Babylon Boyz , by Jess Mowry

Life ain’t always like some of you may live it the easy way—sometimes life sucks, and sometimes it ain’t fun at all. And that’s the way it is for these three homies, the Babylon Boyz.
Take Pook, tall, gorgeous, and gay. Always fighting for who he is, always wanting to get outta Babylon and be a doctor.
Take Dante, who’s never had a chance. His mom was heavy into crack when she was pregnant with him, and died when he was born—born with a bad heart. If he’s really good, no smoke, no alcohol, no excitement of any kind, he might live till he’s 30.
Take Wyatt, over 300 pounds of flab with a 300 pound attitude to back it up. Don’t mess with him—you don’t want to know how he sneaks his gun into school every day.
For these brothers, life is not fun. Life is not easy. Everyday they fight the gangstas in the street and the jocks at school who hate faggots and fat guys and guy with bad hearts and a worse attitude.
These are the good guys, Pook, Wyatt, and Dante, but what will happen when they witness a crack dealer’s arrest, and end up with his gun and the briefcase he threw out of the car just before the cops caught up with him? It could be money—money for a new heart, a medical education, a new start. It could be crack, crack that they could sell for that money. But either way, that briefcase is guaranteed to be danger. What will they do with it?
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Body of Christopher Creed, by Carol Plum-Ucci

The email flashed across the screen, the button signaling an attachment brightly lit.
“Dear Alex Healey,
“My name’s Victor Adams and I am betting that you are going to know all about everything I have to say in this letter. If you don’t, then just delete it, blow it off, and chalk it up to another Internet nutcase.
“But if you know what I’m talking about, you’ll also know it’s true. People lie and they love their lies, live with their lies. But what I have to say here isn’t a lie. It’s a truth I have to live with every day of my life, like it or not. And it’s the reason I’m spending my senior year at a boarding school, away from the friends I grew up with, the teams I played on, the town I lived in.
“That town couldn’t handle what happened to Chris Creed, and I couldn’t handle it either. Chris was a joke, a dork, the kid that everyone loved to hassle, to pick on, to beat up. And I was part of everyone. But then when we were all juniors in high school, he vanished. No blood, no body, no clues or signs or anything. He was just gone, except for the email he sent to the high school principal just before he vanished.
“Folks say I killed him, I saw him dead, and I’m on this giant denial trip. But that’s not true. Chris Creed isn’t dead—he’s alive, I’m sure of it. He’s alive somewhere, and I am going to find him.
“Read the file I’ve attached, and talk to the people who know what really happened. They’ve read it, and will vouch for every word. I swear the following account contains no lies. It is one-hundred-percent accurate. People can love their lies, tell their lies, believe their own lies until hell pays a visit. But this whole story is true. That’s the point of it.
“Read it, and get back to me. You’ve got my address. The rest is up to you. Torey Adams”
What happened to Chris Creed? What is Torey Adams so afraid of? Why does everyone in his hometown think he killed Chris, and why can’t he stop searching for the loser he and his friends beat up on so often?
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On the Fringe, by Don Gallo, Editor
Booktalk based on “Guns for Geeks” by Chris Crutcher

Hi, my name’s Sam, and I want to tell you about Gene Taylor and what he did. Gene’s been just about everyone’s whipping boy his entire life, getting the worst of it from his folks, kids at school, even from some of the teachers. I wonder what all those folks think now, and if they could go back and change what they did, would they. Especially now that they know how Gene got his revenge, or at least part of it.
And those kids who laughed at him and hassled him, how would they feel if they were suddenly standing in his shoes? Maybe you’re like them, cool, attractive, popular, a cheerleader or a jock. Maybe you’d have joined the chorus of jeers. If you had, you might have been one of his targets. But this is just a story, right? Geeks don’t get guns and come to school shooting, the way Gene did. Sure they do, all too often, and people die, just like they did in Mr. Beeler’s government classroom, while we all watched and waited to see if we would be the next victim.
What’s it like to be like Gene, to be someone everyone treats like dirt? Let him tell you, and then listen to what Dana and Suzanne and Brian and Jeannie and Billy and Marco and Arnie have to say.
What’s it like to be an outsider? They know, and they’ll tell you all about it.
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What’s it like being gay or lesbian? What’s it like to have a parent or a friend who is? Have you ever wondered if you are gay or lesbian? Let the teens in these stories show you their lives from the inside out—you may discover you all have more in common than you’d thought.
Vince meets his fairy godfather in “Am I Blue?,” finds out about the great gay fantasy number three, and makes a wish to make it come true.
In “We Might as Well All Be Strangers,” Alison discovers her grandmother knows a lot more about prejudice and acceptance than she had ever imagined.
Lee and Pete, in “Honorary Shepherds,” use their film project to express their love for each other and their admiration for their teacher who helps them redefine themselves, even as she is dying of cancer.
Will’s dad and Chris have been together since Will was three, but Will’s never admitted to his best friend that his dad’s gay in “Holding.”
You’ll also meet Tommy, Terry, David, Michael, Meryl, Lon, Thea, Cindy, and many more; teens all wondering about their sexuality, struggling with the probabilities and possibilities in their lives, and not wanting to go through that process alone.
What’s it like being gay? Listen to these stories and find out.

