KIDS

A Junior Library Guild selection--Front jacket flap. ________ Ruben feels like he is the only kid without a bike. His friend Sergio reminds him that his birthday is coming, but Ruben knows that the kinds of birthday gifts he and Sergio receive are not the same. After all, when Ruben's mom sends him to Sonny's corner store for groceries, sometimes she doesn't have enough money for everything on the list. So when Ruben sees a dollar bill fall out of someone's purse, he picks it up and puts it in his pocket. But when he gets home, he discovers it's not one dollar or even five or ten--it's a hundred-dollar bill, more than enough for a new bike just like Sergio's!

As a school project, George and Blaise become pen pals, writing rhyming letters about their favorite things to do, unaware that one is human and the other a dragon.

It's 1943, and the White House is busy with the war effort. Diana Hopkins only wants to help, but doesn't know what a ten-year-old can do - until the Roosevelts come up with the idea of Victory Gardens, and Diana suddenly has the important job of Victory Gardener for the White House.

A lonely bat thinks he has found a perfect home until he discovers that it's already inhabited by a persnickety squirrel.

Reluctant reader Madeline really wants to earn a star at school, so when Mrs. Dimple, the librarian, suggests she read to a dog Madeline gives it a try.

A reverent account of the creation of a seagoing 9/11 memorial fashioned by incorporating part of one of the fallen towers into the hull of a Navy ship. Following a wordless, powerful sequence in which a seemingly ordinary jet flies peacefully through a cloudless sky and then directly into a tower, Nolan opens by noting that there is "something different, something special" about the seemingly ordinary USS New York. In the tragedy's aftermath, she explains, a steel beam was pulled from the wreckage and sent to a foundry in Louisiana. There, workers melted it down, recast and shaped it, and sent it to New Orleans, where, notwithstanding the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, it was incorporated into the bow of a new ship of war. Gonzalez echoes the author's somber, serious tone with dark scenes of ground zero, workers with shadowed faces, and views of the ship from low angles to accentuate its monumental bulk. Though Nolan goes light on names and dates, she adds a significant bit of background to the overall story of 9/11 and its enduring effects. Backmatter includes a cutaway diagram and some additional facts. A deeply felt but not overwrought telling of a story that will be new to most young readers.

Paxton discovers that by saying the word "alakazoomba," he can magically get whatever he pleases.

Growing up in the segregated town of Clarksville, Tennessee, in the 1960s, Alta's family cannot afford to buy her new sneakers--but she still plans to attend the parade celebrating her hero Wilma Rudolph's three Olympic gold medals.

The story of one young girl's quest to bring clean drinking water to her African village.

Expecting a dog for her birthday, a girl is upset and furious when she gets a tortoise instead, but soon learns that even a tortoise can be a good pet.