Books with author Gennifer Choldenko

Moose Flannagan moves with his family to Alcatraz so his dad can work as a prison guard and his sister, Natalie, can attend a special school. But Natalie has autism, and when she's denied admittance to the school, the stark setting of Alcatraz begins to unravel the tenuous coping mechanisms Moose's family has used for dealing with her disorder. When Moose meets Piper, the cute daughter of the Warden, he knows right off she's trouble. But she's also strangely irresistible. All Moose wants to do is protect Natalie, live up to his parents' expectations, and stay out of trouble. But on Alcatraz, trouble is never very far away. Set in 1935, when guards actually lived on Alcatraz Island with their families, Choldenko's second novel brings humor to the complexities of family dynamics and illuminates the real struggle of a kid trying to free himself from the "good boy" stance he's taken his whole life.

Ant (short for Antonia) is sure she is adopted. She doesn't look anything like her mother or her sisters - or even her dad (who is away working too much). Ant's best friend is a boy called Harrison who draws chickens, and her dog Pistachio, a tiny ageing chihuahua, is her constant companion, but she feels that she just doesn't fit in. Ant's life meanders along until one day her lying starts to cause her, and those around her, some rather serious problems. Forced to face up to some of the things she has spent her life trying to hide from, in particular Ant has to come to terms with why she doesn't get on with her mother. An uplifting, exciting and truly original story.

Today I moved to a twelve-acre rock covered with cement, topped with bird turd and surrounded by water. I'm not the only kid who lives here. There's my sister, Natalie, except she doesn't count. And there are twenty-three other kids who live on the island because their dads work as guards or cook's or doctors or electricians for the prison, like my dad does. Plus, there are a ton of murderers, rapists, hit men, con men, stickup men, embezzlers, connivers, burglars, kidnappers and maybe even an innocent man or two, though I doubt it. The convicts we have are the kind other prisons don't want. I never knew prisons could be picky, but I guess they can. You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.

After losing their house to foreclosure, three siblings - India, Finn and Mouse - have less than twenty-four hours to pack their belongings and fly, without their mother, to stay with an uncle in Colorado.But when they land, a mysterious driver meets them at the airport in a pink car adorned with feathers. He has never heard of their Uncle Red.Like Dorothy in Oz, they find themselves in an unknown place, with no idea of how to get home. Time is running out . . .

Kirsten's parents are barely speaking to each other, and her best friend has fallen under the spell of the school's queen bee, Brianna. It seems like only Kirsten's younger science-geek sister is on her side. Walker's goal is to survive at the new white private school his mom has sent him to because she thinks he's going to screw up like his cousin. But he's a good kid. So is his friend Matteo, though no one knows why he’ll do absolutely anything that hot blond Brianna asks of him. But all of this feels almost trivial when Kirsten and Walker discover a secret that shakes them both to the core. Fast paced, marvelously funny, and brutally honest, If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period touches on universal truths about human nature.