A Handful Of Time

When Patricia's mother sends her to her cousins' cottage for the summer, Patricia doesn't want to go. She doesn't know her cousins at all, and she's never been good at camping or canoeing, let alone making new friends.

This powerful middle-grade novel from the Newbery Honor author of RULES explores a friendship between a small-town girl and the daughter of migrant workers. When Lily's blind dog, Lucky, slips his collar and runs away across the wide-open blueberry barrens of eastern Maine, it's Salma Santiago who manages to catch him. Salma, the daughter of migrant workers, is in the small town with her family for the blueberry-picking season. After their initial chance meeting, Salma and Lily bond over painting bee boxes for Lily's grandfather, and Salma's friendship transforms Lily's summer. But when Salma decides to run in the upcoming Blueberry Queen pageant, they'll have to face some tough truths about friendship and belonging. Should an outsider like Salma really participate in the pageant-and possibly win?Set amongst the blueberry barrens and by the sea, this is a gorgeous new novel by Newbery Honor author Cynthia Lord that tackles themes of prejudice and friendship, loss and love.

Fans of classic frontier survival stories, as well as readers of dystopian literature, will enjoy this futuristic story about an epic cross-country journey. In a Handful of Dust is set ten years after the first novel, Not a Drop to Drink, as a dangerous disease strikes the community where teenage Lucy lives. When her adoptive mother, Lynn, takes Lucy away from their home and friends in order to protect her, Lucy struggles to figure out what home means. During their journey west to find a new life, the two face nature’s challenges, including hunger, mountains, and deserts. New York Times bestselling author Michael Grant says Not a Drop to Drink is a debut “not to be missed,” and this companion title is full of Mindy McGinnis’s evocative, spare language matched with incredible drama and danger. In a Handful of Dust is perfect for fans of the Partials, Enclave, and Legend series.

Part biography, part tribute, offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and "MacArthur Genius" Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe--how to be in the world. George not only engages the world that shaped Octavia E. Butler, she also explores the very specific processes through which Butler shaped herself--her unique process of self-making. It's about creating a life with what little you have--hand-me-down books, repurposed diaries, journals, stealing time to write in the middle of the night, making a small check stretch--bit by bit by bit. Includes photographs of Butler's ephemera (personal notes, library call slips, etc.) taken by George from hundreds of boxes of Butler's personal items.

Not all families are the same. Each family is different, unique and special. This is the beginning of a children's book about family diversity. What types of families are there? And what special thing makes them a family? These are some of the answers we want to offer to encourage tolerance towards others.

Can your whole life change in a single day? Emily dreams of birds. She feels constrained by nearly everything—her overbearing sisters, the expectation to be a proper young lady, and even her stiff white pinafore. Kitty feels undone. Her heart is still grieving a tragic loss, and she doesn’t want to be sent away to a boarding school so far away from home. When the two girls meet by chance, on a beach on the outskirts of Victoria, BC, in 1881, neither knows that their one day together will change their lives forever. Inspired by the childhood of acclaimed Canadian artist Emily Carr, A Day of Signs and Wonders is a sensitive and insightful look at friendship, family, and the foundations of an artist, drawn over the course of a single day—a day in which a comet appears, an artist is born and an aching hole in one girl’s heart begins to heal.

After winding an old watch, Patricia is suddenly transported back in time where she meets her mother as a young girl and uncovers a deep-rooted secret.