Family Library

Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, 11-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter - and friendship - on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.

Malian loves spending time with her grandparents at their home on a Wabanaki reservation. She’s there for a visit when, suddenly, all travel shuts down. There’s a new virus making people sick, and Malian will have to stay with her grandparents for the duration. Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but Malian knows how to keep her family and community safe: She protects her grandparents, and they protect her. She doesn’t go outside to play with friends, she helps her grandparents use video chat, and she listens to and learns from their stories.

In the newest novel by beloved National Book Award finalist Lisa Graff, kids have turned the tables on their parents, and all the rules have been tossed out the window. But does Winnie have what it takes to hold her ground and keep everyone happy? This story, with a pitch-perfect middle grade voice and zany yet poignant situation, is perfect for fans of Sharon Creech, Louis Sachar, and Jack Gantos.

It's a new day, and Ayaan has woken up on the wrong side of the bed where nothing feels quite right. What if he doesn't know the answer at school? What if he messes up? But as he sets out that morning, all it takes is a few reminders from his mom and some friends in the neighborhood to remind him that a new day is a good day because...he is smart, he is blessed, and he can do anything!

Gracie has never felt like this before. One day, she suddenly can't breathe, can't walk, can't anything - and the reason is standing right there in front of her, all tall and weirdly good-looking: A. J. But it turns out A. J. likes not Gracie but Gracie's beautiful best friend, Sienna. Obviously Gracie is happy for Sienna. Super happy! She helps Sienna compose the best texts, responding to A. J.'s surprisingly funny and appealing texts, just as if she were Sienna. Because Gracie is fine. Always! She's had lots of practice being the sidekick, second best.

A fifth grade class, repelled by the overweight new student who has serious home problems, finally learns to accept her.

Anna lives with foster parents, a misfit with no friends, always on the outside of things. Then she is sent to Norfolk to stay with old Mr. and Mrs. Pegg, where she runs wild on the sand dunes and around the water. There is a house, the Marsh House, which she feels she recognizes - and she soon meets a strange little girl called Marnie, who becomes Anna's first ever friend. Then one day, Marnie vanishes. A new family, the Lindsays, move into the Marsh House.

When Emily and Jess Volnik's family inherits a remote, crumbling Scottish castle, they also inherit the Boggart - an invisible, mischievous spirit who's been playing tricks on residents of Castle Keep for generations. Then the Boggart is trapped in a rolltop desk and inadvertently shipped to the Volniks' home in Toronto, where nothing will ever be the same - for the Volniks or the Boggart. In a world that doesn't believe in magic, the Boggart's pranks wreak havoc. And even the newfound joys of peanut butter and pizza and fudge sauce eventually wear thin for the Boggart. He wants to go home....

Elbow Grease and his monster-truck brothers are hardly prepared when they meet Chopper, a speedy, purple monster motorcycle. Chopper wants to be friends with the brothers, who are more than impressed with her epic skills! But when the trucks start to get jealous of her talents, they must learn to overcome their frustrations and welcome a new friend into the group - especially when it's up to them to work together to save the day! Elbow Grease and gang are back in another rip-roaring adventure, in John Cena's third installment in the series!

When the Brighton Bears suit up on game day, 12-year-old Tommy Gallagher is the toughest kid on the football field. And the bravest. After all, his father Patrick is a Boston firefighter - one of Boston's bravest. Tommy's dad taught him everything he knows about football - and life. Yet even Tommy isn't strong enough for what happens when the sirens ring and, for the first time, they're racing away from the fire. "First man in; last man out" had always been his dad's motto, yet he never said anything about leaving in an ambulance.

Cocky seventh-grade super-jock Crash Coogan got his nickname the day he used his first football helmet to knock his cousin Bridget flat on her backside. And he has been running over people ever since, especially Penn Webb, the dweeby, vegetarian Quaker kid who lives down the block. Through the eyes of Crash, listeners get a rare glimpse into the life of a bully in this unforgettable and beloved story about stereotypes and the surprises life can bring.

Soon to be a Netflix animated film starring Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, Alessia Cara, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, Séan Cullen, and Ricky Gervais! Convinced they'd be better off raising themselves, the Willoughby children hatch a sneaky plan to send their selfish parents on vacation. The siblings then embark on their own high-flying adventure to find the true meaning of family. The Willoughbys is a turn to the hilarious from the award-winning author of The Giver and Number the Stars that will have children and parents laughing.

kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining

Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare.

Shenice Lockwood, captain of the Fulton Firebirds, is hyper-focused when she steps up to the plate. Nothing can stop her from leading her team to the U12 fast-pitch softball regional championship. But life has thrown some curveballs her way.

This audiobook follows eigth-grader "Antsy" Bonano as he looks back on three accidental, but beneficial friendships with a few interesting characters, including the often ignored Calvin Schwa.

When the Chatsworth library closes indefinitely, Dodie Fairisle loses her sanctuary. How is a small-town art teacher supposed to cope without the never-ending life advice and enjoyment that books give her? Well, when she’s as resourceful and generous as Dodie, she turns her sunroom into her very own little lending library.

Marcus Vega is six feet tall, 180 pounds, and the owner of a premature mustache. When you look like this and you're only in the eighth grade, you're both a threat and a target. After a fight at school leaves Marcus facing suspension, Marcus's mom decides it's time for a change of environment. She takes Marcus and his younger brother to Puerto Rico to spend a week with relatives they don't remember or have never met. But Marcus can't focus knowing that his father - who walked out of their lives 10 years ago - is somewhere on the island.

Forced to live on his own after his mom dies and her boyfriend abandons him, 12-year-old Jayson does whatever it takes to get by. He will do anything to avoid the foster care system. Besides, his real home has always been the beat-up basketball court behind the projects in the North Carolina hills, and his family has always been his friends and teammates. He manages to get away with his deception until the day he gets caught stealing a new pair of basketball sneakers. Game over. Within a day a social worker places him with a family from the other side of town, the Lawtons.

Don't miss this gripping, emotional prequel to the hit Netflix series Stranger Things! The never-before-told backstory of the beloved Dig Dug maven, Max Mayfield, written by New York Times best-selling author Brenna Yovanoff. This must-listen novel, based on the hit Netflix series, Stranger Things, explores Max's past - the good and the bad - as well as how she came to find her newfound sense of home in Hawkins, Indiana.

All Momo wants for her twelfth birthday is an ordinary life—like everyone else's. At home, she has to take care of her absentminded widowed mother. At school, kids ridicule her for mixing up reality with the magical stories her mother used to tell her. But then Momo’s mother falls gravely ill, and a death hag straight out of those childhood stories attacks Momo at the mall, where she’s rescued by a talking fox . . . and “ordinary” goes out the window. It turns out that Momo's mother is a banished Shinto goddess who used to protect a passageway to the land of the dead.