Books published by publisher Front Street

There is a skeleton in the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. In 1996, community members decided to find out what they could about it. Historians discovered that the bones were those of a slave name Fortune, who was owned by a local doctor. After Fortune's death, the doctor rendered the bones. Further research revealed that Fortune had married, had fathered four children, and had been baptized later in life. His bones suggest that after a life of arduous labor, he died in 1798 at about the age of 60. Merilyn Nelson wrote The Manumission Requiem to commemorate Fortune's life. Detailed notes and archival photographs enhance the reader's appreciation of the poem.

A story of hope during a time of desolation. The Pestilence has arrived. A young girl is hastened out of her dying town and told by her mother, "Run far, run fast." The child travels from village to castle, castle to countryside, in search of shelter. Wherever she turns, the Pestilence has already appeared. Scared and tired, she finally meets a stranger who knows something of this plague. He is kind and learned, but will his knowledge be enough to save her family? Timothy Decker explores the bleak yet breathtaking world of fourteenth-century Europe. Stark pen-and-ink drawings emphasize the realism of this romanticized period, and straightforward prose creates a truly haunting tale.

A raw, poignant story of a band of Brazilian street kids who survive -- if they can -- by their wits alone. Asphalt Angels centers around a boy named Alex, a street child of 13 in Brazil who has been kicked onto the city streets by his stepfather after his mother dies. He is alone and scared. This is the story of how he adapts to life in the streets with a group of other children. Hazards are everywhere: drug-dealing, theft, glue-sniffing, harassment, brutality, even murder. It is not easy steering clear of them, yet Alex manages to survive, eventually making a home with 14 other boys in a house, working in an office, and attending evening school. This story grew from the real-life drama the author observed while on assignment. In an afterword, she reports that some 10,000 children sleep in Rio's streets, and many more roam them by day, victims of inadequate nutrition, education, and shelter, and prey to drugs and violence. Alex does exist, but under another name.

High in the mountains of the Lake District is a secret valley where the Vikings have their last stronghold--their Shield Ring. The Normans seek to crush this group of Northmen and to bring all of England under their control. They build a castle in Carlisle and send an army north. Meanwhile, the Northmen lamb and harvest as though life were normal, but Ari Knudson sharpens Wave-flame and the Jarl prepares his War Host. Two youths of the village--Frytha, a Saxon girl who fled to the valley when the Normans burned her home, and Bjorn, the foster-son of the old harper--make ready, too. As the Norman's approach the secret valley, the Northmen recruit able bodies, and Bjorn volunteers to enter the Norman camp as a spy. Frytha knows Bjorn's deepest fear: that if he is captured, he will fall to Norman torture and reveal the location of the Shield Ring.

The true narrative of a slave from Africa, crafted in verse by Marilyn Nelson. Born an African prince, Broteer Furro was captured by slave traders at age six. As he stepped onto a cargo ship, the vessel's steward purchased the boy and gave him a new name: Venture. He landed in Rhode Island and worked through a lifetime of slavery to buy not only his own freedom but the freedom of his wife and children. Remarkable in his own time for his ambition and physical stature, Venture Smith became history's first man to document both his capture from Africa and life as an American slave. In this breathtaking volume, Marilyn Nelson's poems sit opposite the text of Smith's own narrative. Nelson's controlled verse layers this edition with insight into Smith's stoic eighteenth-century prose. Deborah Dancy's stark watercolor collages highlight the tension between the economical language of the narrative and the turbulent emotion within the poems.

Eddy Thomas can read a college physics book, but he can't read the emotions on the faces of his classmates at Drayton Middle School. He can spend hours tinkering with an invention, but he can't stand more than a few minutes in a noisy crowd, like the crowd at the science fair, which Eddy fails to win. When the local school crossing guard is laid off, Eddy is haunted by thoughts of the potentially disastrous consequences and invents a traffic-calming device, using parts he has scavenged from discarded machines. Eddy also discovers new friends, who appreciate his abilities and respect his unique view of the world. They help Eddy realize that his "friend" Mitch is the person behind the progressively more distressing things that happed to Eddy. By trusting his real friends and accepting their help, Eddy uses his talents to help others and rethinks his purely mechanical definition of success in this Tofte/Wright Children's Literature Award winner.

