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Publisher: Clarion Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2006
ISBN-13: 9780618504558
ISBN-10: 0618504559
Call Number: CUSHM

Set in California in 1949, young Francine Green finds it best to lay low and keep to herself, especially with people being investigated and blacklisted for speaking their minds, yet when Sophie Bowman suddenly shows up at her school and makes her protests known, Francine Green's deferential attitude is forever changed.

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Publisher: David Fickling Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2007
ISBN-13: 9780385751551
ISBN-10: 0385751559
Call Number: DOWNH

Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It’s her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is Sex. Released from the constraints of ‘normal’ life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa’s feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallised in the precious weeks before Tessa’s time finally runs out.

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Publisher: Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 1998
ISBN-13: 9780786804443
ISBN-10: 0786804440
Call Number: FLAKE

Maleeka Madison gets a new teacher, Mrs. Saunders, whose skin is blotched from a rare disease, who becomes an inspiration because she does not let that stop her from standing up for herself, and whose appearance forces Maleeka to rethink how she feels about her own dark skin.

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Publisher: H. Holt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2006
ISBN-13: 9780805079999
ISBN-10: 0805079998
Call Number: GLASS

Set in apartheid South Africa, this powerful and lyrically written novel is Linzi Glass's debut. As twelve-year-old Emily Iris explains it, her mother and father have always been eager to take in travelers and vagabonds, relying on the presence of outsiders to ease the tension between them. Emily has her gentle older sister, Sarah, and Buza, the old Zulu nightwatchman, for company and comfort. But her parents'continuing discontent leads them to welcome some peculiar strangers. One spring, a family of wanderers — a wildlife photographer, his wife, and two boys — comes to stay, and their strange, compelling, and dangerous presence will leave the Iris family infinitely changed.

Publisher: Dial Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2004
ISBN-13: 9780803728479
ISBN-10: 0803728476
Call Number: JOHNS

Bird, a thirteen-year-old girl with a mission, has run away in pursuit of her stepfather. She's sure she'll be able to convince him to return home--to fill the hole he left in their family. And while she hides near his sister's farmhouse, she becomes entwined in the lives of three people who also have holes to fill: Ethan, whose heart troubles have kept him too sheltered from kids his own age; Jay, whose brother has died unexpectedly; and Mrs. Pritchard, whose house has been too empty since her husband was moved to a nursing home. Through the unique voices of the three kids, an eloquent, affecting story unfolds--the story of how one individual's warmth and kindness can heal so many hurts. Bird will leave you thoroughly uplifted.

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The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery is not currently available at Houston Public Library, but you may request it through our free Interlibrary Loan service.  Select the "Check Library Catalog" link to search for this title in WorldCat; you will need your library card to access this database.
For further assistance with Interlibrary Loan, please call 832-393-1313.

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Publisher: Bantam Starfire
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 1993
ISBN-13: 9780553280517
ISBN-10: 0553280511
Call Number: N/A

Valancy lives a drab life with her overbearing mother and prying aunt. Then a shocking diagnosis from Dr. Trent prompts her to make a fresh start. For the first time, she does and says exactly what she feels. As she expands her limited horizons, Valancy undergoes a transformation, discovering a new world of love and happiness. One of Lucy Maud Montgomery's only novels intended for an adult audience, The Blue Castle is filled with humour and romance.

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2004
ISBN-13: 9780689858390
ISBN-10: 0689858396
Call Number: MOSES

In 1947, twelve-year-old Pattie Mae Sheals is sustained by her dreams of escaping Rich Square, North Carolina, and moving to Harlem when her Uncle Buddy is arrested for attempted rape of a white woman and her grandfather is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Poet, author, playwright, and producer Shelia P. Moses was raised the ninth of ten children on Rehobeth Road in Rich Square, North Carolina, where The Legend of Buddy Bush is set.

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Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2007
ISBN-13: 9780385321389
ISBN-10: 0385321384
Call Number: MYERS

Walter Dean Myers returns to the world of 145th Street to show how love can be found, and thrive, in the most unlikely places. Curtis finds love in Iraq as he struggles to stay alive in a war he doesn't want to fight, and Letha discovers her own beauty in the love of her child. There is the "good daughter" who realizes that there's only one way to help her brother and her family. Other stories center on the daily drama of the Curl-E-Que beauty shop, or capture the slapstick side of passion.

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Publisher: Delacorte Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 1999
ISBN-13: 9780385326667
ISBN-10: 0385326661
Call Number: NAMIO

As a young girl in China, Ailin refuses to bind her feet as tradition expects. She feels no remorse when this causes the family of her intended husband to break the marriage agreement. But as she enters adolescence, Ailin realizes for the first time how powerless a girl of good family with no prospect of marriage is in Chinese society.

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2009
ISBN-13: 9781416967996
ISBN-10: 1416967990
Call Number: SMITH

Uncovering the family secret that she had a twin who died two days after he was born, Emma Healy begins to understand why she has always felt that something was missing in her life and so takes a road trip to visit his grave with her neighbor, Peter, who turns out to have more in common with her than she could have ever imagined.

Publisher: Knopf
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2000
ISBN-13: 9780679886372
ISBN-10: 0679886370
Call Number: SPINE

From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” She captures Leo Borlock’s heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. At first. Then they turn on her. Stargirl is suddenly shunned for everything that makes her different, and Leo, panicked and desperate with love, urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her: normal. In this celebration of nonconformity, Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli weaves a tense, emotional tale about the perils of popularity and the thrill and inspiration of first love.

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Publisher: Lobster Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 2009
ISBN-13: 9781897550120
ISBN-10: 189755012X
Call Number: WEBER

Sixteen-year-old Cheryl, stuck in Newfoundland with her anthropologist father as he studies dying cultures, is desperate to get back home to Montreal until she meets Jim, a 17-year old geologist who begins to break down Cheryl's goth exterior. Just as Cheryl opens to the potential of having a community, a friend, and even a romance, her father’s research and her mother’s worsening rheumatism mean they may soon be leaving the damp seaside village.