Books with author Julie Williams Montalbano

Starting middle school can be scary. But knowing what to expect will make you feel more confident. Packed with tips and fun quizzes, here's the inside scoop on topics like classes, lockers, homework, and getting involved in after-school activities. Get help deciding the best way to introduce yourself to those new classmates. Plus, you'll read letters from other girls who were just as worried about starting middle school, and advice from girls who have already been there.

Starting middle school can be scary. But knowing what to expect will make you feel more confident. Packed with tips and fun quizzes, here’s the inside scoop on topics like classes, lockers, homework, and getting involved in after-school activities. Get help deciding the best way to introduce yourself to those new classmates. Plus, you’ll read letters from other girls who were just as worried about starting middle school, and advice from girls who have already been there.

Allie Benton's summer at her grandparents' house in Minnesota is the same as it's always been: northern lights and pine trees, family gossip and root beer floats. She's come here to escape Nebraska's tornado season every summer for as long as she can remember. The only difference is, this time no one's coming to take her back to Nebraska when fall rolls around.With her father dead, her mother run off to heaven knows where, and her twin brother, seven years buried, just a ghost in her memory, Allie settles in with her grandparents for a cold Minnesota winter. But it's hard to fit in at a new school when her family can't afford to buy her a pair of blue jeans. And, in an ethnically divided community, Allie isn't even allowed to choose the friends she wants-handsome Joey Redfern and Lidia, the beautiful Ojibwe girl who calls Allie my niijikwe, "my friend."With a strong poetic voice, Julie Williams creates snapshots of Allie piecing a new life together- longing for her mother, grieving for her father, remembering her brother, and struggling to do what's right in an imperfect world. As the people around her come and go, Allie starts to get a sense of who she is, and of what she can hold on to despite the changes in her world.

Middle school is all about change. In the opening section, girls take a quiz to determine how they respond to change, then receive tips on how to cope with the big changes that they're getting ready to face as they start middle school- switching classes, getting up earlier, and having their own lockers, all while learning to manage a new school, new teachers, new friends, and LOTS more homework and activities! The secret to feeling more confident as she starts middle school is having a little insight into what to expect. This book provides that information as well as Smart Girl's tips from girls who have already made the grade in the big school.

All of Jessie's world is a stage, and she's determined to become a player, in Drama Queens in the House by Julie Williams.Sixteen-year-old Jessie Jasper Lewis doesn't remember a time in her life when she wasn't surrounded by method actors, bright spotlights, and feather boas. Her parents started the Jumble Players Theater together, and theater is the glue that holds her crazy family together. But when she discovers that her father's cheating on her mother with a man, Jessie feels like her world is toppling over. And on top of everything else, she has to deal with a delusional aunt who is predicting the end of the world. Jessie certainly doesn't feel ready to be center stage in the production that is her family. But where does she belong in all of this chaos?