Creating Motivated Readers, One Video at a Time
How Angel Peterson Got His Name by Gary Paulsen Angel and his friends try to shoot a waterfall in a barrel, break the world record for speed on skis, hang glide with an Army surplus parachute, and perform other daredevil stunts. A friend borrows a quarter to wrestle a bear at the carnival to get the attention of a girl, only to be swept out of the ring by a giant paw, like “a hockey puck with legs.” The action takes place 50 or so y...
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City of Beasts by Isabel Allende Fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold is about to join his fearless grandmother on the trip of a lifetime. An International Geographic expedition is headed to the dangerous, remote wilds of South America, on a mission to document the legendary Yeti of the Amazon known as the Beast. But there are many secrets hidden in the unexplored wilderness, as Alex and his new friend Nadia soon discover. Drawing on the str...
Alibi Junior High by Greg Logsted Thirteen-year-old Cody doesn’t know much about normal life. He’s been living and traveling all over the world with his father, who works for the CIA. Together, they’ve formed a research team responsible for tracking the bad guys. But, someone’s caught on. An explosion outside a cafe in France, where they barely escape with their lives, leaves the team shaken. Cody’s father puts him on a plane ...
We Beat the Street: How a Friendship Led to Success by Sampson Davis Sampson, George, and Rameck could easily have followed their childhood friends into drug dealing, gangs, and prison. Like their peers, they came from poor, single-parent homes in urban neighborhoods where survival, not scholastic success, was the priority. When the three boys met in a magnet high school in Newark, they recognized each other as kindred spirits who wante...
The Billionaire’s Curse by Richard Newsome Gerald Wilkins is an Australian youth who’s the recent heir to a fortune bequeathed to him by an English aunt he barely knew. While Gerald’s giddy, irresponsible parents use his good fortune to take a Caribbean vacation, the 12-year-old stays behind in London, facing threats connected to the recent theft of a world-renowned diamond. His attempts to piece together how his aunt’s ...
Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler Three years have passed since Hudson Avery’s parents divorced and her dream of skating professionally disappeared as quickly as her father’s exit to the southwest. Now she’s living in the snow-ravaged, dead-end town of Watonka, NY, and baking cupcakes at her mom’s diner. As she enters her senior year of high school, the teenager’s desire to skate again resurfaces with the announc...
The Black Pearl by Scott O’Dell Ramon wants to prove to his father, Blas Salazar, that he is just as good as Sevillano, Ramon’s worst enemy and Ramon’s father’s best pearl diver, at pearl diving. Manta Diablo, the monster of the deep, guards “The Pearl of the Heavens,” the ocean’s biggest pearl, that Ramon wants to dive for. Ramon got “The Pearl of the Heavens” and brought back home. When Ramon tells his father abo...
Blank Confession by Pete Hautman 16-year-old Shayne Blank walks into a police station and announces that he has killed someone. Detective Rawls, intrigued by Shayne’s calmness, allows the teen to lead him through the entire story, right up to the murder — including his evolving relationship with Mikey Martin,who finds himself the target of a sadistic bully. Mikey’s troubles start when he throws away a bag of drugs forced on him fo...
The Blizzard by John Nez Melanie Hondel is the all-American high school student. She is popular, pretty, and attracts the attention of more than a few boys. One of them is Chet, who Melanie thinks is handsome enough, but whose determined self-reliance she has always found a bit strange and hardly romantic. When Melanie refuses the advances of a classmate, Tommy, and is beaten by him, she flees into a blizzard, where she falls through th...
