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Books published by publisher Ariel Books / Farrar Straus and Giroux [1966]

  • Tractor Mac Teamwork

    Billy Steers

    Hardcover (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), May 10, 2016)
    All the vehicles and animals on Stonybrook Farm are enlisted to help build a new swimming hole for their town's residents. It is a big job, but Tractor Mac and his pals are willing to lend a hand. But a tractor named Deke thinks he can do it all by himself--and do it better than everyone else. He soon learns that a complex job is done best when each member of a team does his or her part.
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  • Speak

    Laurie Halse Anderson

    Hardcover (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 22, 1999)
    The first ten lies they tell you in high school."Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.Speak was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.
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  • Unchanged, Chapters 1-5

    Jessica Brody

    language (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Dec. 16, 2014)
    So many secrets are buried within these compound walls. I used to be one of those secrets. After returning to the Diotech compound and undergoing an experimental new memory alteration, Seraphina is now a loyal, obedient servant to Dr. Alixter and the powerful company that created her. Happy and in love with Kaelen, another scientifically-enhanced human designed to be her perfect match, Sera's history with a boy named Zen is just a distant memory from a rebellious past she longs to forget. But as Sera and Kaelen embark on a nationwide tour to promote Diotech's new product line—a collection of controversial genetic modifications available to the public—Sera's mind starts to rebel. She can't stop the memories of Zen from creeping back in.As more secrets are revealed, more enemies are uncovered, and the reality of a Diotech-controlled world grows closer every day, Sera will have to choose where her true loyalties lie, but it's a choice that may cost her everything she's ever loved.
  • Tractor Mac Harvest Time

    Billy Steers

    Hardcover (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Aug. 11, 2015)
    When the nights start to get cooler and the corn is ready for picking, it's time for autumn fun at the farm! Tractor Mac loves the fall, but he's just too big for the orchard, where he is stuck harvesting apples that Farmer Bill will make into delicious treats. Across the road, Small Fred the tractor is busy with the Pumpkin Picking Festival, but he's just too small to pull all of the people who want to go on a hayride. Working together, Tractor Mac and Small Fred figure out a way to share their chores and share the fun.
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  • Wish

    Barbara O'Connor

    Hardcover (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Aug. 30, 2016)
    A New York Times bestseller!A touching story about a girl and her dog, perfect for young animal loversEleven-year-old Charlie Reese has been making the same secret wish every day since fourth grade. She even has a list of all the ways there are to make the wish, such as cutting off the pointed end of a slice of pie and wishing on it as she takes the last bite. But when she is sent to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live with family she barely knows, it seems unlikely that her wish will ever come true. That is until she meets Wishbone, a skinny stray dog who captures her heart, and Howard, a neighbor boy who proves surprising in lots of ways. Suddenly Charlie is in serious danger of discovering that what she thought she wanted may not be what she needs at all. From award-winning author Barbara O'Connor comes a middle-grade novel about a girl who, with the help of a true-blue friend, a big-hearted aunt and uncle, and the dog of her dreams, unexpectedly learns the true meaning of family in the least likely of places.This title has Common Core connections.
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  • Tonight the Streets Are Ours: Chapters 1-5

    Leila Sales

    language (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Sept. 15, 2015)
    Recklessly loyal. That's how seventeen-year-old Arden Huntley has always thought of herself. Taking care of her loved ones is what gives Arden purpose in her life and makes her feel like she matters. But lately she's grown resentful of everyone--including her needy best friend and her absent mom--taking her loyalty for granted. Then Arden stumbles upon a website called Tonight the Streets Are Ours, the musings of a young New York City writer named Peter, who gives voice to feelings that Arden has never known how to express. He seems to get her in a way that no one else does, and he hasn't even met her. Until Arden sets out on a road trip to find him. During one crazy night out in New York City filled with parties, dancing, and music--the type of night when anything can happen, and nearly everything does--Arden discovers that Peter isn't exactly who she thought he was. And maybe she isn't exactly who she thought she was, either.
  • The Riverman, Chapters 1-5

