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A wonderful story about a child with a supportive family who defies the odds to chase the ultimate tool of knowledge

Catherine McPhail gives a spine-tingling and ghostly edge to a hard-hitting story about a school bully. Karam has changed schools often and is used to making friends easily. But then he meets Alex. Alex has a reputation for being trouble and Karam can do nothing to change it. But Karam is sure that there is something strange about Alex; something that makes him be so mean. Can Karam uncover the secret and what will happen when he does?

Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers aged 8+

When two brothers decide to prove how brave they are, everything backfires—literally—in this “pitch-perfect contemporary novel”. Genie’s summer is full of surprises. The first is that he and his big brother, Ernie, are leaving Brooklyn for the very first time to spend the summer with their grandparents all the way in Virginia—in the COUNTRY! The second surprise comes when Genie figures out that their grandfather is blind. Thunderstruck, Genie peppers Grandpop with questions about how he hides it so well (besides wearing way cool Ray-Bans).

How does he match his clothes? Know where to walk? Cook with a gas stove? Pour a glass of sweet tea without spilling it? Genie thinks Grandpop must be the bravest guy he’s ever known, but he starts to notice that his grandfather never leaves the house—as in NEVER. And when he finds the secret room that Grandpop is always disappearing into—a room so full of songbirds and plants that it’s almost as if it’s been pulled inside-out—he begins to wonder if his grandfather is really so brave after all.

Then Ernie lets him down in the bravery department. It’s his fourteenth birthday, and, Grandpop says to become a man, you have to learn how to shoot a gun. Genie thinks that is AWESOME until he realizes Ernie has no interest in learning how to shoot. None. Nada. Dumbfounded by Ernie’s reluctance, Genie is left to wonder—is bravery and becoming a man only about proving something, or is it just as important to own up to what you won’t do?

Darkus Cuttle can’t believe his eyes when a huge insect drops off the pants leg of his horrible new neighbour. It’s a giant beetle — and it seems to want to communicate.

But how can a boy be friends with a beetle? And what does a beetle have to do with the disappearance of his dad and the arrival of the terrifying Lucretia Cutter, with her taste for creepy fashion?

The first book of a trilogy, Beetle Boy is a darkly hilarious adventure full of exotic beetles, daring schemes, and true friendship.

In this collection of stories is about a guinea-pig that can do clever tricks, the Queen’s favourite Corgi pup, a secret mouse hiding in a tree-house, a chick that wants to be a duck AND you’ll learn how to look after all kinds of pets!
A delightful anthology from the master of animal adventures Dick King-Smith, featuring a never-before-published story.

In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel,  soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.
This electric and heartfelt novel-in-verse by poet Kwame Alexander bends and breaks as it captures all the thrills and setbacks, action and emotion of a World Cup match!

When Charlie’s brother, Joe, is called up to fight in World War II, he promises to write letters to ten-year-old Charlie as often as he can. It won’t make up for not being there to help Charlie out with the neighbourhood bullies, but it’s all Joe can do.

neighbourhood for a soldier and Joe tells Charlie all about it, from long hikes in endless rain and mud to the stray dog his company adopts. But when Joe is sent on a secret mission with the one soldier he can’t stand, he will have to face risks that place their mission — and their lives — in grave danger.

Charlie knew his brother was strong, but he will discover that Joe is more of a hero than he lets on. Will Joe’s letters give Charlie the strength to stand up for himself and be brave, too?

A moving tale of one boy’s determination to save a badger cub, and protect his brother, from the hands of the local thugs.
A bleakly poetic tale about one boy’s determination to save a badger cub from the destructive hands of a local gang. When Nicky finds Jezbo and his gang digging up a badger set, there’s not a lot he can do to save them. But one badger cub has escaped – can Nicky save it? Another stunning and moving novella in the spirit of Kes from award-winning Anthony McGowan.

Caden Bosch is on a ship thatbs headed for the deepest point on Earth:
Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench.
Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.
Caden Bosch is designated the shipbs artist in residence to document the journey with images.
Caden Bosch pretends to join the school track team, but spends his days walking for miles, absorbed by the thoughts in his head.
Caden Bosch is split between his allegiance to the captain and the allure of mutiny.
Caden Bosch is torn.
Challenger Deep is a deeply powerful and personal novel from one of todaybs most admired writers for teens. Now available in paperback.

