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After his mother's death in 1946, eleven-year-old Langston and his father leave behind their quiet life in Alabama and move to Chicago. Struggling to fit in and missing his mother, Langston finds refuge at the local library where, unlike his library in Alabama, blacks are just as welcome as whites to use. There he discovers the poetry of Langston Hughes and a secret--he was named after this very poet whose work his mother loved.
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"Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original - poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in...
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Felicity Pickle is not like other people--where other people collect baseball cards or whatever, Felicity collects words. Words people say, think, and want. The word she wants, in all of her family's moving around, is "home." Finally, her mother's van called the "Pickled Jalapeno" rolls into Midnight Gulch, where she hopes maybe she has found the word "home," and maybe even "friend."
5) Hatchet
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After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the Canadian wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce. Includes an introduction and sidebar commentary by the author.
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Twelve-year-old Jane, who lives at the beach in a run-down old house with her mother, two brothers, and sister, has an eventful summer accompanying her pastor on bible deliveries, meeting former boyfriends of her mother's, and being coerced into babysitting for a family of ill-mannered children.
8) Alone
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Seda's mom inherited an old, crumbling mansion, and it was fun to explore the beautiful grounds for a summer. When her mom decided to renovate and live there, Seda isn't happy. And the coming of winter they'll be cut off from the outside world. When a group of teens get stranded near the mansion during a blizzard, Seda has no choice but to offer them shelter, even though she knows danger lurks in the dilapidated mansion-- and in herself.
10) Lemons
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Lemonade Liberty Witt's mama told her to make lemonade out of the lemons life sends her way, but when she has to move to Willow Creek, California, to live with her grandfather after her mother dies, Lem struggles to find the good in any of it. Then she meets Tobin Sky, the eleven-year-old CEO of Bigfoot Detectives Inc., who invites her on an adventure to capture Bigfoot on film.
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"A new edition of this award-winning modern classic, with new introduction, excerpt, and discussion guide Pakersfield, Georgia, 1958: Thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn is the sixth of ten fatherless siblings. She is the darkest-skinned among them and therefore the ugliest in her mother, Rozelle's, estimation, but she's also the brightest. Rozelle--beautiful, charismatic, and light-skinned--exercises a violent hold over her children. Fearing abandonment,...
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After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway.
15) Bleak house
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Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother's tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket.
17) The line tender
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"Following a tragedy that further alters the course of her life, twelve-year-old Lucy Everhart decides to continue the shark research her marine biologist mother left unfinished when she died years earlier"--Provided by publisher.
18) The Collectors
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Van has always been an outsider. He’s hard of hearing, collects trinkets, and lives with his single mother—an opera singer with a huge personality. Then one day, Van notices a girl stealing pennies from a fountain, and everything changes. He follows the girl, Pebble, and uncovers an underground society full of wishes and the people who collect them. Not all wishes are good and even good wishes often have unintended consequences, and the Collectors...
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When both his parents go AWOL, young Joey Pigza is forced to become like a dad to his months-old baby brother, Carter Junior. Hilarity ensues as he tries, even with the help of a friend, until the real man of the house returns and Joey sees a ray of hope for fixing his family.