Creating Motivated Readers, One Video at a Time
Deep dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn Just before summer begins, thirteen-year-old Ali finds an old photograph. She recognizes the two children. One’s her mother, the other her aunt Dulcie… but who is the third person, the one who’s been torn out of the picture? Ali will have all summer to figure it out, since she’s spending the summer with her aunt and her cousin in the same house her mom and aunt used to visit when ...
A Dog’s Life by Ann M. Martin Squirrel and her brother Bone begin their lives in a toolshed behind someone’s summer house. Their mother nurtures them and teaches them the many skills they will need to survive as stray dogs. But when their mother is taken from them suddenly and too soon, the puppies are forced to make their own way in the world, facing humans both gentle and brutal, busy highways, other animals, and the chang...
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Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan Esperanza thought she’d always live with her family on their ranch in Mexico–she’d always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home, & servants. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Esperanza isn’t ready for the hard labor, financial struggles, or lack of acceptance she now faces. When ...
Evermore: The Immortals by Alyson Noël After a horrible accident claimed the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people’s auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone’s entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact and suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school—but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste. Damen is gorgeous, exotic and ...
Fade To Black by Alex Finn HIV-positive Alejandro Crusan, a Florida high-school junior, is the target of bullying at his school. After being attacked in his car by a baseball bat-wielding teenager, Alex is hospitalized to recover from his injuries. Clinton Cole, prejudiced and afraid of catching AIDS, hates Alex and is responsible for tormenting him on several previous occasions. Now he claims he’s innocent. However, Daria, a teen wit...
Fake ID by Lamar Giles Nick Pearson is hiding in plain sight. In fact, his name isn’t really Nick Pearson. He shouldn’t tell you his real name, his real hometown, or why his family just moved to Stepton, Virginia. And he definitely shouldn’t tell you about his friend Eli Cruz and the major conspiracy Eli was uncovering when he died. About how Nick had to choose between solving Eli’s murder with his hot sister, Re...
Fat Kids Rules the World by K.L. Going Troy Billings is seventeen, 296 pounds, friendless, utterly miserable, and about to step off a New York subway platform in front of an oncoming train. Until he meets Curt MacCrae, an emaciated, semi-homeless, high school dropout guitar genius, the stuff of which Lower East Side punk rock legends are made. Never mind that Troy’s dad thinks Curt’s a drug addict and Troy’s brother thinks Troy’...
Feed by M. T. Anderson Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies’ attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that “Ever...
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