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Holes, by Louis Sachar

Stanley Yelnats wasn’t a bad kid he just came from a long line of losers. His whole family history was full of folks who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. And now it was Stanley’s turn.
Derrick Dunn was a bully and Stanley was his favorite target, in spit of the fact that Stanley was so much bigger than he was. That’s why, at about 3:15 on the last day of school, Stanley was fishing his notebook out of one of the toilets in the boy’s restroom when his bus left. Missing his bus meant that he had to walk home, which is why a pair of sneakers fell out of the sky and hit him on the head. Stanley was so startled that he just grabbed the shoes and started running, which is why a policeman stopped him to question him, and that’s why Stanley was arrested and charged with shoe theft. Because Stanley didn’t have the good luck to be hit by any old pair of sneakers, he had the bad luck to get hit by the pair of sneakers Clyde Livingston, the famous ballplayer, had just donated to charity. They were worth maybe $5000 at a charity auction, and so in spite of it being Stanley’s first offense, the judge gives him not probation, but a choice of jail or Camp Green Lake. Stanley chose to go to the camp, only to discover that it wasn’t green, there wasn’t a lake, and it was the hottest, driest place he’d ever been. And then he finds out what he’s going to do all day, every day.
All the boys at the camp have to go out on the dried lakebed and dig holes. They started at 4:30 in the morning and each boy had to dig until he had a hole five feet deep and five feet in every direction. Then the next morning, they had to get up and do it again.
But they aren’t just digging holes; they’re also looking for something, something interesting, something that could persuade the Warden to give whoever finds it a day off digging.
Is there a reason for Stanley’s bad luck? His family’s always said it was because of his dirty, rotten, pig stealing, great-great grandfather, but maybe they’re wrong!
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The weirdness had always been there for Paul, but it took Tangerine to help him put it all together. Paul has been legally blind since he was five, and has to wear thick, ugly glasses so he can see. But even though his brother and parents have told him it’s because he stared at an eclipse too long, he doesn’t remember doing that and can’t believe he’d ever be that dumb, anyway. And he does remember some things, bits and pieces that don’t fit together, until his family moves to Tangerine County, Florida.
Tangerine is almost like another planet. Hundreds of acres of citrus trees have been burned down to make room for huge, ostentatious housing developments. Strange fires smolder under the earth and can’t be put out; lightning strikes at the same time every day. An enormous sinkhole swallows the whole middle school. And in Tangerine, like many other places, football players are worshipped and exceptions made for them.
Paul’s older brother is a football star—a place kicker who can kick the ball fifty yards and make sure that his team always wins. His parents dote on him and make sure he gets whatever he wants.
But Paul, who’s a soccer player, an unbeatable goalie, can see that there’s something strange and wrong about the way his parents defer to Erik and ignore him. He also knows that he’s afraid of Erik because of something he can’t quite remember. Maybe Tangerine is the place that can help him fit those bits and pieces of memory back together and show him the reason he’s afraid of his big brother.
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Slot Machine, by Chris Linch