    Aaron Starmer

    language (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Dec. 17, 2013)
    Download the first five chapters of The Riverman, the first book in an exciting new series about the fine line between friends and enemies, fact and fiction, by Aaron Starmer! Alistair Cleary is the kid everyone trusts, the kid who wraps his fingers around secrets and never lets go. Fiona Loomis is not the typical girl next door. One day she shows up at Alistair's house with a proposition: she wants him to write her biography. Fiona says that in her basement there's a portal that leads to a magical world where a creature called the Riverman is stealing the souls of children. And Fiona's soul could be next. If Fiona really believes what she's saying, Alistair fears she may be crazy. But if it's true, her life could be at risk. It's up to Alistair to separate fantasy from reality. The Riverman, by master storyteller Aaron Starmer, will leave you questioning the responsibilities of friendship, the boundaries of imagination, and the true origin—and ownership—of the stories we tell.
  • If Animals Celebrated Christmas

    Ann Whitford Paul, David Walker

    Board book (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Sept. 10, 2019)
    Don't miss the other books in this adorable series: If Animals Kissed Good Night, If Animals Said I Love You, and If Animals Went to School!What if animals did what YOU do? This charming story describes how animals might celebrate the holidays!If animals celebrated Christmas...how would they do it? Tortoise would hiss a holiday wish, Crane would croon joyful carols, and mama and Papa Buffalo would kiss beneath the mistletoe. Across the animal kingdom, every creature would deck the halls for this magical season.
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  • The Cricket in Times Square

    George Selden, Garth Williams

    eBook (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Feb. 25, 2014)
    After Chester lands, in the Times Square subway station, he makes himself comfortable in a nearby newsstand. There, he has the good fortune to make three new friends: Mario, a little boy whose parents run the falling newsstand, Tucker, a fast-talking Broadway mouse, and Tucker's sidekick, Harry the Cat. The escapades of these four friends in bustling New York City makes for lively listening and humorous entertainment. And somehow, they manage to bring a taste of success to the nearly bankrupt newsstand.Join Chester Cricket and his friends in this classic children's book by George Selden, with illustrations by Garth Williams. The Cricket in Times Square is a 1961 Newbery Honor Book.
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  • The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

    Pablo Neruda, Ilan Stavans

    Paperback (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 1, 2005)
    The most comprehensive English-language collection of work ever by "the greatest poet of the twentieth century--in any language" (Gabriel García Márque)"In his work a continent awakens to consciousness." So wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, lionized during his lifetime as "the people's poet."This selection of Neruda's poetry, the most comprehensive single volume available in English, presents nearly six hundred poems, scores of them in new and sometimes multiple translations, and many accompanied by the Spanish original. In his introduction, Ilan Stavans situates Neruda in his native milieu as well as in a contemporary English-language one, and a group of new translations by leading poets testifies to Neruda's enduring, vibrant legacy among English-speaking writers and readers today.
  • Unforgotten, Chapters 1-5

    Jessica Brody

    language (Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Dec. 17, 2013)
    Download the first five chapters of Unforgotten, the second book in Jessica Brody's Unremembered Trilogy. After a daring escape from the scientists at Diotech who created her, Seraphina believes she is finally safe from the horrors of her past. But new threats await Sera and her boyfriend, Zen, at every turn as Zen falls prey to a mysterious illness and Sera's extraordinary abilities make it more and more difficult to stay hidden. Meanwhile, Diotech has developed a dangerous new weapon designed to apprehend her. A weapon that even Sera will be powerless to stop. Her only hope of saving Zen's life and defeating the company that made her is a secret buried deep within her mind. A secret that Diotech will kill to protect. And it won't stay forgotten for long.
  • Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

    Peter Godfrey-Smith

    eBook (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Dec. 6, 2016)
    Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.