Ages 10 and up; Gr.5 and up.
Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers fifteen years after her death.

Lexile measure 840; Ages 12 and up; Gr.7 and up; Printz award honor, 2020.
In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted.

Ages 10 and up; Gr.7 and up.
Juan Felipe Herrera, the first Mexican-American Poet Laureate in the USA, is sharing secrets: how to turn your wonder at the world around you into weird, wild, incandescent poetry.

Lexile measure 1120; Ages 8-12; Gr.4-8.
Swept up in the Gold Rush of 1897, young Jack London headed north to strike it rich in the Klondike and discovered something more precious than gold--the seeds of the stories that would flower into his classic novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, and timeless short stories such as "To Build A Fire."

Ages 10 and up; Gr.7-12; Coretta Scott King Author Award honor, 2015.
A powerful and thought-provoking Civil Rights era memoir from one of America's most celebrated poets. Looking back on her childhood in the 1950s, Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Marilyn Nelson tells the story of her development as an artist and young woman through fifty eye-opening poems.

Lexile measure 880; Ages 6-12; Gr.4-8.
A biography of French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Guided Reading Level X; Lexile measure 950; Ages 7-12; Grade level 6.4
In 1940, Hans and Margret Rey fled their Paris home as the German army advanced. They began their harrowing journey on bicycles, pedaling to Southern France with children's book manuscripts among their few possessions.