A little girl must use her coding skills to save her video-game home in Ava in Code Land, an adorable debut picture book by Jess Hitchman and Gavin Cullen, illustrated by Liere Martin. Ava thinks living in a video game is pretty cool. She and her cat, Pixels, spend their days riding breakfast rollercoasters and heading to underwater discos. And if something isn't exactly perfect, Ava can reprogram the world to be just the way she likes it. But then the game's villain, Max Hacksalot, comes along on his magical pirate unicorn and breaks all of Ava's code. When Max manages to send them all to the Game Over screen, it's up to Ava and her coding skills to save the day!
What kind of awesome will you be? Jess Hitchman's joyful, playful picture book, All Kinds of Awesome, celebrates children finding their passions and embracing their own awesomeness, and is paired with adorable illustrations by Vivienne To of a diverse and multicultural group of kids, all coming together on the final line of: "You will always be awesome to me." With a message of acceptance and inspiration at the heart of this story, All Kinds of Awesome shows how amazing kids are today and how they can grow their interests and passions into something even cooler.
It’s been a decade since Ava MacDaniel stepped foot on her uncle’s Utah ranch; a decade since she followed her work-obsessed mother to Paris without looking back. Now, as an upand- coming New York painter, Ava’s days are filled with galas on the arm of her gorgeous publicist boyfriend. When she finally gets a chance to open a gallery for underserved artists, Ava’s life couldn’t look more perfect. But her dream comes with a catch: making peace with the estranged family she left behind. Macy Paxton has spent her whole life on the picturesque Utah land. Though she never forgave her cousin for abandoning her, she eventually found love in Ben, a charming soldier. But after Ben went missing during a special forces operation, Macy never quite recovered. Ava’s convinced she’ll please everyone and be back to her life in a New York minute. But when facing the shadows of her past leads her to a captivating stranger, everything becomes more complicated. In her stunning debut novel, Frederic weaves a journey of love, loss, and the bonds of sisterhood. Sometimes, the perfect future can only be found in the broken pieces of the past.
A coding adventure about a brilliant inventor and her runaway robot, Rox's Secret Code aims to inspire the next generation of female leaders in STEM! Rox is happy to spend the whole day on her laptop inventing awesome robots, but her dad wants her to clean up! When the Chorebot she designs gets a mind of its own and tries to organize the whole city, Rox and her neighbor Amar race to recode Chorebot in time to save the day.
The unforgettable, haunting story of a young woman’s perilous fight for freedom and justice for her brother, the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer Set primarily in Iran, this extraordinary debut novel weaves 50 years of modern Kurdish history through a story of a family facing oppression and injustices all too familiar to the Kurds. Leila dreams of making films to bring the suppressed stories of her people onto the global stage, but obstacles keep piling up. Her younger brother, Chia, influenced by their father’s past torture, imprisonment, and his deep-seated desire for justice, begins to engage with social and political affairs. But his activism grows increasingly risky and one day he disappears in Tehran. Seeking answers about her brother’s whereabouts, Leila fears the worst and begins a campaign to save him. But when she publishes Chia’s writings online, she finds herself in grave danger as well. Inspired by the life of Kurdish human rights activist Farzad Kamangar and published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his execution, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is an evocative portrait of the lives and stakes faced by 40 million stateless Kurds. It’s an unflinching but compassionate and powerful story that brilliantly illuminates the meaning of identity and the complex bonds of family. A landmark novel for our troubled world, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is a gripping and important read, perfect for fans of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.
Ava and Alex are taking sibling rivalry to a whole new level in the seventh book of the It Takes Two series! It’s Homecoming Week in Ashland! That means a big game, a big dance, and, most importantly, Powder Puff. But when Alex and Ava are placed on different teams for the middle school girls’ flag football game, trouble brews. Ava is getting loads of extra attention because of her athletic ability, but this leaves Alex feeling majorly left out. Not one to hide from a little competition, Alex is determined to beat her sister at her own game by becoming her team’s secret weapon! But Ava isn’t worried about her jealous sister or Powder Puff. Because she has ADHD, she’s supposed to get extra time on her tests, but her new substitute science teacher is refusing to give it to her. Ava knows it isn’t fair—but how is she supposed to fix things in her science class and win Powder Puff for her team?
Chin, who writes the "Wild Edibles" column for the New York Times, goes looking for love, blackberries, and wild garlic in this wildly uneven, yet warmly exhilarating memoir. Trekking through Central Park and other urban beaten paths and backyards, Chin leads us on a journey of discovery as she searches for the tender shoots poking through cement cracks and hardy wild plants resisting winter's bite.--
