Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Nittoso" in All Categories

A hilarious new middle grade novel from beloved and best-selling author Gordon Korman about what happens when the worst class of kids in school is paired with the worst teacher. The Unteachables never thought they’d find a teacher who had a worse attitude than they did. And Mr. Kermit never thought he would actually care about teaching again. Over the course of a school year, though, room 117 will experience mayhem, destruction - and maybe even a shot at redemption.

Maximillian Fly wants no trouble. Yet because he stands at six feet two, with beautiful indigo wings, long antennae, and more arms than you or me, many are frightened of him. He is a gentle creature who looks like a giant cockroach. This extraordinary human wants to prove his goodness, so he opens his door to two SilverSeed children in search of a place to hide. Instantly, Maximillian’s quiet, solitary life changes. There are dangerous powers after them and they have eyes everywhere. But in this gray city of Hope trapped under the Orb, is escape even possible?

Inspired by their grandmother, cousins Elaine and Jan decide to open tea for two, a lakeside tearoom where they can serve up cups of comfort to their patrons. When they buy a teapot at a flea market, the dealer tries to buy it back, and then a woman starts snooping around their house. Is she after the teapot, or the elegant piece of jewelry the electrician found in a wall? Then a would be thief nearly gets away with stealing their property from a restorer’s shop.

Isabel Lawson is standing on the balcony of her suite at the Hotel de Crillon as she gazes at the twinkling lights of the Champs-Élysées and wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake. She was supposed to be visiting the Christmas tree in the Place de la Concorde and eating escargots and macaroons with her new husband on their honeymoon. But a week before the wedding, she called it off.

Hamish Brewer (aka the Tattooed Skateboarding Principal) grew up in a home disrupted by poverty, addiction, and family dysfunction. He understands the feelings of fear, lostness, and desperation that overwhelm too many children today - because that was his life. That experience is what drives him to work relentlessly to empower people living in the toughest areas to envision and create a better future for themselves. Disrupt the norm. That is the challenge Hamish, a Nationally Distinguished Principal, calls educators, students, families, and communities to accept.

In what passes for an ordinary day in a psych ward, Dr. Zoe Goldman is stumped when a highly unusual case arrives. A young African American girl, found wandering the streets of Buffalo in a catatonic state, is brought in by police. No one has come forward to claim her, and all leads have been exhausted, so Zoe's treatment is the last hope to discover the girl's identity. When drugs prove ineffective and medical science seems to be failing, Zoe takes matters into her own hands to track down Jane Doe's family and piece together their checkered history.

In Harrow's eerie tale of madness and heartache, Patience, diagnosed with a "nervous disposition," is forced to take up residence in the rural, dilapidated Gravely House, in hopes that she will "calm down and get better" before her senior year begins. But when she discovers a girl living inside her bedroom mirror, the past comes back to haunt, in more ways than one.

March 1987. The FDA has just approved AZT as the first drug to treat AIDS. But it's too late for Iris’s dad. He’s dying, confined to a hospital bed in the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, J.R. (who Iris hates), four floors above Iris and her mom. Soon, all Iris has left of her kind, loving dad are memories, photos, and a binder full of the poems they used to exchange. As Iris navigates her rage and grief, she resolves to speak out against the rampant fear, misinformation, and prejudice surrounding AIDS—and find the pieces of Dad that she never knew before.

Her patients are dying. Some are apparent suicides and others possible accidents, but rumors are flying that Dr. Zoe Goldman is an angel of death - intentionally helping hopeless cases go to a "better place" - or, worse yet, a dangerously incompetent doctor. As a new psychiatry fellow at the local correctional facility, Zoe is still learning the ropes while watching her back to avoid some dangerous prisoners.

Twelve-year-old Abigail (she/her/hers) is so excited to spend her summer at Camp QUILTBAG, an inclusive retreat for queer and trans kids. She can’t wait to find a community where she can be herself—and, she hopes, admit her crush on Laura Dern to kids who will understand. Thirteen-year-old Kai (e/em/eir) is not as excited. E just wants to hang out with eir best friend and eir parkour team. And e definitely does not want to think about the incident that left eir arm in a sling.

Eleven-year-old Joey is angry. All the time. And she doesn’t understand why. She has two loving moms, a supportive older half brother, and, as a triplet, she’s never without company. Her life is good. But sometimes she loses her temper and lashes out, like the time she threw a soccer ball—hard—at a boy in gym class and bruised his collarbone. Or when jealousy made her push her (former) best friend (and crush), Layla, a little bit too roughly.

After helping to host Tea for Two’s first “Teas Around the World” tasting, Rose Young approaches the proprietor cousins - Elaine Cook and Jan Blake - in distress. Rose’s mother died recently, and in going through her belongings, she found a death certificate - for herself! What could this document mean? What happened when Rose was a year old? The cousins search for truth behind this unsettling discovery that reaches far beyond Lancaster, Maine, to a pivotal point not only in Rose’s life but also in history.

Honour Metcalf’s quilting needlework is admired by a wealthy customer of the Boston Mantua-maker for whom she works. In need of increasing her earnings, she agrees to create an elaborate white work bridal quilt for the dowager’s niece. A beautiful design emerges as she carefully stitches the intricate patterns and she begins to dream of fashioning a wedding quilt of her own.

Little Cindy Ann knew things no one else knew and saw things no one else saw. Ever since she'd nearly died of fever, the gift of second sight had been hers. Only, it didn't seem like such a gift when the other children called her a witch and wouldn't play with her. Or, when her visions resembled nothing so much as her worst nightmares.

A girl betrays a longtime friend for a chance at popularity and finds she has cut off her connection to childhood forever. Set in the fog-shrouded artichoke fields of coastal California, this story won second place in the River City Writing Awards in Fiction (1997) for its attention to character and freshness of setting.

Grayson McDonough has no use for teal ribbons, 5k runs, or ovarian cancer support groups now that his beautiful wife Jenna is gone. But their nine-year-old daughter Sadie seems to need the connection. When Annabelle Curtis, the beautiful cancer survivor organizing the memory quilt project for the Ovacome support group, begins to bring out the silly and fun side of his precious daughter again, Gray must set aside his own grief to support the healing of Sadie's young heart. But is there hope for Gray's heart too along the way?

He’s back! That was the first thought that crossed Cindy Biggs’ mind when she heard of the brutal triple-murder in her hometown of Coleman. Yes, the awful crime was nearly identical to the one performed during her hard-scrabble childhood at the time of the Great Depression. But this was 2014, not 1936. Cindy was no longer an innocent nine-year-old child, but an elderly woman who used her gift of second sight to assist the police every now and then.

Winner of the 1996 Writers@Work Fellowship in Fiction, this story takes place in a remote and eerie ghost town in the Eastern Sierra. Holly, a young archeologist grieving the death of her brother, finds that the bleak landscape holds surprising discoveries - from the promise of romance to professional opportunity. In the end she turns her back on both to choose a more lasting, if lonely, devotion.

The people you love are taken from you. That’s what Maddie DiMarco learned when she survived the plane crash that killed her parents. Fifteen years later, the scars remain. And the ones no can see are hardest to heal. Since the accident, Maddie’s avoided the unpredictable and uncaring outside world, including any relationships - except for the one with her devoted older sister, Kat, who has always been there for her.

Kit and Jeff move to the idyllic coastal town of Bodega Boy when he gets a postdoc fellowship at a marine lab. As a grant deadline looms at Jeff's lab, Kit begins pursuing her own professional interests while uncovering memories of her deceased father - both of which challenge her role as support to Jeff and her own notion of who she is and wants to be.