Would it be three weeks of summer camp for incoming freshmen or twenty-one days of nightmares?
Elvin, Mikie, and Frankie are best friends and incoming freshmen at the Catholic Brothers Academy in the fall, which means that they have to go to summer camp to meet their classmates and faculty members, and to have FUN, whether they want to or not. But when they arrive, they discover that it’s not just a summer camp, it’s a sports camp, and that FUN means playing and playing and playing that sport, day after day after day. That’s not really a problem for Mikie, who’s good at basketball, or Frankie, who’s cool, tall, handsome, and knows how to play golf and tennis, but it’s a nightmare for Elvin. El’s your classic uncoordinated fat kid who hates sports. When his Cluster Leader asks him what sport he likes best, he says “None.” Frankie, who’s also in his cluster, is appalled to hear El acting like such a geek.
But El has to go somewhere—everyone has to have a slot, a pigeonhole to fit into, so they send him to football, where he becomes intimately acquainted with what it feels like to have several real football types jump on top of him all at once. To say the least, it isn’t pleasant. When the coach kicks him out, he goes to baseball, but only lasts one day. Finally he ends up in wrestling—with lots of other fat kids. Maybe he can make a go of this—if he could only figure out the rules.
Meanwhile, Mikie’s fitting in, coasting the way he usually does, but Frankie is having some problems. The seniors from the football team, who are in the golf/tennis slot and also the school leaders, are grooming Frankie to take their place after they graduate, and some of the things they want him to do aren’t fun at all, and others just seem cruel. But he wants to fit in, to find his slot, more than anything else, so he goes along with it, while Mikie and Elvin wonder if he’ll survive.
It may be only three weeks, but those twenty-one days change Mikie, Frankie, and Elvin in ways they never expected. They knew who they were when they were fed into the slot machine, but who were they when they were spit back out?
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Turner was big, big and mean. The first time Anthony saw him, he was lying on top of Anthony’s girlfriend, Diana. They were both drunk and laughing. Anthony turned and walked out of the party.
Diana had been the one perfect thing in Anthony’s life, and now she was gone. He wanted revenge in the worst kind of way, and the first step was getting a job at O’Dermott’s, a burger franchise where Turner worked. He knew there was an opening—his friends Rick and Jenn who also worked there, told him Diana had quit.
Snowing the manager was easy and Anthony was hired. He wasn’t sure how to get his revenge, but then Turner provided the inspiration he needed, first by getting Anthony beaten up by the guys from Burger Queen, O’Dermott’s arch-rivals, and then by tricking Anthony into turning the whole restaurant into a toxic waste dump for hours.
And what was the plan? Will it involve a troll, a disguise, a kidnapping, ransom letters, humiliation, and doing to Turner all the things he’d hate most in the world? It was elaborate, and not the easiest plan to pull off. But it was beautiful, and huge and ornate—and inescapable. It would hurt Turner in many, many spots at once. It was perfect.
No more Mr. Nice Guy—Anthony was going for the throat. “I will make you cry, Turner,” he vowed. “I will make you cry!”
Can a burger wuss really take down someone who’s older, meaner, bigger, but not necessarily smarter? Is revenge served hot or cold at O’Dermott’s? Find out in Burger Wuss. (Top)

Silent to the Bone, by E.L. Konigsbery

It is easy to pinpoint the minute when my friend Branwell began his silence. It was Wednesday, November 25, 2:43 pm, Easter Standard Time. It was there--or, I guess you could say not there--on the tape of the 911 call. It was Vivian who finally told the dispatcher that something was wrong with Nikki, Branwell's baby sister. And she also said that it was Branwell who had hurt her. Bran still said nothing. He was still saying nothing when later that day, a police car took him to the Clarion County Juvenile Behavioral Center.
I’ve known Bran all my life, and we’ve always been best friends. I didn’t know what had happened in that house, but I knew Bran would never, ever have hurt Nikki. He simply wasn’t capable of it. I guess that’s why his dad, Dr. Zamborska, asked me if I’d go to the Center and see if I could persuade him to talk. I said I would, but I didn’t tell Dr. Z that I didn’t think I could make a difference. We weren’t friends the way we had always been. Oh, we still caught the bus to school together, and talked, and from the outside, to someone else, it probably looked like nothing had changed. But something had. Ever since Columbus Day, six weeks before, Branwell had been different. He seemed to have less time for me, less to say to me, and something that he was keeping from me, keeping hidden. But I knew after the first time I went to see him, that I would have to forget the distance that had grown between us, and be old friend I had always been, if he was ever going to speak to me.
And, with the help of a set of homemade flash cards, he did. I was the first one he spoke to, because he knew that even before I had learned all the details, I knew he could not have hurt the baby. But before I tell you what those first words were, I need to tell you what came before them, and all the things I heard in Bran’s silences.

