Books with author Betsy Franco

He’s a young artist obsessed with myths. But can he fix his own fate? Acclaimed author Betsy Franco and her talented son collaborate on a hip YA novel of "epic" proportions.Life. Love. Death. Identity. Ovid’s got a lot on his mind, and he pours it all — as confessions, observations, narrative poems, and drawings — into the pages of a notebook. Inspired by his namesake, he wryly records his classmates’ dramas as modern-day Roman mythology. There’s Sophie and Caleb, the Psyche and Cupid of cyber-couples; poetic Paula, who pursues filmmaker Franny like Apollo chasing Daphne; and graphic novelist Duwayne, a Proserpina shuttling between divorced parents. Meanwhile, Ovid hides his own Olympian struggles: his meth addict sister Thena has run off, leaving him with a suffocating home life and a disturbing secret. In her striking YA debut, Betsy Franco introduces an expressive soul with a heartbreakingly authentic voice. Fantastical ink illustrations by her son Tom Franco enhance the intimate tone, delving deep into one intriguing teen’s imagination.

Show students how math applies to the world around us through open-ended math projects involving investigations into American history. Students actually learn math as they solve problems related to the Boston Tea Party, covered wagons, African American quilts, the Statue of Liberty, the Gold Rush, Pony Express, and voting rights. Fourscore and 7, which includes possible solutions, used historical facts and events to engage students in geometry, factors and primes, operations with large numbers, fractions, decimals, measurement, area and volume, probability, discrete math, ratio and scale, data and graphing, and percents.