New+Books+Fall+2013

Best New Books for Tweens! @Kennedy Library Fall 2013

// From the American Library Association “Best Books” Lists: //

APPLEGATE, Katherine. __The One and Only Ivan__. illus. by Patricia Castelao. HarperCollins/Harper. When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life.

BLUMENTHAL, Karen. __Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different__. Feiwel & Friends. Chronicles the life and accomplishments of Apple mogul Steve Jobs, discussing his ideas, and describing how he has influenced life in the twenty-first century.

BYRD, Robert. __Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin__. illus. by author. Dial. A biography of Benjamin Franklin that follows him from his childhood in Boston, where he was the son of a poor soap and candle maker with seventeen children, to his death, describing how Franklin became a self-made man who died a renowned statesman.

DE GRAAF, Anne. __Son of a Gun__. tr. from Dutch. Eerdmans. In alternating narratives full of searing detail, siblings Lucky and Nopi describe being kidnapped at ages 8 and 10 and forced to become warriors (and deafened Nopi a child wife) before the Liberian Civil Wars wind down and they can make their separate ways home. An informational appendix adds context.

FREEDMAN, Russell. __Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship.__ Clarion. Looks at the lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, including their friendship and their effect on Emancipation and the Civil War.

GIDWITZ, Adam. __In a Glass Grimmly__. Dutton. Frog joins cousins Jack and Jill in leaving their own stories to seek a magic mirror, encountering such creatures as giants, mermaids, and goblins along the way. Based in part on fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. HARTMAN, Rachel. __Seraphina.__ Random. In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals.

LEVINSON, Cynthia. __ We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March __. Peachtree. Discusses the 1963 Birmingham Children's March in Birmingham, Alabama.

LOWRY, Lois. __Son__. Houghton Harcourt. Unlike the other Birthmothers in her utopian community, teenaged Claire forms an attachment to her baby, feeling a great loss when he is taken to the NurturingCenter to be adopted by a family unit. The last book in the “Giver” series.

MANZANO, Sonia. __The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano__. Scholastic. It is 1969 in Spanish Harlem, and fourteen-year-old Evelyn Serrano is trying hard to break free from her conservative Puerto Rican surroundings, but when her activist grandmother comes to stay and the neighborhood protests start, things get complicated.

MONTGOMERY, Sy. __Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World.__ Houghton Harcourt.

Examines the life and accomplishments of TempleGrandin, whose childhood diagnosis of autism and love of cows led her to revolutionize the livestock industry.

RAPPAPORT, Doreen. __Beyond Courage : The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust__. Provides detailed accounts of twenty-one acts of defiance committed against Nazis in Nazi-occupied countries during World War II.

VOORHOEVE, Anne C. __My Family for the War__. tr. from German by Tammi Reichel. Dial. Ten-year-old Franziska Mangold escapes Nazi Germany on the kindertransport she boards in Berlin, and when she arrives in London, she takes on the name Frances and struggles with her identity as she pieces together a new life without her family. Check out the entire Kennedy Library Catalog at: []