by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Action / Adventure
One minute Sam, Zara, Ben and Marcia are spending their summer with the very eccentric Professors Ampersand and Hartleigh-Broadbeam, working on an experimental airplane. They have no idea that someone has bugged the room and is listening to every word they’re...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Sports
One of my all-time favorite books for young adults. Meet T.J. Jones. He’s black and white and Japanese, and he goes to a high school where the jocks are king. T.J. wants nothing to do with sports at his school, until his math teacher asks him to organize a...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Realistic/Contemporary Fiction
One of my favorite books for young teens. Lafayette is a seventh grader who has lost both parents and now holds onto his two brothers, Ty’ree and Charlie. Ty’ree is the oldest and has given up his dreams of MIT to assume the role of caretaker for his...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Fiction
One of my top ten picks for teens! Cole Matthews is an angry kid who retaliates against a ninth-grader for “ratting him out” by smashing the kid’s head into the sidewalk. Circle Justice has sentenced Cole to a year on an island in South Alaska. Cole...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Picture Book
One of the best illustrators for children today, Lois Ehlert tells the delightful tale of a leaf as he makes his journey. Gorgeous pictures made from leaves take you over the fields and through the woods. Where will Leaf Man go? A must for fall.picture book Read aloud...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Historical Fiction
One of the best ways I ever found of learning history was to read historical fiction and understand the times through the eyes of a sympathetic character. Here is just such an opportunity. Birdy is a fourteen-year-old girl living in medieval England. She has a great...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Non-Fiction
One of the most popular children’s/young adult authors has written a book about writing itself. What does writing have to offer the average young person or any of us for that matter? How do you make a good story? Can you ever make your story perfect? How about...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Historical Fiction
One of the most powerful books a teen can read, this is the story of Gabi, a 14-year-old girl in Guatemala, who loves to look up to the sky and who loves to climb trees. She lives in dangerous times that don’t seem to touch her, until the day comes when she...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Picture Book
Oooh, the cat has gotten out into the yard, and he’s looking for lunch, bird-by-bird. You get to go along and meet all the different birds in the backyard from American Robin to Red-headed Woodpecker and you see all the wonderful plants around them too. This is...
by Mike Costanzo | Mar 24, 2009 | Humor
Our friend, Tank, whom we met in the first book, Trading Places with Tank Talbott, is in “deep kimchee.” He has just been brought into the principal’s office and told that if he doesn’t shape up academically over the summer, he’s going to...
