Tomorrow Night Come To a Panel Discussion With Local Children's Writers

The event starts at 6:30 pm at our Colfax Avenue store on Wednesday, May 14, 2014.

Our panelists include Lindsay Eland, author of A Summer of Sundays; Christine Liu-Perkins, author of At Home in Her Tomb: Lady Dai and the Ancient Chinese Treasures of Mawangdui; Melanie Crowder; author of Parched; Claudia Mills, author of Zero Tolerance and Kelsey Green, Reading Queen; Barbara Wright, author of Crow; and Ellen Mahoney, author of Earthrise. Guests at this event can enter to win some great prizes!

When you're the third of six kids, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle, but Sunday Fowler is determined that this summer she'll find the one thing that makes her stand out from her siblings.

And when she discovers a silver box in the basement of the library her parents are renovating, she might just have found something to gain her the attention she so craves. Inside is a series of letters addressed to "The Librarian" and a manuscript. But who wrote them? With the help of annoying neighbor-turned-new-friend Jude, Sunday is determined to track down the author. And when she unveils this novel to the world, she'll be famous!

But uncovering this manuscript means stirring up secrets that some people in the town hoped to keep buried. And Sunday must decide if some things -- loyalty, trust, friendship -- are worth more than her name in the headlines.

This middle-grade chapter book unearths the mysteries of the Mawangdui tombs, one of China’s top archaeological finds of the last century. Miniature servants, mysterious silk paintings, scrolls of long-lost secrets, and the best preserved mummy in the world (the body of Lady Dai) are just some of the artifacts that shed light upon life in China during the Han dynasty.

A mesmerizing debut middle-grade novel about a boy, a girl, and a dog struggling to survive in an African land after the water has run out.

In this haunting, lyrical novel told from three perspectives, Sarel has just witnessed the violent murder of her parents. But she is not completely alone on the drought-ridden land. Nandi is the leader of a pack of dogs who looks out for her pups and for skinny Sarel-girl. Nandi knows they are all in trouble, and she knows, too, that a boy is coming-an escaped prisoner with the water song inside him. A hard-hitting but ultimately hopeful survival story.

 

 

Seventh-grader Sierra Shepard has always been the perfect student, so when she sees that she accidentally brought her mother's lunch bag to school, including a paring knife, she immediately turns in the knife at the school office. Much to her surprise, her beloved principal places her in in-school suspension and sets a hearing for her expulsion, citing the school's ironclad no weapons policy. While there, Sierra spends time with Luke, a boy who's known as a troublemaker, and discovers that he's not the person she assumed he would be--and that the lines between good and bad aren't as clear as she once thought. Claudia Mills brings another compelling school story to life with Zero Tolerance.

Kelsey Kline is the best reader in the third grade—well, maybe tied for best with know-it-all Simon Ellis. When the principal, Mr. Boone, announces a school-wide reading contest—complete with a pizza party for the winning class and a special certificate for the top readers in each grade—she knows she’s just the person to lead Mrs. Molina’s third graders to victory. But how can they win when her classmate Cody Harmon doesn’t want to read anything, and even Kelsey’s best friends Annika and Izzy don’t live up to her expectations? And could Simon possibly be reading all of those books that he claims he is, or is he lying to steal Kelsey’s rightful spot at the top?

The summer of 1898 is filled with ups and downs for 11-year-old Moses. He's growing apart from his best friend, his superstitious Boo-Nanny butts heads constantly with his pragmatic, educated father, and his mother is reeling from the discovery of a family secret. Yet there are good times, too. He's teaching his grandmother how to read. For the first time she's sharing stories about her life as a slave. And his father and his friends are finally getting the respect and positions of power they've earned in the Wilmington, North Carolina, community. But not everyone is happy with the political changes at play and some will do anything, including a violent plot against the government, to maintain the status quo.

One generation away from slavery, a thriving African American community—enfranchised and emancipated—suddenly and violently loses its freedom in turn of the century North Carolina when a group of local politicians stages the only successful coup d'etat in US history.

 

 

On February 5, 1971, Edgar Mitchell jumped off the last rungs of a ladder connecting him to NASA's Antares spacecraft and landed with two feet on the Moon. Following the disastrous Apollo 13 mission, Mitchell was one of three astronauts to successfully complete the Apollo 14 journey to the Moon, though it wasn't without its own alarming moments.

In Earthrise, Edgar recalls his spectacular trip to the Moon and the life experiences that got him there, including his early days spent in Roswell, New Mexico, amid nuclear testing and the rumored UFO crash; his first solo airplane flight as a young teen; his time as a navy combat pilot; and becoming a NASA astronaut. With fascinating detail, Edgar describes what it was like to launch into space and land on the Moon, illuminating everything from the practical--eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom in space--to the mystical, life-changing experience of gazing at Earth from afar.With illuminating sidebars, transcripts of NASA recordings from the historic Apollo 14 mission, and extensive resources including lists of space-related websites, museums, organizations, films, and books, Earthrise is an invaluable addition to any space, astronomy, or science buff's bookshelf.