by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Fiction
Kirby Nickel lives in a basketball town whose claim to fame is Brett McGrew, NBA superstar. Kansas University is about to retire McGrew’s number and, as part of the ceremonies, the seventh-grade team from Stuckey, Kansas, is invited to pay a scrimmage game...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Realistic/Contemporary Fiction
Know any nine-year-old boys who just want to watch TV and play video games- If you do, then this tale may sound a bit familiar. Cody is just such a boy and his mother has decided he has to get up off the couch and go out into the woods. She’s sending him to camp...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Picture Book
Koala Lou loves being loved by her mother. It is the most wonderful feeling in the world. And then, a new sibling is born and we all know how moms have to divide their time when there are two and not just one. There just aren’t as many I Love Yous coming her way...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Realistic/Contemporary Fiction
Kristen McKenna and Walker Jones are both starting seventh grade. Kristen can’t wait to get back to school to see her best friend, Rori, … or at least she thought she was her best friend. But Rori has changed. Walker, or Walk as he is known, is one of the...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Historical Fiction
Left-handed, twelve-year-old Grace has always wanted to work in the factory just like her parents and her older sister, Delia. When French Johnny comes to the schoolhouse to claim a young boy for the factory, Miss Leslie, the teacher, fights to keep the boy in school...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Humor
Leon is in the fourth grade and is determined to survive against his strange teacher, Miss Hagmeyer, who loves to sew, and his enemy, Lumpkin the Pumpkin. Miss Hagmeyer insists on teaching from “The Heavenly Stitches of Virtue” school of thought and makes...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Realistic/Contemporary Fiction
Let’s talk about the truth. Sarah has gone to basketball tryouts and is delighted to learn that she has made the team. No problem there, well, except that the coach thinks Sarah is a boy, and, in fact, everyone else on the team is a boy. Should she tell? Then...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Realistic/Contemporary Fiction
Life has handed Harper some major curveballs, and she’s decided to step out of her world a bit and spend the summer in Tennessee, helping to build a house for a family who lost their home to a tornado. What has happened to Harper to bring her here? What can she...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Historical Fiction
Life in Mexico is ideal when we first meet Esperanza and her family amidst their vineyards and the love in their family. It all quickly and harshly disappears, though, as her father is murdered and her uncles maneuver to control her mother and the family fortunes....
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Humor
Life is a challenge for Greg Heffley. It used to be that he understood all the rules. Life made sense. The girls all liked the fastest boy in class. You knew where you stood. But now it’s middle school and the rules have all changed. He’s trying to be...