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Heroes, by Robert Cormier

My name is Francis Cassavant, and I am back in Frenchtown for the first time in three years. After the grenade, I was in the hospital in France, then in one in England, and now they have shipped me home with a Silver Star and no face. I have eyes, because I can see, and eardrums, because I can hear, but no ears to speak of. My nose is gone, with two black holes where it used to be. My teeth are gone as well, but my jaw is intact so I can wear dentures. The grenade also damaged my throat, and I don’t even sound like myself any more. I wear a white silk scarf tied around the bottom part of my face and pull a Red Sox cap low over my forehead, to hide as much of what I look like as I can. Since I’m wearing my old fatigue jacket, everyone knows I’m a veteran. What they don’t know, however, is that I am on a mission. I carry a gun in my duffle bag, and I am waiting to use it. I killed in France and Germany; one more death won’t make any difference. I am going to do something I should have done three years ago, instead of forging the date on my birth certificate and joining the army when I was only 15. In a way I’m glad that no one can recognize me, that my face is gone. It will make it easier to leave when my mission is over. No one will blame Francis—it will be the vet without a face that killed Larry LaSalle.
They say I’m a hero, just like Larry, but it’s a lie. I had my chance to be a hero, and I failed. I am determined not to fail again.

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Over the Wall, by John Ritter

Tyler was good at baseball, and a shoe-in for shortstop in the all-stars. He was short, only five feet, but he was a five tool player-- strong arm, good speed, good fielding, hits for average, and hits for power. He had only one thing against him, but it was a killer. He had a hair trigger temper, and when he got angry, people got hurt.
Trash talking is part of baseball, but Tyler couldn’t just let it roll off him any more than he could a miscalled play against him.
But Coach Trioli is a Vietnam vet, and he knows a lot about anger and how to deal with it. And when Tyler gets kicked off the team, coach goes to bat for him and gives him one more chance. But Tyler has to meet his conditions-- no un-sportsman-like conduct, stay in control, no slip-ups, not even one, and demonstrate that he has the maturity and control it takes to play ball at the all-star level. He didn’t care how Tyler showed that maturity, but if he didn’t, he’d have no chance of being and all-star shortstop.
Will thirty bats, sixteen porcelain birds, four war memorials and an eye-opening soccer game get Tyler in to the all-Stars? Go Over the Wall and find out.
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I know I won’t ever forget Colin. Among the other things he taught me was how to be an individual, not half of a set of identical twins. How to be “Mark” and not “Matthew and Mark.” He made me think about things I’d always taken for granted, to ask questions and look for answers. He was a teacher and a friend, and for a little while, I was like a son to him.
But the most important things he taught me were about the wonderful complexities of the world, and about how God always answers prayers, even when we don’t like or want to accept the answers we get. I’ll never forget Colin, because he changed my life forever.
But I didn’t know that the first time I saw him. Matthew and I were supposed to preach our first sermon in our dad’s church that night, and I was scared. So instead of going to soccer practice with Matt, I went to the park. That’s when I saw Lydia, an incredible dog who could dive just like the ducks in the pond, and her owner, Colin. That was the afternoon I made friends with a scientist and my life began to change, and change, and change.
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Sacrifice, by Diane Matchek

