The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu
By Wendy Wan-Long Shang

Sixth-grader Lucy would much rather play basketball than go to Chinese School. She knows she will hate it--and besides, why does she need to learn to speak Chinese anyway? She wants to be a basketball star!
When her great aunt comes from China to visit for an extended stay (months!) Lucy is even more horrified that she will have to share her room with Yi Po...who doesn't speak any English.
Lucy is sure her year is doomed. But she is in for some surprises, to help her deal with the challenges of family and school stuff!

To This Day

To This Day
By Shane Koyczan

To This Day is a spoken word poem by Shane Koyczan, beautifully illustrated in this powerful book by 30 different artists from around the world.
The video of Koyczan's poem about bullying--and being bullied himself--went viral on the internet in 2013. It is moving and inspiring.

The Mildenhall Treasure

The Mildenhall Treasure
By Roald Dahl
Illustrated by Ralph Steadman

Since I love all stories by Roald Dahl, I was curious when I found this on our library's shelves; I had never heard of it before. This true, short story is amazingly and beautifully illustrated, so it's really a picture book--and quite a great one!
Inspired by a news story from a newspaper he read in 1945, Roald Dahl interviewed an English farmer named Gordon Butcher who had accidentally uncovered a Roman treasure while working in the fields one day. Little did Mr. Butcher know he had stumbled upon an incredible, rare fortune, buried for over a thousand years...and then he was cheated out of it by a greedy neighboring farmer who knew what the treasure was really worth.

Here is an account of the of the same story and photos of the treasure from the British Museum, where it is kept to this day:
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/2012/03/29/roald-dahl-and-the-mildenhall-treasure/

Bad Girls

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves & Other Female Villains
By Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple
Illustrated by Rebecca Guay

I really enjoyed reading these short, lively accounts of real women (girls, in some cases) who made history--infamously--for different reasons and all in different ways.
The mother/daughter team of Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple present some of their own research process in the form of a brief, fun comic strip at the end of each chapter.
Each chapter is about a different "villainous" woman, and in the end, the reader is left to decide whether or not these women deserve their titles of "Sirens, Jezebels, murderesses, thieves...and villains."

Includes brief biographies of: Delilah, Jezebel, Cleopatra, Salome, Anne Boleyn, Bloody Mary, Elisabeth Báthory, Moll Cutpurse, Tituba, Anne Bonney & Mary Read, Catherine the Great, Mata Hari...and many others!

The Beast of Cretacea
By Todd Strasser

Maybe you've never read the classic Moby-Dick...I haven't (yet!)...but this sci-fi retelling of Herman Melville's epic adventure on a whaling ship may make you want to check it out!
Set in the future, when Earth is covered by a Shroud of thick pollution, food and all other resources are scarce.  Humans struggle to survive--at least most of them do.
Ishmael, age 17, has no other choice than to be transported to another galaxy to harvest resources from a different Earth-like planet--that way he can make money to get his parents off of Earth and somewhere safer.
Little does Ishmael know that by joining the crew of the mighty Pequod, dangerous adventures lie ahead: a giant, lethal underwater beast the captain of the Pequod is obsessed with hunting down, savage pirates, gentle islanders etching out an alternative way of life on land, new friends--and new enemies.
All of this for a boy who has never eaten solid food, taken a shower, nor seen the ocean...
A page-turner!

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society
By Trenton Lee Stewart 

This is a very fun book (and series!) for people who love puzzles, mysteries, and secret missions...
Four specially-chosen, quirky, and orphaned children are sent to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened to help solve a mystery they don't completely understand but are supposedly well-equipped to tackle. The challenge is for them to work together--and think WAY out of the box--to stop evil forces from controlling the world's population...hard to explain, but read it and enjoy!

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel

Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel
by Sara Farizan

From the publisher:
Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is a relief. As an Iranian-American, she's different enough; if word got out that Leila liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when beautiful new girl Saskia shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would. As she carefully confides in trusted friends about Saskia's confusing signals, Leila begins to figure out that all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be, and some are keeping surprising secrets of their own.