Mr. and Mrs. O?Grady are so poor they have just one of everything to share ? one potato a day, one chair, one blanket full of holes, and one gold coin for a rainy day. After digging up the last potato in their patch, Mr. O?Grady comes upon a big black object. It?s a pot ? no ordinary pot, for what they soon discover is that whatever goes into it comes out doubled! Suddenly the O?Gradys aren?t destitute anymore. But what they really long for is one friend apiece. Can the magic pot give them that?
 
This retelling of a Chinese folktale pays tribute to the author?s Irish heritage, and to the joys of an old marriage, new friendships, and the impulse to share. Using pen and gouache, the artist shows the ?simple? characters in all their winning complexity.

Allie Nichols, ?Ghost Magnet,? has only just finished sixth grade, but already she?s grappled with her fair share of adventure: three ghosts have sought her help in less than two months. Now that summer has finally arrived, Allie is ready for a break. Too bad ghosts don?t know about summer vacation. When a new spirit causes Allie to babble incomprehensibly at rehearsals for her town?s first pageant, she and her best friend, Dub, know they have another ghostly mystery to solve. But why does the ghost seem so interested in the pageant, which portrays the relationship between the area?s early European settlers and the local Seneca Indians? And could its manifestation have anything to do with the rich girl who just came to town with her family?
 
In the fourth fascinating ghost book by Cynthia DeFelice, Allie and Dub uncover a centuries-old secret?the destruction of a Seneca village at Poplar Point?and come up with a plan to share it.

One day while running on the trail near his house in upstate New York, Owen McGuire meets a girl with startling green eyes and bloody cuts all over her body who seems to be utterly alone. Her name is Campion, after the wildflower that is an alien species in the area—alien meaning “from someplace else”—and Campion claims to come from someplace else entirely, a planet called Home. She plans to signal her parents to come pick her up in their spaceship. Owen agrees to help, and as he does, he feels happier than he has in a long time: his mother died a year and a half ago, and now he and his workaholic father live together like two planets on separate orbits, in a new house far from his friends. What will he do when Campion asks him to come with her into outer space, away from his lonely life on Earth?

In this moving novel, two friendless kids search the night sky for something to believe in—but discover that they’ve found what they need right here on Earth.

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A teenager discovers racism and romance on his father?s farm

For his fourteenth birthday, Joe Pedersen wants a motorbike that costs nearly a thousand dollars. But his mom says the usual birthday gift is fifty dollars, and his dad wants Joe to earn the rest of the money himself and ?find out what a real day?s work feels like.? Angry that his father doesn?t think he?s up to the job, Joe joins the Mexican laborers who come to his father?s farm each summer. Manuel, the crew boss, is only sixteen, yet highly regarded by the other workers and the Pedersen family. Joe?s resentment grows when his father treats Manuel as an equal. Compared with Manuel, Joe knows nothing about planting and hoeing cabbage and picking strawberries. But he toughs out the long, grueling days in the hot sun, determined not only to make money but to gain the respect of his stern, hardworking father. Joe soon learns about the problems and fears the Mexicans live with every day, and, before long, thanks to Manuel, his beautiful cousin Luisa, and the rest of the crew, Joe comes to see the world in a whole different way.

In her sensitive new novel, Cynthia DeFelice explores our dependency on migrant workers and simultaneous reluctance to let these people into our country and into our lives.

September 1840 marks five months since twelve-year-old Nathan Fowler’s life-threatening encounter with Weasel, the heartless man who stalked Nathan like a wild animal through the forest. Nathan hasn’t been the same since, wary of every new person he meets – including the visiting peddler Orrin Beckwith. When Beckwith shows Nate and his family a handbill advertising a show with a “white Injun,” a man without a tongue, Nathan is sure the man is his friend Ezra, who lost his tongue to Weasel’s knife. Determined to save Ezra from this traveling show of “human oddities,” Nathan sets out with Beckwith from Ohio to Pennsylvania. On the way, Nathan encounters more people than he’s ever met before, and he begins to learn a thing or two about human nature. The biggest shock, however, is Ezra himself, and it will take more than Nathan bargained for to bring him back home.
 
This long-anticipated sequel to Weasel is a masterful adventure story, in which Nathan Fowler triumphs over the legacy of fear left him by the villain Weasel.