"When the time is right," her father had said. "When the time is right." But Weak-one wasn't willing to wait any longer to prove to the warriors of her tribe that she was worthy to be one of them. "The time is now," she said to herself, and began to make plans to avenge her father's death. It was unusual among the Crow Indian tribes for a woman to be a warrior, but it was not forbidden.
Weak-one was an outsider in the tribe, and many thought she was crazy. At 15, she was skinny, long-limbed, with black hair that snarled in a grimy mess down her back. Her face, with its high cheek-bones and straight nose, might have been beautiful, but it was a hard mask, filled with determination, her mouth a taut, straight line. She wore crudely sewn boy's clothing, and her eyes smoldered from deep within, like a wildcat's eyes at night from inside its den.
She waited until the war party had been selected, and then stood and faced the warriors. "I, too, wish to go with the war party. My father was killed by a Headcutter, and as my father's only kin, I have the right to settle this matter by slaying a Headcutter warrior." But they laughed at her, and refused to let her go with them. When she realized she could not join them openly, she decided to follow them and join them later, when it was too far to send her back. After the battle, when they returned to the village, everyone would finally recognize her as the Great One, the most powerful warrior in her tribe, just as her fa-ther's dream had predicted, so many years ago.
But nothing went according to her plan, for the gods had their own plans for the girl called Weak-one, who called herself Great One. She knew that in order to have a real name, she must earn it. Yet that night, as she crept away from the only home she had ever known, the girl had no idea how many hardships waited for her in the months ahead. Would she have the courage, the determination, the knowledge to survive months alone in the wilderness, and even more months as a prisoner of a Pawnee tribe, unwilling to reveal why they had captured her? Would she be able to prove to herself and everyone else that she did not deserve the name Weak-one-who-will-not-last-long?
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“I leaped onto the sliding ladder in the back room of Gladstone’s Shoe Store of Chicago, gave it a shove, and glided fast toward the end of the floor to ceiling shelves of shoeboxes. My keen retailer’s eye found the chocolate loafer, size 13, I slid the ladder to the Nikes, grabbed two boxes of easy walkers, beige and white, in size 41/2 narrow, pushed again to women’s saddles, found the waxhides, size 7, rode the ladder to the door one-handed. Children, do not try this at home. I am a shoe professional.”
I can sell shoes to anyone. I started at Gladstone’s last year, when I was a sophomore, and my life fell apart. I gained almost 20 pounds, dropped to second string on the basketball team cause I couldn’t jump, and got a C- in history, which knocked me off the honor roll. I staggered through the whole year, wondering why God had invented adolescence. Gladstone’s saved me. When I was there, I was somebody. I didn’t feel big, awkward or lost. I was successful. I helped people. And I loved it.
Selling shoes is how I ended up driving Mrs. Gladstone to Texas. She was in the store the night that Dad came in and demanded to see me. He was, as usual, messy, drunk, and loud. I hadn’t seen him for two years, and I wasn’t happy to see him now. Last time, he’d spent the whole summer hanging around, drinking, not drinking, making promises and breaking them. It had been awful. I took him outside and poured him into a cab, then went back in to apologize to Mrs. Gladstone for the scene he’d made. Luckily, she didn’t blame me for his problem, and I went back to selling shoes. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, Mrs. Gladstone went back to watching me.
I couldn’t have been more surprised to hear her voice on the phone later that night, telling me she wanted me to be her driver. “Pick me up at 7 tomorrow morning, and drive me downtown. Then we’ll see.” Her car was a huge old Cadillac, and I’d never been in one, much less driven one. I much preferred selling shoes. But Mrs. Gladstone was nothing if not determined, so just a few days later, I found myself driving out of Chicago in a blinding rainstorm, heading for Gladstone’s Shoe Stores of Peoria, Springfield, St. Louis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Shreveport, and Dallas. Mrs. G and I were on a road trip to end all road trips. So come along with us, and find out what road trips—and selling shoes—are all about.
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A Door Near Here, by Heater Quarles

The harder I tried to make it work, the more difficult it got. Mom never had been much of a mother, so we all learned to take care of ourselves. She always drank a lot, but up ‘till a couple of months ago, she had a job, so she just couldn’t go to bed and stay there. After she got fired, she quit doing anything but drinking and sleeping. Bills didn’t get paid, things around the house didn’t get fixed, and I ended up being the one trying to keep us all together, and not let anyone know how bad things had gotten.
Mom and Dad have been divorced for ten years, and he has a new wife and kids. If it had just been Tracey and Douglas and me, we could have lived with them. But no way were we going to leave Alisa behind. She was born two years after Mom and Dad split, when Mom was dating a lot of men. No one knew who her father was, and the three of us had brought her up a lot more than Mom had. She was ours, and she was the reason we were trying to make it on our own.
But I found out the hard way that the lies we’d constructed so carefully were no more than a house of cards, just waiting for a gust of wind to topple it over. The morning the pipes under the sink broke, and I sliced open my hand making everyone’s lunches, and Alisa wrote her letter to C. S. Lewis, was the morning our house of cards began to fall apart.
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She looked like a mermaid, hair wrapped around her body, acting more like an animal than a human. But she was a girl, a girl who'd lived with the dolphins for years. Could she ever learn to be a human girl, instead of a dolphin girl?
They found her on an island off the coast of Cuba. Her hair hung down to her feet, and she was covered with seaweed. Her height and body development were of a human girl between 11 and 16 years old. Her skin was streaked with salt, and she had barnacles and strange circular scars all over her body. She was unable to speak; instead she made a high-pitched crying noise, like a seagull. The Coast Guard crew that rescued her called her Mila. They later discovered that she had been living with the dolphins since she was 3, thirteen years ago.
But now Mila must go from the world of the dolphins to the world of humans; from a world of togetherness to a world of separate-ness; from a world with no boundaries, to a world with walls and locked doors. Her body is human, but her mind, her thoughts, her ideas, are those of the dolphins. Will she ever be able to knit the two halves of herself together in a seamless whole?
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Beet Fields , by Gary Paulsen

