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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Hello, America by Livia Bitton Jackson
Eighteen-year-old Elli has a number tattooed onto her arm. It is an indelible remnant of a terrifying past a life lived, for many years, in the death camp of Auschwitz. When Elli arrives in New York City, she can not speak English, and...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Set in 1943 when the Nazis occupied Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen is asked to carry out a heroic deed and aid her uncle in his efforts to smuggle Danish Jews across the sea to Sweden, where they will be safe. She has already...
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Ad lit.org: Guide: Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam and the Science of Ocean Motion
Part of Houghton Mifflin's excellent Scientists in the Field series Tracking Trash introduces Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a "trash tracker", who studies where trash goes when it is "spilled" in the ocean, to determine the direction of ocean...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Liesel Meminger is only nine years old when she is taken to live with a foster family, the Hubermanns, on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, in the late 1930s. She arrives with few possessions, but among them is The Grave Digger's...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb
In Cures for Heartbreak, Margo Rabb writes a fictional account of a 15-year old girl whose mother dies just days after being diagnosed with melanoma; then her father falls ill, too. Using vignettes - many appeared elsewhere as short...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Arguably Mark Twain's most famous novel - indeed, one of the greatest works of American literature - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn brings together two people from the lower rungs of society, an ill-educated boy escaping an abusive...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Coraline's parents are too busy to play with her. She's on her own, and when she goes exploring in her new apartment she unlocks a door that leads to a different world. At first it looks familiar, even intriguing, but Coraline quickly...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Tweak by Nic Sheff
Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and Ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Sold by Patricia Mc Cormick
Thirteen-year old Lakshmi thinks she is leaving her poor rural family to go to the city to become a maid. Little does she know her family has sold her into prostitution, and the price for her freedom may be too high. This National Book...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Beyond the Deepwoods
Young Twig is different. Raised by a woodtroll family since infancy, he's never fit in at home, in his village, or at school. As he approaches his 14th birthday, he learns the circumstances of his beginnings: how he was abandoned by his...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Corby Flood
Corby Flood and her family are about to set sail on a rather ramshackle cruise ship, the S.S. Euphonia. Onboard, among the odd passengers and eccentric crew, there is a strange group of men in bowler hats who call themselves the...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Fergus Crane
Fergus Crane discovers that his teachers from the school ship Betty Jeanne are not quite what they seem - they're actually pirates! Can Fergus and his winged horse save his schoolmates on the far-off Fire Island? And who else will he...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Freeglader by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
After the great battle and destruction of Undertown, its surviving inhabitants must seek out a new life in the Free Glades, but to do so will require a mass exodus across the treacherous Mire and the seductive Twilight Woods. Led by a...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Hugo Pepper
After his adventure-seeking, storytelling parents are eaten by polar bears in the Frozen North when he is just a baby, Hugo Pepper is found and raised by reindeer herders. One day he discovers a flying sled with a very special compass -...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Midnight Over Sanctaphrax
Captain Twig learns that the Mother Storm is headed toward the Edge to re-seed the sacred waters of Riverrise, and thus rejuvenate all life forms throughout the land. This rare and natural occurrence would come as great news but for one...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Stormchaser
Twig lives as a sky pirate alongside his famous father, Cloud Wolf, until the Stormchaser is damaged due to Twig's inexperience. A furious Cloud Wolf leaves Twig behind on their next quest for the sacred material stormphrax. Not knowing...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Curse of the Gloamglozer
In this prequel to the first three volumes, readers meet young Quint long before his sky pirating days, as he becomes the apprentice to Linius Pallitax, the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax. Shortly after his arrival, Quint is enlisted...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Last of the Sky Pirates
Fifty years after Captain Twig severed the anchor chain securing the floating rock of Sanctaphrax to Undertown, all is not well in the great floating city or the urban sprawl of Undertown. Rook Barkwater is selected as a Librarian Knight...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Winter Knights
As the floating city of Sanctaphrax becomes gripped by a harsh and relentless winter, Quint begins his training in the Knights Academy, the venerable school charged with training the elite band of Knights Academic. As the buoyant rock...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Vox by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Rook Barkwater's skycraft crashes in the deadly area of the Edge known as Screetown. Rook is rescued, only to be captured on the way back to the sewers that house the Great Library. Mindwashed and forced to work for a sinister goblin...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Godless by Pete Huatman
A simple gag makes faith the centerpiece of Jason Bock's summer: What if the town water tower is God? Jason shares his quirky observation with his friend Shin, and soon finds himself the head of a new religious sect of "Chutengodians"...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
When Dashti, a maid, and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years because of Saren's refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very long and dark imprisonment.
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
High on the side of rocky Mount Eskel, far from the valleys where gardens are green and lush, where lowlanders make laws, Miri's family has lived forever, pounding a living from the stone of the mountain itself. For as long as she can...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt's stories...