Born with no air in his lungs, it was only when Reuben Land's father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that Reuben's lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma from then on, making him a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that his father is touched by God and can overturn the laws of nature.The quiet 1960's midwestern life of the Lands is upended when Reuben's brother Davy kills two marauders who have come to harm...

**This Newbery Honor winner and #1 New York Times bestseller is a beloved modern classic. Hoot features a new kid and his new bully, alligators, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes.A PARADE BEST KIDS BOOK OF ALL TIME**Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid ...

Matt Donaghy has always been a Big Mouth. But it's never gotten him in trouble -- until the day Matt is accused of threatening to blow up Rocky River High School.Ursula Riggs has always been an Ugly Girl. A loner with fierce, staring eyes, Ursula has no time for petty high school stuff like friends and dating -- or at least that's what she tells herself Ursula is content with minding her own business. And she doesn't even really know Matt Donaghy.But Ursula is the only pers...

Fifteen-year-old Brett Gerson is the kind of kid you love to hate. He's smug, arrogant, rude, and filthy rich. When his dad is jailed for insider trading, his family loses everything and Brett has to face life without the mansion, the Mercedes, and his beloved $5,000 stereo. But his attitude begins to change when he's forced to take a summer job assisting Alfie Moore, the seventy-year old guy who used to clean his swimming pool . . .Told in the first person and set in a fictional C...

The hysterical #1 New York Times bestseller from Newbery honoree Carl Hiaasen featuring gators, snakes, bats that bite, and reality show hosts gone wild!When Wahoo Cray’s dad—a professional animal wrangler—takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing Derek Badger, the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complic...

A storyteller “of great humanity and huge heart” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like a River, which sold more than a million copies and captured readers’ hearts around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author’s body of work. Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply belove...

Shirley Jackson’s deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family takes readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, macabre humor, and gothic atmosphere.Six years after four family members died suspiciously of arsenic poisoning, the three remaining Blackwoods—elder, agoraphobic sister Constance; wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian; and eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine, or, Merricat—live together in pleasant isolation. Merricat h...