Books with author Ann Kelley

What causes a meteor shower?A True Book: Space series dives into the many components that make each planet distinctive and exceptional, as well as explore many of the other components that make up Space. This series includes an age appropriate (grades 3-5) introduction to curriculum-relevant subjects and a robust resource section that encourages independent study.This book introduces meteor showers, describing what causes them, what happens when they enter Earth's gravity, and what can be learned about the universe from the study of meteorites.

No parents. No rules. No way home.Fourteen-year-old Bonnie MacDonald couldn't be more excited for a camping trip on an island off the coast of Thailand. But when a strong current sweeps Bonnie and her friends past their appointed campsite, depositing them instead on what the boatman calls a "forbidden island," they're just happy to have reached dry land.Overnight, things take a turn for the worse. Three torturous days pass, but the boatman doesn't return, and what once seemed like a vacation in paradise becomes a battle against the elements.Peppered with short, frantic entries from Bonnie's journal as she struggles to survive, Lost Girls tells the page-turning, heart-pounding story of a group of teen girls fighting for their lives.

Never enter the boneyard. Never follow the scream.All rimriders know the legend of the boneyard; an uncharted area of dead space that navigators avoid at all cost. Any ship foolish enough to cross the boundary disappears leaving only the echo of an unearthly scream.****With the plasma net still in place at space station Deep Anchor, tensions between United Earth Corporation and Freetraders run high. As Jane continues her apprenticeship and prepares for the master navigator’s exam, the crew of the Solar Vortex makes a desperate attempt to run UEC’s blockade before the space station goes dark. Will success bring hope to the Freetrader cause or lead to the loss of someone dear and bring Jane’s world crashing down?

It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns to be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live. BACK COVER Meet Gussie. Twelve yhears old and settling into her new ramshackle home on a cliff top above St Ives, she has an irrepressible zest for life. She also has a life-threatening heart condition. But it's not in her nature to give up. Perhaps because she knows her time might be short, she values every passing moment, experiencing each day with humour and extraordinary courage. Spirited and imaginative, Gussie has a passionate interest in everything around her and her vivid stream of thoughts and observations will draw you into a renewed sense of wonder. Gussie's story of inspiration and hope is both heartwarming and heartrending. Once you've met her, you'll not forget her. And you'll never take life for granted again.

It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live.

Gussie is a twelve year old girl from St. Ives in Cornwall. She is passionate about learning, wildlife, poetry, literature, and she wants to be a photographer when she grows up. But her dreams were put on hold as she struggled with a serious heart condition. Now she has got what she needed: a heart and lung transplant. But it isn't working out quite the way she thought. Firstly she has to leave her beloved Cornwall to live in London and in the months following her operation she is unable to do very much except read and adopt a stray kitten, but she could do that when she was sick. She craves adventure and experience beyond her four walls, until, that is, she hits upon a plan - she is going to get her divorced parents to fall in love again. It's not going to be easy, her mum is still dating her doctor boyfriend and despises Gussie's father, who happens to be living with his new girlfriend - the Snow Queen. But Gussie is a determined girl and there is only one thing that could stop her now.REVIEWS'Not many books around that you can give to anyone of any age and be sure of an appreciative audience, but Kelley does it beautifully in this, the third in the Gussie series, following the well-deserved Costa Category award for The Bower Bird.' SUE BAKER's Personal Choice, PUBLISHING NEWS'A great book.'THE INDEPENDENT'You have to read it, and it will stay with you forever!'TEEN TITLESBACK COVERI ask for a mirror. My chest is covered in wide tape, so I can't see the clips or incision but I want to see my face, to see if i've changed.Gussie wants to go to school like every other teenage girl and find out what it's like to kiss a boy. But she's just had a heart and lung transplant and she's staying in London to recover from the operation.Between managing her parents' love lives, waiting for her breasts to finally start growing, and trying to hide a destructive kitten in her dad's expensive bachelor pad, Gussie makes friends with another cardio pation int the hospital, and finds out that she can't have everything her heart desires...

This title, which won the 2007 Costa award, continues the story of Gussie, a precocious young girl diagnosed with a rare heart condition. Despite this, she is determined to live life to the fullest, experiencing typical adolescent problems such as love and parent troubles. While never complaining, she offers a direct and honest insight about herself and the world around her, in a story which is poignant, charming, and oddly optimistic.

No parents. No rules. No way home.Fourteen-year-old Bonnie MacDonald couldn't be more excited for a camping trip on an island off the coast of Thailand. But when a strong current sweeps Bonnie and her friends past their appointed campsite, depositing them instead on what the boatman calls a "forbidden island," they're just happy to have reached dry land.Overnight, things take a turn for the worse. Three torturous days pass, but the boatman doesn't return, and what once seemed like a vacation in paradise becomes a battle against the elements.Peppered with short, frantic entries from Bonnie's journal as she struggles to survive, Lost Girls tells the page-turning, heart-pounding story of a group of teen girls fighting for their lives.

Magic isn't for sissies.No good comes from this book. The story has magic, mayhem, theft, murder, sass talk, demons, animals committing felonies, gleeful revenge, and bad things happening to good people for no particular reason. It won’t encourage good habits and probably fine tune bad ones. The only lesson learned is don’t lie unless you know the rules.Teenager Peter Whistler lives at the Little Angels Home for Orphan Boys. Life in New Jersey is harsh in the Great Depression, but Peter has an exceptional ability to lie. He hones his talent, convinced it’s the ticket to easy fortune. He certainly doesn’t foresee the arrival of a murderous conjurer with mysterious designs on a little blind girl named Esther. Drawn into a nefarious plot to unleash a demon, Peter leads Esther and an enchanted terrier on a desperate escape to New Orleans and meets Amelie Marchand. Like all well-bred southern girls she’s trained in deadly martial arts, but with a murderous stepmother, Amelie has troubles of her own. Peter and Amelie’s one chance for survival is to head deep into the bayou and seek help from a mad shaman known as the Frog King. Welcome to an alternate 1930s where both jazz and magic fill New Orleans’ air. Can a little luck, mystical lies, and a dash of Cajun crazy help Peter harness the power to kill an immortal demon? If not, the Depression will be a picnic by comparison when hell arrives on Earth.

She had made me envious. Strange as it might seem, I had not known envy before. Surely there must be other ways of living, I thought, not hand-to-mouth, alone, in a draughty old shack looking out at the same scene, day after day. Was this to be my future?It’s 2137, and the future’s dark.Sixteen-year-old Flora is scraping out a humble living, selling homegrown supplies from her late grandparents’ run-down Shell Shack and keeping her illegal copy of Pride and Prejudice hidden from the terrifying Uzi soldiers.But Flora’s life changes when she meets Li-li, the daughter of a powerful Rice Lord. Flora is seduced by the lavish lifestyle of her rulers, but also sees the brutality that underpins their lifestyle. What choices will she face on her last days in Eden?An innocent adrift in a world ripped apart by greed and want...The year is 2137, but the people of Eden are reduced to living in medieval fashion. The human race is deeply divided and the world has been brought to its knees by the Oil Wars and rising sea levels.Flora is trying to hold on to her humanity as her world changes forever.Costa Award winning author Ann Kelley’s disturbing vision of the future has much to say about our own times.It’s a disturbing, compulsive read that makes you realise that not so very much needs to shift for this to happen here. HELEN DUNMORE on RunnersThe author as artist evokes people and places with delicacy, humour and truth – a novel of outstanding beauty. COSTA AWARD JUDGES on The Bower Bird