It was 1955, and he was sixteen and on his own. He’d run away when his drunken mother had crawled into his bed to do more than sleep, and the first job he got was working in the beet fields, thinning beets.
The beets taught him the boredom of mindless repetitious labor, and the Mexicans he worked beside taught him the value of belonging to a group and of friendship.
And after the beet fields, there were the wheat fields and endless, exhausting work with never enough sleep.
When the wheat fields were behind him, he learned about betrayal and death and mourning.
And finally, he learned to be a carney—tough, cynical, out to make a buck any way he could. And just when he thought he’d learned it all, Ruby taught him that he hadn’t.
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Bat 6 , by Virginia Euwer Wolff

If only. . . . If only. . . . They all said it. There had been clues, signs, but they’d been ignored or misunderstood. But the Bat 6 game was everything, the most important event for sixth-grade girls, and this was the fiftieth game.
Forty-nine years before, in 1899, the women of Barlow Road and Bear Creek Ridge, at the end of the Oregon Trail, decided the rivalry between their towns had gone on long enough. They planned a ladies softball game and picnic, and the men from both towns showed up and made friends. Over the years, the games continued, and eventually, it became traditional for the sixth-grade girls teams to play against each other. It was the only game they played, and they could only be on the team for one year. For the nine girls on each of the teams, it was the most important year of their lives.
But in 1949, the Bat 6 game had an unexpected finish. A tragic finish. There was one girl on each of the teams who was different, new that year, an unknown quantity.
Aki was Japanese, and her family had just come back to town after being released from internment camp where they’d lived for years. She hadn’t lived on Bear Creek Ridge since she was in the second grade. Her mother had been a Bat 6 girl in 1930, the MVP that year, and everyone in Bear Creek Ridge was delighted that the Japanese American families they’d missed for so long were back in town. The Ridgers were certain Aki would be able to help the Bat 6 team win. She was short, and a left-hander, great for first base, and could hit harder than almost anyone on the team. She had the potential to be a MVP, too. For her, the war was over.
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Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse

