Books in Junior Library Guild Selection series

Skunk is mischievous. Skunk is selfish. Skunk is bossy. Skunk is ... a skunk. So when Lizard stomps on Skunk's toes (purely by accident) you can be sure that Skunk won't forget it. As it turns out, however, the only thing bigger than Skunk's silly grudge is Lizard's generous heart. For Lizard is a friend (a true friend), and as Skunk soon discovers, friends believe in making things right, no matter what it takes ...

The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I’d seen only in Gideon’s stories: Manifest—A Town with a rich past and a bright future. Abilene Tucker feels abandoned. Her father has put her on a train, sending her off to live with an old friend for the summer while he works a railroad job. Armed only with a few possessions and her list of universals, Abilene jumps off the train in Manifest, Kansas, aiming to learn about the boy her father once was.Having heard stories about Manifest, Abilene is disappointed to find that it’s just a dried-up, worn-out old town. But her disappointment quickly turns to excitement when she discovers a hidden cigar box full of mementos, including some old letters that mention a spy known as the Rattler. These mysterious letters send Abilene and her new friends, Lettie and Ruthanne, on an honest-to-goodness spy hunt, even though they are warned to “Leave Well Enough Alone.”Abilene throws all caution aside when she heads down the mysterious Path to Perdition to pay a debt to the reclusive Miss Sadie, a diviner who only tells stories from the past. It seems that Manifest’s history is full of colorful and shadowy characters—and long-held secrets. The more Abilene hears, the more determined she is to learn just what role her father played in that history. And as Manifest’s secrets are laid bare one by one, Abilene begins to weave her own story into the fabric of the town. Powerful in its simplicity and rich in historical detail, Clare Vanderpool’s debut is a gripping story of loss and redemption.CHARACTERS Manifest townspeople of 1918 Shady Howard: saloon owner and bootlegger Jinx: con artist extraordinaire Ned Gillen: Manifest High School track star Hattie Mae Harper: up-and-coming journalist for the Manifest Herald The Hungarian Woman: owner and operator of Miss Sadie’s Divining Parlor Sister Redempta: nun, not a universal Ivan DeVore: postmaster Velma T. Harkrader: chemistry teacher and maker of home remedies Mr. Underhill: undertaker Hadley Gillen: Ned’s father and owner of the hardware store Eudora Larkin: president of the Daughters of the American Revolution (Manifest chapter) Pearl Ann Larkin: daughter of Mrs. Larkin, and Ned’s girl Arthur Devlin: mine owner Lester Burton: pit boss Finn: Jinx’s uncle Additional townspeople and their countries of origin Donal MacGregor: Scotland Callisto Matenopoulos: Greece Casimir and Etta (and little Eva) Cybulskis: Poland Olaf and Greta Akkerson: Norway Mama Santoni: Italy Hermann Keufer: Germany Nikolai Yezierska: Russia Manifest townspeople of 1936 Abilene Tucker: new girl in town Gideon Tucker: Abilene’s father Lettie and Ruthanne: friends of Abilene Pastor Shady Howard: still a little shady Hattie Mae Macke: still writing “Hattie Mae’s News Auxiliary” Ivan DeVore: still postmaster Velma T.: still the chemistry teacher Sister Redempta: still a nun Miss Sadie: still a diviner Mr. Underhill: still the undertaker Mr. Cooper: the barber Mrs. Dawkins: owner of Dawkins Drug and Dime Mrs. Evans: woman who sits on her porch and stares

Featuring five famous trials, this book examines the way our right to a fair trial can be threatened, when people are tempted to abandon their principles in the name of safety. Trials included are the Salem Witch Trials, the Haymarket Affair Trial, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the trial of Alger Hiss, and the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui—the latter not yet covered extensively in any book.

In this Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year, Paula Young Shelton, daughter of Civil Rights activist Andrew Young, brings a child’s unique perspective to an important chapter in America’s history. Paula grew up in the deep south, in a world where whites had and blacks did not. With an activist father and a community of leaders surrounding her, including Uncle Martin (Martin Luther King), Paula watched and listened to the struggles, eventually joining with her family—and thousands of others—in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery. Poignant, moving, and hopeful, this is an intimate look at the birth of the Civil Rights Movement.From the Hardcover edition.

You are a Bengal tiger cub, one of three -- Dacca, Rajpur, Raniganj -- abandoned by your mother. You are so cold and thin that someone with kind hands puts you on a heating pad and sits by you for hours, moistening your mouth with milk. When you give a weak cry and look up, there is a human face almost crying too. Your new mother is Helen Delaney Martini, who has already raised a lion cub in her New York apartment. Tigers in the bathtub will be no problem for her and her husband, Fred. This remarkable book -- strikingly striped as tigers are, sympathetically spoken as any child could wish -- tells the story of Helen Martini, founder of the Bronx Zoo's animal nursery in 1944 and its first woman zookeeper.

A 2014 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist "An exceptionally well-researched, lovingly crafted, and important tribute to unsung American heroes." -- "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review) World War II is raging, and thousands of American soldiers are fighting overseas against the injustices brought on by Hitler. Back on the home front, discrimination against African Americans plays out as much on Main Street as in the military. Tanya Lee Stone examines the little-known history of the Triple Nickles, America's first black paratroopers, who fought in an attack on the American West by the Japanese. The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, in the words of First Sergeant Walter Morris, "proved that the color of a man had nothing to do with his ability."Front matter includes a foreword by Ashley Bryan. Back matter includes an author's note, an appendix, a time line, source notes, a bibliography, and an index.