Bel Air Bambi And The Mall Rats

When Bambi Babcock's TV-producer father bankrupt, the Babcocks have to get out of Los Angeles ... fast. Dad heads for his hometown of Hickory Fork, which he remembers as a wholesome place for kids to grow up. But Bambi, her sister Buffie, and their little brother Brick come up against the Mall Rats, a down-home teenage gang run by scary Tanya and beef Jeeter. When the Mall Rats walk into school dives for cover. They've already trashed the mall. Bambi knows that if her show-biz family is going to get stuck here, they must turn the school around and save the town. The Mall Rats will never know what hit them.

In answer to the perennial question "What else should I read?", these innovative resources go beyond linear listings of suggestions to help students find books through a variety of directions, including subject, author, and genre. Each guide contains approximately 30 displayable bookwebs that can be used as posters, with reproducible bookmarks that list related titles and fit into pockets on the posters. Each web leads users to 8 to 14 related topics that have lists of relevant books with their authors and brief LC descriptions. Detailed author, title, and subject indexes make further exploration easy. Hundreds of the best fiction books for young readers, titles commonly found in school library collections, are covered in the webs. The visual, nonlinear features of these books make them unique and user-friendly tools for educators and students alike. Perfect for the bulletin board, the bookwebs are a great way to stimulate reading!

One of the most revered authors of young adult books, Richard Peck has penned several critical and commercial successes including Dreamland Lake, The Ghost Belonged to Me, and the National Book Award finalist, A Long Way from Chicago. Peck's novels have also received prestigious awards including the Edgar for Are You in the House Alone? and the Newbery Medal for A Year Down Yonder. He is also the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the National Humanities Medal, the ALAN Award, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Medallion. In Richard Peck: The Past Is Paramount, authors Donald R. Gallo and Wendy J. Glenn recount the highlights of Peck's life, focusing on his world travels, his accomplishments as a teacher and his renowned writing career. Gallo and Glenn examine Peck's 30 novels, as well as his short stories and children's books, poems, essays and other nonfiction. An additional chapter analyzes themes, characters, and style in his writing. The appendixes list Peck's many honors and prizes, as well as film adaptations of his works. The extensive bibliography cites all of Peck's primary and secondary works, along with sources of interviews, speeches, prayers and credos, articles about him, and sources of reviews of each of his books. For fans and scholars alike, Richard Peck: The Past Is Paramount is the most authoritative resource about the life and work of this beloved author.

Written for librarians, teachers, and researchers, this is the second five-year supplement to the authors' Dictionary of American Children's Fiction, 1960-1984 (Greenwood, 1986). Its 567 entries cover 189 award-winning children's books by 136 authors published from 1990 to 1994. Included are concise critical reviews of novels, biographical profiles of authors, and descriptions of memorable characters. An appendix lists books by the awards they have won, and an extensive index allows complete access to the wealth of material contained within this reference work. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for those works that critics have singled out to receive awards or have placed on citation lists during the five years covered by the volume. The reference also contains biographical entries for leading authors of children's fiction, with entries focusing on how the author's life relates to children's literature and to particular works in this dictionary. The volume provides a list of awards, along with an appendix classifying individual works by the awards they have won. An extensive index provides full access to the wealth of information in this book.

School and public libraries often provide programs and activities for children in preschool through the sixth grade, but there is little available to young adults. For them, libraries become a place for work—the place to research an assignment or find a book for a report—but the thought of the library as a place for enjoyment is lost. So how do librarians recapture the interest of teenagers? This just might be the answer. Here you will find theme-based units (such as Cartoon Cavalcade, Log On at the Library, Go in Style, Cruising the Mall, Space Shots, Teens on TV, and 44 others) that are designed for young adults. Each includes a display idea, suggestions for local sponsorship of prizes, a program game to encourage participation, 10 theme-related activities, curriculum tie-in activities, sample questions for use in trivia games or scavenger hunts, ideas for activity sheets, a bibliography of related works, and a list of theme-related films. The units are highly flexible, allowing any public or school library to adapt them to their particular needs.

Newbery Medalist Richard Peck tells a story of small-town life, gay marriage, and everyday heroes in this novel for fans of Gary Schmidt and Jack Gantos. Archer Magill has spent a lively five years of grade school with one eye out in search of grown-up role models. Three of the best are his grandpa, the great architect; his dad, the great vintage car customizer,; and his uncle Paul, who is just plain great. These are the three he wants to be. Along the way he finds a fourth—Mr. McLeod, a teacher. In fact, the first male teacher in the history of the school. But now here comes middle school and puberty. Change. Archer wonders how much change has to happen before his voice does. He doesn't see too far ahead, so every day or so a startling revelation breaks over him. Then a really big one when he's the best man at the wedding of two of his role models. But that gets ahead of the story. In pages that ripple with laughter, there's a teardrop here and there. And more than a few insights about the bewildering world of adults, made by a boy on his way to being the best man he can be.

If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it," begins Richard Peck's latest novel, a book full of his signature wit and sass. Russell Culver is fifteen in 1904, and he's raring to leave his tiny Indiana farm town for the endless sky of the Dakotas. To him, school has been nothing but a chain holding him back from his dreams. Maybe now that his teacher has passed on, they'll shut the school down entirely and leave him free to roam. No such luck. Russell has a particularly eventful season of schooling ahead of him, led by a teacher he never could have predicted-perhaps the only teacher equipped to control the likes of him: his sister Tansy. Despite stolen supplies, a privy fire, and more than any classroom's share of snakes, Tansy will manage to keep that school alive and maybe, just maybe, set her brother on a new, wiser course.