This novel dramatizes an incident that took place in a California school in 1969. A teacher creates an experimental movement in his class to help students understand how people could have followed Hitler. The results are astounding. The highly disciplined group, modeled on the principles of the Hilter Youth, has its own salute, chants, and special ways of acting as a unit and sweeps beyond the class and throughout the school, evolving into a society willing to give up freedom for regimenta...

In the middle of the night Garrett is taken from his home to Harmony Lake, a boot camp for troubled teens. Maybe some kids deserve to be sent there, but Garrett knows he doesn't. Subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse, he tries to fight back, but the battle is futile. He won't be allowed to leave until he's admitted his "mistakes" and conformed to Harmony Lake's standards of behavior. And there's no way to fake it. Beaten, humiliated, and stripped of his prid...

**A middle school must-read that exposes the antisemitism in our country today!From the author of The Wave comes a poignant and timely novel about a group of seventh graders who are brought together—and then torn apart—by an afterschool club that plays a video game based on WW2.**There's a new afterschool club at Ironville Middle School.Ms. Peterson is starting a video game club where the students will playing The Good War, a new game based on World War II....

Something strange is happening in the parking lot of Time Zone High: The established cliques aren’t in their usual gathering places. Instead, everyone has joined in one large, frantically interacting mass.Why? Maybe it’s because the world may end tomorrow.Allegra Hanover is Time Zone High’s over-achieving valedictorian, so motorcycle-driving surfer bum Andros Bliss seems like the last person she would date. But when an asteroid is rumored to be hurtling toward Earth, the no...

Master storyteller Todd Strasser reimagines the classic tale of Moby Dick as set in the future—and takes readers on an epic sci-fi adventure.When seventeen-year-old Ishmael wakes up from stasis aboard the Pequod, he is amazed by how different this planet is from the dirty, dying, Shroud-covered Earth he left behind. But Ishmael isn’t on Cretacea to marvel at the fresh air, sunshine, and endless blue ocean. He’s here to work, risking his life to hu...

When Dan and his family go from middle class to homeless, issues of injustice rise to the forefront in this relatable, timely novel from Todd Strasser that VOYA calls “poignant,” “darkly humorous,” and “exceptionally thought-provoking.”It seems like Dan has it all. He’s a baseball star who is part of the popular crowd and dates the hottest girl in school. Then his family loses their home.Forced to move into the town’s Tent City, Dan feels his world...

It’s the summer of 1962, and Scott and his friends spend their days playing baseball and thinking about girls. But the threat of nuclear war looms over everything they do, and they are haunted by the idea that they could all be dead tomorrow.Even though the possibility of war is all anyone talks about, Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst, building a bomb shelter to protect his family and stocking it with enough supplies to keep them a...

This novel dramatizes an incident that took place in a California school in 1969. A teacher creates an experimental movement in his class to help students understand how people could have followed Hitler. The results are astounding. The highly disciplined group, modeled on the principles of the Hitler Youth, has its own salute, chants, and special ways of acting as a unit and sweeps beyond the class and throughout the school, evolving into a society willing to give up freedom for regimenta...

Todd Strasser, author of the powerful and disturbing Give a Boy a Gun, again focuses on an important social issue as he tells a thought-provoking, heart-wrenching story of young lives lost to the streets—and of a society that has forgotten how to care.Her street name is Maybe. She lives with a tribe of homeless teens—runaways and throwaways, kids who have no place to go other than the cold city streets, and no family except for one another. Abused, abandon...

What if the bomb had actually been dropped? What if your family was the only one with a shelter?In the summer of 1962, the possibility of nuclear war is all anyone talks about. But Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst. As the neighbors scoff, he builds a bomb shelter to hold his family and stocks it with just enough supplies to keep the four of them alive for two critical weeks. In the middle of the night in late Octob...

Todd Strasser’s acclaimed account of school violence that Kirkus Reviews calls “vivid, distressing, and all too real.”For as long as they can remember, Brendan and Gary have been mercilessly teased and harassed by the jocks who rule Middletown High. But not anymore. Stealing a small arsenal of guns from a neighbor, they take their classmates hostage at a school dance. In the panic of this desperate situation, it soon becomes clear that only one thing matte...

"WHEN YOU GREW UP IN THE PROJECTS, THERE WERE NO CHOICES. NO GOOD ONES, AT LEAST."In the Frederick Douglass Project where DeShawn lives, daily life is ruled by drugs and gang violence. Many teenagers drop out of school and join gangs, and every kid knows someone who died. Gunshots ring out on a regular basis.DeShawn is smart enough to know he should stay in school and keep away from the gangs. But while his friends have drug money to buy fancy sneakers and ...