 and Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1.
The Gypsy Morph (The Genesis of Shannara, Book 3)
August 3, 2008 – 3:56 am
Author: Terry Brooks
Publisher: Del Rey
Product Description
Terry Brooks won instant acclaim with his phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Sword of Shannara. Its sequels earned Brooks legendary status. Then his darkly enthralling The Word and the Void trilogy revealed new depths and vistas to his mastery of epic fantasy. Armageddon’s Children and The Elves of Cintra took Brooks’s remarkable mythos to a breathtaking new level by delving deep into the history of Shannara. And now, The Gypsy Morph rounds out–with an adventure of unforgettably imaginative scope–the first phase of a new chapter in this classic series.
Eighty years into the future, the United States is a no-man’s-land: its landscape blighted by chemical warfare, pollution, and plague; its government collapsed; its citizens adrift, desperate, fighting to stay alive. In fortified compounds, survivors hold the line against wandering predators, rogue militias, and hideous mutations spawned from the toxic environment, while against them all stands an enemy neither mortal nor merciful: demons and their minions bent on slaughtering and subjugating the last of humankind.
But from around the country, allies of good unite to challenge the rampaging evil. Logan Tom, wielding the magic staff of a Knight of the Word, has a promise to keep–protecting the world’s only hope of salvation–and a score to settle with the demon that massacred his family. Angel Perez, Logan’s fellow Knight, has risked her life to aid the elvish race, whose peaceful, hidden realm is marked for extermination by the forces of the Void. Kirisin Belloruus, a young elf entrusted with an ancient magic, must deliver his entire civilization from a monstrous army. And Hawk, the rootless boy who is nothing less than destiny’s instrument, must lead the last of humanity to a latter-day promised land before the final darkness falls.
The Gypsy Morph is an epic saga of a world in flux as the mortal realm yields to a magical one; as the champions of the Word and the Void clash for the last time to decide what will be and what must cease; and as, from the remnants of a doomed age, something altogether extraordinary rises.
The Berenstain Bears and the Truth (First Time Books(R))
August 1, 2008 – 7:32 am
Rating: (26 reviews)
Author: Stan Berenstain, Jan Berenstain
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Product Description
When Brother and Sister Bear accidentally break Mama’s favorite lamp, their little lie grows bigger and bigger, until Papa Bear helps them find the words that set everything right again.
Richard Scarry’s Great Big Schoolhouse
August 1, 2008 – 6:31 am
Rating: (2 reviews)
Author: Richard Scarry
Publisher: Sterling
Product Description
Great Big Schoolhouse is lovingly remembered by generations of American children whose first day at school was undoubtedly made easier by Scarry’s warm, friendly, and comforting classroom. Huckle’s life changes forever as he joins his classmates on the school bus; meets Miss Honey, his sympathetic teacher; and learns the alphabet, new vocabulary, numbers, the days of the week, and the hours of the day. Of course, there’s recess, show and tell, and
a few unexpected adventures, too! Young readers are welcomed in, as they’re asked to help some of Huckle’s friends answer Miss Honey’s questions.Beautifully produced, this is the perfect gift for any child approaching school age—and the flip side of the dust jacket hides a fun surprise: a Richard Scarry A-Z wall poster.
a few unexpected adventures, too! Young readers are welcomed in, as they’re asked to help some of Huckle’s friends answer Miss Honey’s questions.Beautifully produced, this is the perfect gift for any child approaching school age—and the flip side of the dust jacket hides a fun surprise: a Richard Scarry A-Z wall poster.
Blueberries for Sal (Picture Puffins)
July 31, 2008 – 5:33 pm
Rating: (86 reviews)
Author: Robert McCloskey
Publisher: Puffin
Amazon.com
Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk go the blueberries into the pail of a little girl named Sal who–try as she might–just can’t seem to pick as fast as she eats. Robert McCloskey’s classic is a magical tale of the irrepressible curiosity–not to mention appetite–of youth. Sal and her mother set off in search of blueberries for the winter at the same time as a mother bear and her cub. A quiet comedy of errors ensues when the young ones wander off and absentmindedly trail the wrong mothers.
Blueberries for Sal–with its gentle animals, funny noises, and youthful spirit of adventure–is perfect for reading aloud. The endearing illustrations, rendered in dark, blueberry-stain blue, will leave you craving a fresh pail of your own. (Picture book)
Mini Masters Boxed Set (Mini Masters)
July 30, 2008 – 8:35 am
Rating: (17 reviews)
Author: Julie Merberg, Suzanne Bober
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Product Description
Four beautiful board books from Chronicle Books’ best-selling Mini Masters series, all packed in a colorful box. The set includes: Dancing with Degas, A Picnic with Monet, A Magical Day with Matisse, and In the Garden with Van Gogh. Each title pairs simple verses with some of the most beloved paintings of our time. It is a lovely way to introduce children to the wonder-filled works of these four artists. Four board books come in a handy storage box. Full color throughout each book. Ages infant to 4 years.
Planes Board Book (Byron Board Books)
July 30, 2008 – 8:17 am
Rating: (13 reviews)
Author:
Publisher: HarperFestival
Product Description
Children explore the many ways we use airplanes, from seaplanes to crop dusters to planes that write messages in the sky. This very simple picture book about transportation ‘will delight the youngest, and have enough meat for older preschoolers and beginning readers.’ — K.