A brilliant young woman's fight against a debilitating psychological illness is set against the historical events of the Prague Spring and the anti-Soviet struggles in Czechoslovakia. When Jude's mother gets a fellowship to go to Prague to study, Jude's world is thrown into chaos. The teenage girl feels threatened and isolated. It turns out her whole family is going, but still Jude feels adrift. When she arrives in Prague and discovers that their life in the embassy compound is closely circumscribed by rules and regulations and that they are closely watched at all times, she begins to suffer even more. Desperate to break out of the constraints imposed on her and her family, Jude sneaks out one night only to encounter a security crackdown on students and dissenters. Although she makes it home safely, her consciousness continues to deteriorate as she fluctuates in and out of rationality. Only when Jude steals a friend's car and drives into the countryside does the true seriousness of her condition become apparent to her family. Then the long road to recovery begins. The violence of our parting flays the skin from my body, shredding muscle and splintering bone. But the worst is that my shattered vessel can no longer hold the rhythm and order of that lovely deep music. I feel it leave me, leaking away, drop by drop, until all that is left is emptiness that jerks, hardens, and blazes into pain.I open my eyes. I am lying in the street, my cheek held fast by the grit of asphalt, support for which I am grateful. Lexy is there, and Merry, but no order, no sense. Sirens. Jostling. Pain like a knife at my heart. —FROM THE BOOK

Little Chicago opens in the office of Children’s Services, where 11-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker trying to determine what has happened to him. His emotions are blocked at first, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother’s boyfriend, and is released into his mother’s custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy’s attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Blacky is helped at first by a classmate, Mary Jane, who has also been ostracized, and then by the gun that he buys easily from his sister’s boyfriend. Little Chicago is an unblinking look at the world of a child who has been neglected and abused. It portrays head-on the indifference and hostility of classmates, teachers, and even Blacky’s mother, once these people learn his “secret.” Like Sura in The Buffalo Tree and Whensday in The Copper Elephant, Blacky is one of Adam Rapp’s mesmerizing voices, more so because it is a voice so rarely heard.

"I get along well with honey badgers," says the protagonist of this story. After all, he was raised by a pair of them. Protected by his adoptive parents, who represent the most fearless species on the planet, this boy has nothing to fear as he eats (only flowers) and drinks (spring water) and sleeps (in a den) and plays (with kites made of ferns). In this nonsensical picture book, first-time author Jamison Odone navigates a boldly wild and unabashedly strange style. Radiant, exotic, spooky illustrations highlight the unorthodox sequence of the protagonist's statements that explain his bizarre life.

In this Michael L. Printz Honor Book, Lily wishes she could be like the other girls in her class. But how can she? As the only sensible person in her family, she never has time to hang out with friends. Someone has to stay home to look after her brother. Maybe she should fall in love! What could be less sensible that that? When her grandmother invites the whole family to a party, Lily cannot imagine how they will make it through the day. Her mother is always bringing home strange people. Lily doesn't even know her father. Her grandfather has disowned her brother. Her brother has a new girlfriend that no one has met. To top it all off, that day when her eye caught Daniel Steadman's just for a moment, she felt all woozy inside. If that was love, she isn't sure she likes the feeling. As the party approaches, all Lily can hope for is one whole and perfect day. Is it too much to ask?

The Lord's Prayer, taught by Jesus Christ to his disciples, has been an enduring source of faith and inspiration. Heidi Holder gathers together all of God's creatures--the tiniest insect and the most delicate butterfly, the goldfinch and the salmon-crested cockatoo, the gentle deer and the powerful leopard--to illuminate the promise of the prayer and to celebrate the beauty of the world God created.Ms. Holder's extraordinary paintings accompany the text of the Lord's Prayer as it appears in the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. Her detailed notes on the illustrations, included at the back, explain the traditional or personal significance of some of the plants and animals she has chosen to portray.