Pshango is a young, black Labrador suddenly abandoned by his human family. So from being a ‘protected’ pet, he is forced to fend for himself on the streets of Delhi, where gang-dogs and gang-humans roam and rule. How he meets up with the Pariah gang (of dogs) and comes to terms with all the changes in his new life are the main themes driving the plot, which is intertwined with a thread involving a set of thieves out to hold a rich man to ransom and the tributary tales of the inhabitants of Peepal Enclave, including an intrepid, lonely girl called Sabiha and a set of Rottweilers that go by the name, Lalaram Louts. Throw in a couple of happy elephants called Komal and Anarkali, an about-to-wed couple called Sleazy and Lovely, some dog catchers and a deadly mean mother-and-son duo who make Sabiha’s life a misery… these are some of the cast of characters, apart from a whole lot of canines named mostly for their personalities.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls is a children’s book packed with 100 bedtime stories about the life of 100 extraordinary women from the past and the present, illustrated by 60 female artists from all over the world. This book inspires girls with the stories of great women, from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams.

J.K. Rowling burst on to the world stage with this first amazing saga of Harry Potter

Gripping adventure story by top author Malorie Blackman, in a lower reading-age version.

When Angela is kidnapped and held to ransom, she’s not convinced her dad will pay to get her back. And so Angela uses all of her own resourcefulness to make her escape. But is she wrong about her dad?

Drawing is what Ramon does. Its what makes him happy. But in one split second, all that changes. A single reckless remark by Ramon’s older brother, Leon, turns Ramon’s carefree sketches into joyless struggles. Luckily for Ramon, though, his little sister, Marisol, sees the world differently. She opens his eyes to something a lot more valuable than getting things just “right.” Combining the spareness of fable with the potency of parable, Peter Reynolds shines a bright beam of light on the need to kindle and tend our creative flames with care.

Jane is 12 years old, and she is ready for adventures, to move beyond the world of her siblings and single mother and their house by the sea, and step into the bknow-not what.b And, over the summer, adventures do seem to find Jane, whether itbs a thrilling ride in a hot-air balloon, the appearances of a slew of possible fathers, or a weird new friendship with a preacher and psychic wannabe. Most important, therebs Janebs discovery of what lies at the heart of all great adventures: that itbs not what happens to you that matters, but what you learn about yourself.

And don’t miss Polly Horvath’s Northward to the Moon, the sequel to My One Hundred Adventures.

Nailer’s time is running out. He’s getting too big for his work – stripping copper wire from old oil tankers – and once he’s off the crew he’s on his own, stuck in a shack on the beach with no food, no money and no way of earning his keep.

Julia is very short for her age, but by the end of the summer run of The Wizard of Oz, she’ll realize how big she is inside, where it counts. She hasn’t ever thought of herself as a performer, but when the wonderful director of Oz casts her as a Munchkin, she begins to see herself in a new way. As Julia becomes friendly with the poised and wise Olive—one of the adults with dwarfism who’ve joined the production’s motley crew of Munchkins—and with her deeply artistic neighbour, Mrs Chang, Julia’s own sense of self as an artist grows. Soon, she doesn’t want to fade into the background—and it’s a good thing because her director has more big plans for Julia!

Bubbling over with humour and tenderness, this is an irresistible story of self-discovery and of the role models who forever change us.

“Speak up for yourself–we want to know what you have to say.” From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically

Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn’t remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?

This fascinating novel represents a stunning new direction for acclaimed author Mary Pearson. Set in a near future America, it takes readers on an unforgettable journey through questions of bio-medical ethics and the nature of humanity. Mary Pearson’s vividly drawn characters and masterful writing soar to a new level of sophistication.

Providing a clear, comprehensive and colorful guide to how the world is governed both in theory and practice, The Book of Rule examines the governments of all the world’s nations — from major powers to the newest developing countries, from democracies to dictatorships — and shows exactly how power is exercised in each. In addition to profiling national governments, The Book of Rule also explains the general principles behind today’s political systems and charts the evolution of governments from ancient times to the present.