I don’t really remember how it was before the dust, when the land was green with grass, and the air was clean and the sky blue. I was born in August 1920, when the winter wheat was ripe. Daddy’d always wanted a boy, but he got me instead, a red-headed, long-legged girl with long hands and a hunger to play wild piano. He named me Billie Jo. By the time I was nine, he’d given up on having a boy and tried to make do with me. But in January 1934, when I was fourteen, Ma told us she was expecting again.
Daddy won’t ever leave this farm. He’s like the ground itself, solid, rooted. Ma and I aren’t like that. The dust could blow us away, and I wouldn’t mind. I’d like to get out of the dust, away from the grit that gets into everything. It sifts through the walls, under the doors, and past the windows. At night I sleep with a damp cloth over my face so I don’t breathe in the dust.
Ma had her own way of coping with the dust. She was particular about how the table should be set. Plates upside down, glasses upside down, napkins folded around knives and forks. Food went on the table last, when we sat down. Then we’d shake the dust out of our napkins, and turn over our plates and glasses, leaving clean round circles in the dust on the table. Her trees are another way she fights the dust, apple trees she planted when she and Daddy came to the farm. She carries water out to them, and every year they’re covered with blossoms, all pink and white, and then with apples that grow round and red. And we make apple pie, apple butter, canned apples, and apples piled in a bowl on Ma’s piano.
That piano is the way I cope with the dust. When my fingers point at the keys, the music just flows out of them. I’m whole when I play, there is no dust, only me and the music. Ma doesn’t like my music, she’d prefer me to play the sweet melodies that she does. Daddy got her the piano for a wedding present, and she draws him to her when she plays. Even after the last milking, when he’s so tired he can’t think of anything but the mattress under his bones, he’ll come into the parlor and listen to Ma play. And it’s beautiful music, but it’s not my music. My music is wild and free and loud. And when I play, people stop and listen, and forget the dust, just the way I do.
But all that’s over now, the music, Ma, my little brother. The fire changed all that. And there are things I can’t forgive. I can’t forgive Daddy for leaving the pail of kerosene by the stove. I can’t forgive myself for what I did with that pail. And I can’t forgive Ma for not being here now when I need her so much. We were a family, just three, almost four of us, and there was laughter, and love, and music to keep the dust at bay. Now there are only two of us left, me and Daddy, and we sit and stare at each other in silence, unforgiving, each alone. I don’t know if we can ever be a family again.
And still the dust comes, howling across the empty fields, seeping into the houses, stealing hope just as it steals the wheat out of the fields. Sometimes the rain follows, but never the kind our farm needs, soft and plentiful. It’s just enough to keep our last bit of hope alive for one more day or month or year. Daddy will never leave this land. Maybe I will. I don’t know if it’s my home any longer. I want out, out of the despair, out of the loneliness, out of the poverty, out of the dust. But can I ever really leave?
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Their lives changed forever because they wanted to see an American western movie. American movies didn’t come to Venice very much any more because of the war. But tonight Memo had money to pay for Roberto, Samuele, and Sergio. Suddenly, just after the newsreels were over and the movie started, the lights came on, and German soldiers began forcing the crowd out of the theater, down the street, and onto a train. They were prisoners.
Germans needed someone to build highways and airfields, and kidnapping boys and young men from their allies was one way to get the slave labor they needed.
Sergio, Roberto’s older brother, was put on board a different train from the three boys, and it’s not long before Memo is put in a different group and Roberto and Samuele, now called Enzo to hide his Jewishness from the guards, are alone in a crowd of strangers.
Feel the cold and the brutality of the labor camps, as the boys fight to survive, not only the weather and the backbreaking work, but also starvation, and clothes and shoes that fall apart, worn completely to shreds. And always, daily, there is the danger that someone will discover that Enzo is a Jew.
What do you do when you think you can’t go on? You lean on your friend, and take another step, another breath, and another, and another.
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Tomorrow When the War Began, by John Marsden

They thought they’d been to Hell, but when they got back from their camping trip, they realized that Hell wasn’t the beautiful and serene wilderness they’d just left, it was what they found after the invaders had destroyed their town and their families while they’d been gone.

It happened in Australia, in what might be the near future. The seven of them were camping in a wilderness called Hell when the black jets flew over late at night, flying low, without lights. It seemed like there were hundreds of them, and it took all night for them to pass. But the next morning when Lee said maybe it was World War III, and they’d been invaded, no one took it seriously. It wasn’t until days later, when they walked out of Hell to discover deserted homes, corpses of livestock and pets, empty streets patrolled by armed soldiers speaking a foreign language, their friends and families help prisoner by more armed guards, that they realized Lee’s passing comments about World War III had been true. While the seven of them had been camping, Australia had been invaded. Their small rural town with its nearby deep harbor, was one of the first places to be captured. If they’d stayed in town, they would be prisoners, or they’d be dead. There were no alternatives.
But they hadn’t been there, and now they were free, as long as none of the enemy discovered them. What could they do now? They were only seven, against thousands of armed and vicious invaders. Only one thing was clear. Hell was not the isolated wilderness where they’d felt so safe. Hell was what they found waiting for them when they left that wilderness to go home, only to find that home no longer existed.
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Corgan is the perfect soldier, genetically engineered to have the fastest reflexes possible. In 2080, he’s fourteen, and the War is only eighteen days away. He lives in a Box, a small room with walls made of aerogel, which can put him into any virtual setting he needs or wants to be in. He has never been with another real human being, only virtual images. He has never been outside in real time, even though in virtual reality, he’s been all over the world. He does what he’s supposed to, doesn’t ask a lot of questions, believes what he’s told, and follows the rules.
All that changes when he meets Sharla, one of his two teammates in the War. She is also fourteen and genetically designed to break any code in nanoseconds. She also loves to break the rules and laughs at punishments, because she knows they need her to win the war. She’s been going all over the city since she was eight, and has been around lots of people. But she’s the first actual person Corgan has ever seen or touched.
Brig is the second person. He’s the third member of their team. But his genetic engineering didn’t turn out as well as Corgan’s or Sharla’s. He’s only about half as tall as a normal ten-year-old, with a huge head and spindly, weak arms and legs. He spent the first six years in the Mutant Pen before the caretakers discovered he was a double genius and began training him. But in spite of his brain, he can be a real pain in the neck, and has a smart mouth besides.
Three genetic experiments, three children designed to win a virtual war with the two other federations on Earth. The Prize? The Isles of Hiva, one of the last uncontaminated places on Earth, a real paradise, not a virtual one. But are Corgan, Sharla, and Brig being told the truth, or is the Supreme Council hiding things from them? Corgan discovers that some things don’t add up the way they’re supposed to, and Sharla begins to ask more questions, including the most important one, the one no one wants to ask or answer—what happens to us if we lose?
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Downsiders, by Neal Schusterman

