Toby Wheeler Eighth Grade Benchwarmer

Fans of John Feinstein and Matt de la Peña will love Toby Wheeler's dreams of being a basketball star that Phil Jackson says is "a truly great basketball story." And don't miss Thatcher Heldring's newest novel, The Football Girl--about a girl who follows her passion for the game and tries out for the football team! When Toby Wheeler has a chance to join the junior high basketball team, he’s eager to prove he can keep up with his best friend, JJ. But practice doesn’t go quite as Toby has planned, and when the coach announces the lineup, Toby’s hopes of playing ball with JJ are history: he’s an eighth-grade benchwarmer! "A truly great basketball story. Every hoops fan will love this book.”—Phil Jackson, former head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and member of the NBA Hall of Fame "This novel will appeal to readers who are looking for something one step beyond Matt Christopher's books."—SLJ "This engaging sports story gains depth from subplots involving Toby's tricky relationships with his former best friend and with the coach's daughter."–The Horn Book "Looking for something to do during halftime of the March Madness basketball games? Read this book.”-The Washington Post "With so much written about the friction between girl friends, it's good to have a book that acknowledges that left-out feeling happens to boys, too."–Booklist

Fourteen-year-old Wyatt, hoping to impress a girl and ward off a bully, decides to join his older brother's summer football league, "The League of Pain," against the advice of his parents, who think golf is the right sport for him.

When eighth-grader Roy Morelli's divorced parents find out he is failing history, they ban him from playing on his beloved all-star baseball team, and, even worse, he winds up being tutored by his father's new girlfriend.

For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book

TOBY WHEELER LOVES basketball and playing pickup games at the local rec center. No coaches, no practices, just nonstop action with his best friend, JJ, at his side. But lately JJ's been acting like he's too busy for Toby, and Toby knows it will only get worse once basketball season begins at their junior high. That's because JJ is the star of their school team, while Toby is just an ordinary gym rat.When Coach Applewhite offers Toby a chance to join the team, Toby's eager to prove he can keep up with JJ. But then the coach announces the lineup, and Toby's hopes of playing ball with JJ are history: he's an eighthgrade benchwarmer! Befriending the coach's daughter only makes matters worse. Now the only way Toby will get in the game is if he starts thinking like a team player, on and off the court.

For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself. Molly doesn’t want to be seen as “Miss Difficulty Overcome”; she wants to make herself known to the kids at school for something other than her father’s death. So she decides to join the baseball team. The boys’ baseball team. Her father taught her how to throw a knuckleball, and Molly hopes it’s enough to impress her coaches as well as her new teammates. Over the course of one baseball season, Molly must figure out how to redefine her relationships to things she loves, loved, and might love: her mother; her brilliant best friend, Celia; her father; her enigmatic and artistic teammate, Lonnie; and of course, baseball. Mick Cochrane is a professor of English and the Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

After the entire population of Earth's solar system is whisked away by alien technology, Jack and his classmates and teachers aboard the PSS 118 are the only humans left. It's up to them to find and rescue the rest of humanity—if they can avoid the aliens hunting them down, steer clear of a robot civil war, and figure out who among them might be a traitor. "Hilarious, high-stakes, un-put-downable fun."—Jarrett Lerner, author of the EngiNerds series "Another amazing trip across the galaxy with the students of PSS 118!"— Monica Tesler, author of the Bounders series

Set in a world five hundred years in the future, Welly and the wizard Merlin are forced to take on a new type of powerful magic in a highly complex and technical world after Welly's friend, Heather, is kidnapped by the sorceress Morgan LeFay. Reprint.