Escaping Tornado Season: A Story in Poems

Allie Benton's summer at her grandparents' house in Minnesota is the same as it's always been: northern lights and pine trees, family gossip and root beer floats. She's come here to escape Nebraska's tornado season every summer for as long as she can remember. The only difference is, this time no one's coming to take her back to Nebraska when fall rolls around. With her father dead, her mother run off to heaven knows where, and her twin brother, seven years buried, just a ghost in her memory, Allie settles in with her grandparents for a cold Minnesota winter. But it's hard to fit in at a new school when her family can't afford to buy her a pair of blue jeans. And, in an ethnically divided community, Allie isn't even allowed to choose the friends she wants-handsome Joey Redfern and Lidia, the beautiful Ojibwe girl who calls Allie my niijikwe, "my friend." With a strong poetic voice, Julie Williams creates snapshots of Allie piecing a new life together- longing for her mother, grieving for her father, remembering her brother, and struggling to do what's right in an imperfect world. As the people around her come and go, Allie starts to get a sense of who she is, and of what she can hold on to despite the changes in her world.

Teen & Young Adult

Williams, Julie

Literature & Fiction

HarperTempest

A poetic novel for young adults offers a look at how God plays a special role in the simplest activities in oneÆs daily life as a part of his experiments on human nature and beings He created.

God Went to Beauty School

Rylant, Cynthia

Claws

At sixteen, Jed Berg is living a happy life as a popular guy at school with a cool girlfriend and great car, but when Gertrude, his pink-haired punk classmate, informs him that her mother is dating his father, Jed sees his perfect world being threatened at the very core.

Weaver, Will

Necessary Noise: Stories About Our Families as They Really Are

Once upon a time that was not so very long ago, a family was described as a man, a woman, and their offspring. That was what families were. These ten stories talk about families the way they really are.   Siblings coping with their younger brother's overdose. A girl terrified of her older sister's dual personality. A boy trying to adjust to his life with two mothers. A father visiting his son on death row. These are stories of today's families -- fractured, blended, at risk, non-traditional, and some that are even still nuclear.   Noted anthologist Michael Cart asked celebrated young adult authors the question "What does 'family' mean today?" The ten stories in this anthology provide some illuminating -- and sometimes surprising -- answers. Here family is defined by the connections between all kinds of people -- and the necessary noise they make.

Children's Books

Cart, Michael

Making the Run

loner lu, crazy lu
All her life Lulu McClellan has heard the names. Growing up in a small Kentucky town, Lu has forever felt like she's on the outside looking in. Maybe that's why she takes pictures-to make sense of what she sees and feels but doesn't always understand.countdown to freedomNow that graduation is almost here, Lu and her friend Ginny are moving in a quick blur of drugs and drink. Lu thinks she's just marking time, waiting for the moment when life will begin for real.end of innocenceBut the road is full of unmarked twists and turns. Without warning, Lu free-falls into first love, white Ginny begins a deadly spiral into oblivion.a startling portraitIn stark, poetic prose, Heather Henson writes about what it means to come to a crucial crossroads and find the courage to make a run for the unknown.

Henson, Heather

loner lu, crazy luAll her life Lulu McClellan has heard the names. Growing up in a small Kentucky town, Lu has forever felt like she's on the outside looking in. Maybe that's why she takes pictures-to make sense of what she sees and feels but doesn't always understand.countdown to freedomNow that graduation is almost here, Lu and her friend Ginny are moving in a quick blur of drugs and drink. Lu thinks she's just marking time, waiting for the moment when life will begin for real.end of innocenceBut the road is full of unmarked twists and turns. Without warning, Lu free-falls into first love, white Ginny begins a deadly spiral into oblivion.a startling portraitIn stark, poetic prose, Heather Henson writes about what it means to come to a crucial crossroads and find the courage to make a run for the unknown.

Summer Baseball Car Baseball Sock Ball Wall Ball The Time Tower: can you get older faster? The speed of light: can it be measured? A carp, washed up in the riberbank: what's inside? Larry, Witt, and Rafferty have a whole summer to play all the different kinds of baseball, to build structures in the backyard, to find out what makes the world tick. "We've got to keep busy," says Witt. I want to know everything. Not just part." Larry doesn't want to know what keeps him heading for Witt's backyard, rich with weeds and rotting appliances, whenever he's not at baseball practice. All he knows is that there's no one he'd rather be with than these two friends, that the chaos of Witt's universe offers refuge from his own orderly home and an entrance into a world of change, growth, and unpredictability. THE HOTEL EDEN author Ron Carlson's first novel for young readers is a heady immersion in the first moments of adolescence, when nothing is as it ever was before.

The Speed of Light

Carlson, Ron.

Sports & Outdoors

Miss Smithers

In spite of the premature publication of my 'zine and resulting renewed social ostracism, things are happening for me! I've been stood up by the coolest girl in school, I have a Jesus bracelet, I ate dinner at a steak restaurant and lived to tell, I may be a virgin until I marry, I'm a Miss Smithers candidate, and I HAVE LEATHER PANTS! I even feel ready for the first official event of the pageant, the Etiquette Workshop. No longer homeschooled and socially isolated, Alice McLeod has: 1. a female friend, George; 2. a male friend, Goose; 3. a $400 clothing allowance to dress herself for the Miss Smithers pageant. Following on the debut of Alice, I Think, Susan Juby's delightful second novel is about finding the perfect outfit and finding oneself, about winning a pageant and winning at love.

Juby, Susan

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

deAR gooSE, Thank you for your letter. Too bad you won't be able to write. I guess you'll be too busy moving on. Me too. First of all, I'm quite busy socially. Very busy socially. Plus, my screenwriting is really taking off. I'm basically in discussions with some people. Producer-types. You know. They say moviemaking is the new novel writing. I'm pretty much on the vanguard of that whole thing. Thanks for the memories. Alice I'm not sure that quite captures my emotional state. A more accurate reflection of how I feel would have been: Dear Goose, AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Alice Heart-Torn-into-Small-Pieces-and-Then-Thrown-Away MacLeod

Humor

Jake Riley is a nice guy. Jake Riley is a loser. Jake Riley is a good friend. Jake Riley is dangerous. Everyone has a different idea about Jake. Lainey's friends think he's her boyfriend. Lainey's mother thinks he's sad. Lainey's guidance counselor thinks he is a bad influence on her. None of these people really know the truth about Jake. Not even Lainey. By the time Lainey learns the truth about Jake, she no longer has to wonder about one thing. She knows he's dangerous.

Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged

Davis, Rebecca Fjelland

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Books by HarperTempest

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

Escaping Tornado Season: A Story in Poems

God Went to Beauty School

Claws

Necessary Noise: Stories About Our Families as They Really Are

Making the Run

Making the Run

The Speed of Light

Miss Smithers

Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged