In a collection of personal stories and essays, award-winning and bestselling artists from Matt de la Peña and Veera Hiranandani to Max Brallier and R.L. Stine write about how hope always wins, even in the darkest of times.\nWhere does hope live?\nIn your family?\nIn your community?\nIn your school?\nIn your heart?\nFrom a family restaurant to a hot-dog shaped car, from an empty road on a moonlight night to a classroom holiday celebration, this anthology of personal stories from award-winning and bestselling authors, shows that hope can live everywhere, even—or especially—during the darkest of times.\nNo matter what happens: Hope wins.\nContributors include: Tom Angleberger, James Bird, Max Brallier, Julie Buxbaum, Pablo Cartaya, J.C. Cervantes, Soman Chainani, Matt de la Peña, Stuart Gibbs, Adam Gidwitz, Karina Yan Glaser, Veera Hiranandani, Hena Khan, Gordon Korman, Janae Marks, Sarah Mlynowski, Rex Ogle, James Ponti, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Ronald L.Smith, Christina Soontornvat, and R.L. Stine.

Hope Wins: A Collection of Inspiring Stories for Young Readers

Literature & Fiction

De La Peña, Matt

Hiranandani, Veera

Cartaya, Pablo

Ogle, Rex

Khan, Hena

Gibbs, Stuart

MLYNOWSKI, SARAH

Brallier, Max

Cervantes, J.C.

Buxbaum, Julie

ANGLEBERGER, TOM

Gidwitz, Adam

STINE, R.L.

Korman, Gordon

Short Stories & Anthologies

Philomel Books

Winner of the 2020 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award.Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle’s first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school’s free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex’s is a compelling story of a more profound hunger―that of a child for his parents’ love and care. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted, and authentically told with the voice and point of view of a 6th-grade kid, Free Lunch is a remarkable debut by a gifted storyteller.

Free Lunch

Children's Books

Biographies

Norton Young Readers

Punching Bag

Product Description 
The companion to Rex Ogle’s award-winning Free Lunch is a searing account of adolescence in a household torn by domestic violence. 
Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate, fierce mother; and charts the trajectory of his stepdad’s anger. Hovering over Rex’s story is the talismanic presence of his unborn baby sister. 
Through it all, Rex threads moments of grace and humor that act as beacons of light in the darkness. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted, and authentically told, Punching Bag is a remarkable memoir about one teenager’s cycle of violence, blame, and attempts to forgive his parents―and himself. 
 From School Library Journal 
Gr 7 Up-"Your sister is dead, and it's your fault." This haunting declaration sets the tone for the author's life when, at age seven, he returns from a three-month stay with grandparents in another state to be forced by his frantic mother to look at photos of his stillborn sister Marisa. In this follow-up to Free Lunch, his 2019 memoir about childhood battles with poverty, Ogle details years of merciless violence-emotional, psychological, and often physical-as mom and stepdad Sam brutalize each other and each of them attacks him. He recounts how, when the police show up at their apartment, he feels pressure to lie to keep the family together for younger brother Ford. Throughout, he is advised and comforted by a fleeting dream of Marisa. Despite all this, Ogle shows a remarkable empathy for his parents, both of them victims of severe domestic abuse in their own childhoods, as well as for his mother's struggle with mental illness and Sam's with alcohol addiction. Frequently coarse and profane language may be off-putting for sensitive readers. Instances of homophobia and anti-Hispanic bigotry (Ogle's mother is Mexican American), amplified by derogatory epithets, nonetheless serve to frame his social isolation. The volume closes with a list of resources for suicide prevention and combating domestic violence, as well as a Q&A with Ogle from earlier this year. Though the subject matter is harrowing and it is at times difficult to continue reading, Ogle's message throughout is focused on survival and hope. VERDICT Highly recommended for all middle and high school collections.-Bob Hassett, Luther Jackson M.S., Falls Church, VAα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. 
 About the Author 
Rex Ogle was born and raised mostly in Texas. He received the 2020 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award for his memoir 
Free Lunch. A former children’s book editor in New York City, Rex and his partner now enjoy much nicer weather in Los Angeles.

Winner of the 2020 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award. Instead of giving him lunch money, Rex’s mom has signed him up for free meals. As a poor kid in a wealthy school district, better-off kids crowd impatiently behind him as he tries to explain to the cashier that he’s on the free meal program. The lunch lady is hard of hearing, so Rex has to shout. 
Free Lunch is the story of Rex’s efforts to navigate his first semester of sixth grade―who to sit with, not being able to join the football team, Halloween in a handmade costume, classmates and a teacher who take one look at him and decide he’s trouble―all while wearing secondhand clothes and being hungry. His mom and her boyfriend are out of work, and life at home is punctuated by outbursts of violence. Halfway through the semester, his family is evicted and ends up in government-subsidized housing in view of the school. Rex lingers at the end of last period every day until the buses have left, so no one will see where he lives. 
Unsparing and realistic, Free Lunch is a story of hardship threaded with hope and moments of grace. Rex’s voice is compelling and authentic, and Free Lunch is a true, timely, and essential work that illuminates the lived experience of poverty in America.

When Rex was outed the summer after he graduated high school, his father gave him a choice: he could stay at home, find a girlfriend, and attend church twice a week, or he could be gay--and leave. Rex left, driving toward the only other gay man he knew and a toxic relationship that would ultimately leave him homeless and desperate on the streets of New Orleans. Here, Rex tells the story of his coming out and his father's rejection of his identity, navigating abuse and survival on the streets. Road Home is a devastating and incandescent reflection on Rex's hunger--for food, for love, and for a place to call home--completing the trilogy of memoirs that began with the award-winning Free Lunch.

Road Home

Self-Help

Death & Grief

Abuela, Don't Forget Me

A Finalist for the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award.\nRex Ogle’s companion to Free Lunch and Punching Bag weaves humor, heartbreak, and hope into life-affirming poems that honor his grandmother’s legacy. 
In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle’s abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on―to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela’s red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life. 
Abuela, Don’t Forget Me is a lyrical portrait of the transformative and towering woman who believed in Rex even when he didn’t yet know how to believe in himself.

Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate, fierce mother; and charts the trajectory of his stepdad's anger. Hovering over Rex's story is the talismanic presence of his unborn baby sister. Through it all, Rex threads moments of grace and humor that act as beacons of light in the darkness. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted, and authentically told, Punching Bag is a remarkable memoir about one teenager's cycle of violence, blame, and attempts to forgive his parents--and himself.

When We Ride: A Novel

Teen & Young Adult

A Finalist for the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award. Rex Ogle's companion to Free Lunch and Punching Bag weaves humor, heartbreak, and hope into life-affirming poems that honor his grandmother's legacy. In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle's abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on--to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela's red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life. Abuela, Don't Forget Me is a lyrical portrait of the transformative and towering woman who believed in Rex even when he didn't yet know how to believe in himself.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ogle, Rex. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ogle, Rex

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ogle, Rex. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Hope Wins: A Collection of Inspiring Stories for Young Readers

Hope Wins: A Collection of Inspiring Stories for Young Readers

Free Lunch

Punching Bag

Free Lunch

Road Home

Abuela, Don't Forget Me

Punching Bag

When We Ride: A Novel

Abuela, Don't Forget Me