Books published by publisher 1st Books Library

The Journal of Leroy Jeremiah Jones, a Fugitive Slave is about a 12-year-old slave boy who lives on a cotton plantation in Alabama in 1855 with his Mammy, sister Beulah, rascally twin brothers Buster and Bizzle, and Baby Ernestine. Leroy's job is to take care of the evil plantation owner's stepson, Eddy, who becomes his best friend and "conspirator in crime." Leroy and Eddy find plenty of mischief to get into until the day they learn "Pappy Snake" and "Mis Evil Eye", Eddy's stepfather and mother, plan to give Leroy's twin brothers away to relatives in the Carolinas. That's when the two boys launch a plan to hide Leroy's family in a secret cave they discovered the day Eddy skipped school. Leroy meticulously records his escapades with Eddy and the close calls his family has. This book includes photos and nonfiction information that will interest teachers, librarians, and parents and is recommended for children age ten and above.

This insightful middle grade novel portrays a child struggling to survive in an alcoholic family.Can eleven-year-old Jessica run away from her life? It's so hard living with an alcoholic parent. The fear. The anger. The embarrassment. The emptiness in her heart where a father's love should be. How can she bear to keep hearing his cruel words? What will other kids think if they see her father drunk? Can she protect her three-year-old brother?Jessica becomes more and more discouraged, but, as she turns 12 and then 13, she makes important discoveries about herself and her power to determine her future.

This is a period piece, a memoir of the halcyon days of the 1940s when young people grew up in an atmosphere of war (World War II) and learned the importance of sacrifice, creating their own play, inventing their own games, and living in the uncertainty of the future. The book is about working class young people coming of age in the midwest (Clinton, Iowa) IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE while the United States struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb.

The Phantom Sleuth takes the reader out of the ordinary work-a-day world and transports him/her into a world of "What ifs."What if you were suddenly transformed into a cat? What would it be like? How would you handle it, and how would the world react? Would you be considered wacky or insane?Who hasn't wondered how a sane sensible person handles an out-of-body experience. In this instance, a housewife, transported into the cat world by an unexplainable incident, narrates her struggle to maintain sanity in a world of disbelievers.