When a terrible drought struck William Kamkwamba’s tiny village in Malawi, his family lost all of the season’s crops, leaving them with nothing to eat and nothing to sell. William began to explore science books in his village libra

Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

With 284 pages of original drawings and combining elements of picture book, graphic novel, and film, Brian Selznick breaks open the novel form to create an entirely new reading experience. Here is a stunning cinematic tour de force from a boldly innovative storyteller and artist.

Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, an architecture student, has arrived from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to Clara Morgenstern a young widow living in the city. When Andras meets Clara he is drawn deeply into her extraordinary and secret life, just as Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends them both into a state of terrifying uncertainty.

Matilda loves science and inventing and the eponymous frustrated inventor heroine finds out that her Grandma Joss once discovered a planet – for which her male boss got the credit. Hearing that he is about to receive the Nobel prize, Matilda and Joss set out to crash the ceremony and set the record straight. Warm-hearted and funny, this is a marvellous mix of righteous indignation and madcap race against time.

Award-winning author and illustrator Ashley Spires has created a charming picture book about an unnamed girl and her very best friend, who happens to be a dog. The girl has a wonderful idea. ?She is going to make the most MAGNIFICENT thing! She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work. All she has to do is make it, and she makes things all the time. Easy-peasy!? But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and the girl tries and fails, repeatedly. Eventually, the girl gets really, really mad. She is so mad, in fact, that she quits. But after her dog convinces her to take a walk, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right.

The New York Trilogy is perhaps the most astonishing work by one of America’s most consistently astonishing writers. The Trilogy is three cleverly interconnected novels that exploit the elements of standard detective fiction and achieve a new genre that is all the more gripping for its starkness. It is a riveting work of detective fiction worthy of Raymond Chandler, and at the same time a profound and unsettling existentialist enquiry in the tradition of Kafka or Borges. In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. The New York Trilogy is the modern novel at its finest: a truly bold and arresting work of fiction with something to transfix and astound every reader.

When a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn’t surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. After all, the family descends from an Indian agent who worked on the North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is home to her mother’s family. However, she stops dead in her tracks when she finds in the collection a rare drumba powerful yet delicate object, made from a massive moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar, ornamented with symbols she doesn’t recognize and dressed in red tassels and a beaded belt and skirtbespecially since, without touching the instrument, she hears it sound. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined.

Nikolai is a boy who believes that if he can find the answers to his three questions, he will always know how to be a good person. His friends–a heron, a monkey, and a dog–try to help, but to no avail, so he asks Leo, the wise old turtle. “When is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do?” Leo doesn’t answer directly, but by the end of Nikolai’s visit, the boy has discovered the answers himself. A timeless tale by Leo Tolstoy, retold in a picture book adults will value as much as children will.

From much loved author Chris Higgins and acclaimed illustrator Emily MacKenzie comes a charming new young fiction series about friendship.
Bella has just moved into a new house. It’s old and dark and she’s sure there’s a ghost in the attic! But things look up when she meets her new next-door neighbour Magda. Magda is lots of fun! She’s bubbly and full of imagination and can even turn cartwheels! Soon they are best friends.
But Magda is also trouble! She breaks Bella’s mum’s best tea set, wrecks Bella’s room and covers the whole living room in soot. And somehow makes sure Bella gets the blame for everything.

Experience the cosmos as never before with UNIVERSE: The Solar System and Beyond
Beginning with a fascinating overview and then organized by planet, this book takes us on a trip across time and space that includes a front-row seat to the explosive birth of the solar system, a journey to (and then deep inside) each of its eight planets, and even an in-depth exploration of asteroids and comets.
With this newly revised edition, the authors’ goals are to help you use astronomy to understand science–and use science to understand what we are. Fascinating, engaging, and visually vibrant, this text will help you answer two fundamental questions: What are we? And how do we know?
Three ever widening domains are presented–Earth, our solar system, and the large scale universe itself–each including the ones before it and extending outward.

In Palmer LaRue’s hometown of Waymer, turning ten is the biggest event of a boy’s life. But for Palmer, his tenth birthday is not something to look forward to, but something to dread. Then one day, a visitor appears on his windowsill, and Palmer knows that this, more than anything else, is a sign that his time is up. Somehow, he must learn how to stop being afraid and stand up for what he believes in.