interpersonal relations

Having been friends since childhood, when Eve and Andrew make it to eighth grade, suddenly everyone, crush-obsessed, assumes they will start dating each other. Feeling pressured to it, Eve asks Andrew to take her to the school dance, and everyone loses their minds--but for the childhood friends it is nothing but overwhelming awkwardness. It becomes so awkward that both of them, independently, decide to be the worst boyfriend/girlfriend ever, so that neither of them has to be the one to make things even more awkward--and potentially end their friendship--and break up with the other.

Rosie Vo's father, a former professional racquetball player, pressures her to not only play the sport, but love it as much as he does. When she meets new student Blair, who also plays racquetball, they become fast friends. Blair doesn't seem to suffer from the kind of pressure Rosie feels, so she concocts a plan to get her father to coach Blair for an upcoming tournament and thus take his attention off of Rosie. Rosie's efforts fail, but she does learn to advocate for herself and confront her father about her feelings.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen accidentally becomes a contender in the annual Hunger Games, a grave competition hosted by the Capitol where young boys and girls are pitted against one another in a televised fight to the death.

When she was in middle school, Charlotte Illes' uncanny detective abilities actually made her a minor celebrity in her town, but that was before she graduated high school and no longer accepted calls on her little blue phone in her garage-office. Now twenty-five, she feels stuck, having no romantic or professional prospects to speak of--and her old blue phone has started ringing again. Solving a case as an adult, though, is far different than her cases as a kid: for one, there were no dead bodies or missing persons back then. Also, the villains now see her as a threat, and could set their sights on her next.

In seventeenth century New England, Hester Prynne is condemned by Puritan law to wear a scarlet "A" as the symbol of the sin she has committed.

The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. There are no strangers in the town of Near. These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true. The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion. As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy. Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab's debut novel is entirely original yet achingly familiar: a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won't soon forget.

A picture book that illustrates that sometimes children may feel brave as lions or shy as mice, and the zoo inside their heads reflects how they behave on the outside. The little boy in the story is part mischievous monkey, part curious llama, and part chameleon, hiding from the world.

Seventeen-year-old Mina Lee's first love is art. But since her mother's death, her father has preferred she be involved in more academic pursuits. Developing a webcomic in the hopes that she can convince him to let her attend art school, Mina wakes one morning to discover she has somehow entered her superhero-driven world, complete with a crush on her deceased childhood friend Jin. Now forced to navigate a changing storyline she didn't write, she must use her newfound superpowers to defeat villains, get the guy, and somehow, get back to her own world.

Teenagers discuss the influence of family, community, and school on their self-esteem, personal codes of morality, and ability to function socially.

"Jibe? is the 'weird-o' of the class. Gifted and solitary, he is passionate about birds. In his large family, the law of the father, a practicing Catholic, is more and more stifling. Me?lo loves to run under the tall trees of Mount Royal, music in her ears. Devastated by a catastrophic romantic relationship, she lives alone with her mother. A school project brings them together and this is the beginning of a story with two voices"--Translation of back cover.