Ethan Suspended

After a school suspension and his parents' separation, Ethan is sent to live with his grandparents in Washington, D.C., which is worlds apart from his home in a Philadelphia suburb.

In this guide, 100 recommended books and booktalks offer the perfect way to start value discussions with teens and teen/adult book groups. With its focus on current, popular titles, Value-Packed Booktalks: Genre Talks and More for Teen Readers is a flexible tool for all educators—from Young Adult (YA) librarians and readers' advisors at public libraries to school librarians and teachers. Booktalks are provided for young adult literature published between 2006 and 2010, organized by values addressed in specific genres. Examples of discussions show how these booktalks can help teens define what is personally important to them and why. Unique in that it ties current popular genres to values (courage with adventure titles, problem-solving with mystery/suspense), the book focuses on 100 recently published YA fiction and nonfiction titles, offering summaries, lists of themes, values statements, booktalks, and curriculum connections. It also cites passages appropriate for read-aloud booktalks, designates a general grade-range (middle, junior, or senior high school), notes gender appeal for the titles (male, female, or cross gender), and lists similar or related works, some published before 2006.

With the explosion in YA publishing, it’s harder than ever to separate good books from the rest. Booklist magazine’s editors’ deep and broad knowledge of the landscape offers indispensable guidance, and here they bring together the very best of the best books for young adults published since the start of the 21st century.

This resource makes it easy for teachers and librarians working with middle-school children to infuse their curriculum with multicultural literature. Carefully vetted and annotated, it encompasses fiction and non-fiction published in the last decade, making it an ideal reference and collection development tool for schools and public libraries alike

Support current educational initiatives with a ready-to-use tool that will help you with selection, motivation, and skill building relative to titles published within the last five years. New demands by Common Core and other national and state standards mean teachers and librarians need support in pairing high-interest content with skill building that speaks to those standards. This hands-on, research-based resource will help. Covering 100 titles, it guides you to topics, themes, values, and activities that meet national and state standards. The book's organization—by genres, topics, and themes—will enable librarians to serve customers with specific requests and help teachers build thematic units. Focusing on recent young adult fiction and nonfiction (2010–2014), the guide offers a succinct plot summary, links to popular themes and genres, indication of reading levels, and an engaging booktalk for each title. It also includes guidelines for further promoting each book and extending knowledge through discussion. The author, a former middle and high school teacher, demonstrates how you can foster close reading through paraphrasing, comparison, and response and explains how to strengthen critical thinking among teens. Lists of related titles and notes on gender appeal can be used for readers' advisory.

A CBC Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of 2020 In a book equal parts travelogue and pandemic guide, the journalist Ethan Lou examines the societal effects of COVID-19 and takes us on a mesmerizing journey around a world that will never be the same. Visiting Beijing in January 2020 to see his dying grandfather, the Canadian journalist Ethan Lou unknowingly walks into a state under siege. In his journey out of China and—unwittingly—into other hot zones in Asia and Europe, he finds himself witnessing the very earliest stages of a virus that will forever change the world as we know it. Lou argues that the coronavirus outbreak will have a far greater impact than SARS, for example, simply because China is now many more times integrated with the increasingly interconnected world. Over decades, globalization has crafted a world painfully sensitive and susceptible to shocks such as this pandemic. A crisis like it has thus been long overdue—and we have yet to see it unfold fully. In our integrated world, events that may previously be isolated now ripple farther and wider and in ways we do not expect and cannot foresee. We have not seen the worst, and if and when we outlast this pandemic, nothing will ever be the same. Decisions now—or indecisions—will shape and define the world for decades. These ideas are fleshed out through the virus's spawning and how it spread, the unprecedented measures to contain it and an examination of past pandemics and other crises and how they shaped the world--and an argument for why this one's different. Lou shows how drastically the virus has transformed the world and charts the greater and more radical shifts to come. His ideas and arguments are framed around his unintentionally tumultuous journey around the world, whose path the virus seemed to follow until he landed safely in quarantine in a small town in Germany, where he was able to take stock and start telling his story.

Gough, Feehan, and Lyons have taken everything learned from their research on developing GrandFamily Resource Collections and leading grandfamily programming in several states and put it in this easy to use guide. They share the successes and failures of existing programs so other librarians can hit the ground running rather than trudge through a time-consuming and costly period of trial-and-error. It’s a lot more efficient to learn from someone else’s mistakes than to make your own. The target population, grandfamilies, and most specifically, grandparents raising grandchildren have become a statistically-significant group worthy of attention in many communities but library practitioners may not have explored further due to a lack of resources and money. Special features include: List of Web resources (government agencies, support groups, etc.) List of grants and funding opportunities Sample grant applications List of possible community partners for the library Sample surveys or some tactic for getting to know the needs of one’s target population Sample marketing plans Sample promotional materials Sample activity sheets Sample release forms, etc. With this practical and comprehensive guide, your library will be ready to jumpstart or easily expand a stellar program for the grandfamilies in your community.

Chip Thurmond, a 33 year-old high school English teacher in San Jose, CA, has a problem. Her name is Estella Santos, an obsessed, conniving, 17 year-old who sits in the back row of Chip’s 2nd period class. The girl, who fancies herself Juliet and Chip her Romeo, will stop at nothing in her pursuit of her inspiring English teacher. One afternoon she meets with him after school and fabricates a story about her dad molesting her. She pleads for Mr. Thurmond’s assistance, but is empathetically told the two of them will meet tomorrow with Estella’s school counselor. That’s not what Estella had in mind! That night she contacts Chip, telling him she’s run away and has nowhere to go. Can he please, please help her? She ends up on his apartment couch and when Chip rebuffs her advances . . . it’s game on for Estella. Early the next morning, Chip’s principal discovers on his cell phone pictures of Estella at Chip’s apartment, including one of her wrapped only in a sheet. Chip is placed on administrative leave pending his dismissal and thinking it best, Estella decides to disappear. Assuming his arrest imminent, Chip buys a trailer and heads east eventually landing in the little town of Jones Lake, KS where he hopes to enjoy anonymity while finding employment at the town’s small, rural K-12 school. Street-smart, fearless, and a little crazy, Juliet soon picks-up her Romeo’s trail. Her only wish in life it seems is for the two to consummate their love or die trying. Jones Lake, Chip assumes, is a small, innocuous place where little happens, He soon finds out differently. Loaded with intrigue, romance, mystery, crime, and mysticism, the small town is full of off-beat characters, including: a homeless man claiming to be an angel; a troubled but beautiful teaching colleague plotting the death of her husband; an ornery chief of police who’s antagonistic toward everyone; a girl-next-door parent smitten with Chip; a cemetery caretaker who talks with the dead; and many more. And, as if it couldn’t get any worse, Chip learns from his previous school that Estella Santos has learned his whereabouts and is en route. Is it time to flee again Chip wonders or has he journeyed far enough? Is he ready to confront the must cunning, self-assured person he’s ever known and again risk his career. Or, maybe it’s just time to pack his bags and head to North Dakota?