Books with title Ordinary

Family secrets and school secrets entwine in an engaging new novel from the author of You Remind Me of You, and Splintering.Sometimes when life haunts you, you're better off becoming the ghost. Emil Simon feels invisible enough. He counts as a nonentity at his elite preparatory school and makes barely a dent in his father's thoughts. When his older brother runs away, he entrusts Emil with a master key to Caramoor Academy. Soon Emil is sneaking into the school at night to explore ... and falling for a faculty daughter who sneaks in for reasons of her own. This is a novel about living with disappearances... and willing yourself to appear.

Ordinary = Boring? Not Anymore!While behind the wheel during driver's ed, high school sophomore Kate Sterns inadvertently foils an escaped convict's getaway. When her heroic actions land her face on the front page of the local paper, she thinks her life is over, and it is, at least her life as an ordinary anyway. Overnight she is plucked from the ordinaries and plopped into the "in crowd." At first Kate is in denial of her status change, but then she likes it, that is until she's labeled a snob, her locker gets trashed and one other minor thing-- she's being stalked.

In Abby's world, magic isn't anything special: it's a part of everyday life. So when Abby learns that she has zero magical abilities, she's branded an "Ord"-ordinary, bad luck, and quite possibly a danger to society. The outlook for kids like Abby isn't bright. Many are cast out by their families, while others are sold to treasure hunters (ordinary kids are impervious to spells and enchantments). Luckily for Abby, her family enrolls her in a school that teaches ordinary kids how to get around in a magical world. But with treasure-hunting kidnappers and carnivorous goblins lurking around every corner, Abby's biggest problem may not be learning how to be ordinary-it's whether or not she's going to survive the school year!

Shortlisted for the SYRCA 2013 Diamond Willow Award, selected as an American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Book, a Booklist Editors’ Choice, nominated for the OLA Golden Oak Tree Award, and a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards: Young Adult/Middle Reader Award, the Governor General's Literary Awards: Children's Text and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award There’s not much that upsets young Valli. Even though her days are spent picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror are the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. Valli and the other children throw stones at them. No matter how hard her life is, she tells herself, at least she will never be one of them. Then she discovers that she is not living with family after all, that her "aunt" was a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family’s hands. She decides to leave Jharia . . . and so begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods. It’s not so bad. Valli finds that she really doesn’t need much to live. She can "borrow" the things she needs and then pass them on to people who need them more than she does. It helps that though her bare feet become raw wounds as she makes her way around the city, she somehow feels no pain. But when she happens to meet a doctor on the ghats by the river, Valli learns that she has leprosy. Despite being given a chance to receive medical care, she cannot bear the thought that she is one of those monsters she has always feared, and she flees, to an uncertain life on the street.

All twelve-year-old Elizabeth Dagmar Johnson ever wanted was to suffer so she could be a great artist. Madame DuBois, her French art teacher, always tells her to reach deep inside and paint what she feels. Unfortunately, Elizabeth always feels happy. That does not make for great, gut-wrenching, emotional art. It makes for nice, pretty, colorful, art and she is not happy about that at all. Then there was a fire at her school. Nothing too dramatic, but she was sent to stay with her grandparents for two weeks. That should have made for huge amounts of suffering and it did, sort of. She found out some strange stuff about her grandparents such as: her grandma knits purses; her grandpa has an unnatural affection for the hardware store and is addicted to Mine Sweeper; she hates peeling apples; her Uncle Chip did something crazy with a spoon. She had to endure a meeting of the Red Hat Society, an organization of really, old ladies. She had to listen to way too many weird stories from her seemingly psychic grandma. Finally, she had to suffer through her grandpa’s hospital visit where she was forced to tell her grandma some “stories” of her own so she wouldn't be sad and cry. To top it all off, she inadvertently fell in love at a most inopportune moment. Did Elizabeth suffer enough to make her dream of creating a masterpiece and getting on Madame DuBois Wall of Honor come true? Only one way to find out . . .

Eight year old Ibrahim and friends win a Quran competition, where the prize sees them scoring tickets to watch an exciting football game after their class is paid a visit by Hakeem Mohammed, a star football player from the California Spartans.Hakeem Mohammed and the California Spartans are in New York City for one of the most anticipated football games of the season. Ibrahim and friends unite with Hakeem in the locker room to meet the team before the big game. Though their meetings with Hakeem were brief, he instilled a life long impression before going on to star in one of the most memorable games in football. This story unfolds in No Ordinary Day, the first book from 'Childhood Champions', a new series of stories about a group of Muslim children in New York City and their daily adventures.

Everybody in Jack's family seems to be brilliant - apart from Jack and his downtrodden dog Zero. Even his little sister can beat him at swimming. But Jack's uncle Parker has come up with a plan to make him and Zero shine: they'll pretend that Jack can tell the future! If only they couldforesee what chaos the plan will cause . . .* Helen Cresswell is the much-loved writer of over 40 children's books. She's the author of classics such as Lizzie Dripping as well as having adapted The Demon Headmaster for television. She has been runner-up for the Carnegie Medal four times.

Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense readership for his Cork O’Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable—and to take on a maturity beyond his years.

Ordinary = Boring? Not Anymore! While behind the wheel during driver's ed, high school sophomore Kate Sterns inadvertently foils an escaped convict's getaway. When her heroic actions land her face on the front page of the local paper, she thinks her life is over, and it is, at least her life as an ordinary anyway. Overnight she is plucked from the ordinaries and plopped into the "in crowd." At first Kate is in denial of her status change, but then she likes it, that is until she's labeled a snob, her locker gets trashed and one other minor thing-- she's being stalked.