We’ve all heard the urban legends about New York City—about the alligators in the sewers, the homeless who live in forgotten subway tunnels, the rats that grow as large as dogs—but what if they weren’t legends? What if they were true?
Robert Gunderson is about to find out. He’s nineteen years old, homeless, and ready to die, when he jumps down onto the subway tracks under Grand Central Station and walks down a long dark tunnel. But when he’s finally facing the train, he can’t do it, and leaps to one side, clinging to a steel beam as the train rushes by.
Three figures appear out of the darkness and a boy demands to know his name. When he tells them, a flashlight comes on, and he sees instead of the dirty, homeless, vicious tunnel-rats he’d expected to see, something entirely different. The three kids, a girl and two boys, aren’t dirty at all. Their hair is shaved around their ears, but long everywhere else, hanging down their backs. Their clothing is made of hundreds of bits of patchwork, and they wear metallic cuffs on their wrists and ankles. Even their flashlight is strange—its face is oblong instead of round, and the shaft swirled with red and green patterns. It looks ancient and almost holy.
Robert Gunderson does not know it but he is about to enter another world, a world that exists far below the New York streets where he spent much of his life. It’s called the Downside, and Robert Gunderson will spend the rest of his life there.
What is the Downside? Why do its residents hate and fear those who live on the surface? Slip through a sewer grate, into the maze of tunnels underneath New York City, and find out.
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Charlie has a secret. He’s found something in the back of the old barn on the ranch he inherited from his uncle, a door behind a stack of hay bales. But this door doesn’t lead into the pasture behind the barn; it leads into somewhere else. Charlie isn’t sure where it is, or when it is, but this place has sabertooth tigers, and mastodons, and buffalo, and too many extinct species to count. But it has no people, no pollution, no trash. It belongs only to Charlie.
What will he do with his brave new world?
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Shade's Children , by Garth Nix

“I am Shade. I am the protector of the human race. . . . but I send children out to die. . . . I must protect humanity from the Overlords. . . . .but more must die. . . . I must protect. . . . death, death, too much death.”
When the change occurred and the Overlords took over Earth, everyone over the age of fourteen vanished, and the rest, or most of them, were herded into dormitories and kept captive until they were fourteen, and then taken to the Meat Factory, where their brains and muscles were harvested to help create the hideous creatures the Overlords used to fight their battles.
Few children escape the dorms, and the Trackers, Ferrets, and Myrmidons are designed to hunt them down. But in an old submarine, wedged under an abandoned wharf, a computer-generated adult has created an army of children to fight the Overlords. They are trained and equipped, and sent out on missions to get information about the Overlords that will lead to their destruction.
Ella leads the top team, four children with special powers they gained as a result of the change. Ella is able to create objects with her mind. Drum is huge and muscular, and has the ability to manipulate objects with his mind. Ninde is telepathic, and can hear the thoughts of the Overlords’ creatures. Gold-Eye is the newest member of the team, and his talent is intermittent and uncontrolled, but allows him to see a few minutes into the future.
Their mission, to get into an old university laboratory and bring back computer disks and equipment for their leader, the only adult on the planet, the person they all trust and admire—the hologram who calls himself Shade.
But is he as benevolent as he appears to be, or does he have his own agenda that he’s unwilling to reveal?
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