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Just when I was beginning to think The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was simply a fantasy to entertain tweens in a Marvel Comics style, the book turned into a legitimately powerful tale (pun entirely intended!).  With this Squirrel Meets World installment, the husband and wife team of Shannon Hale and Dean Hale cleverly pens a multi-genre adventure-mystery featuring superhero “Doreen Green, age fourteen. Over five feet tall and not an inch mean” (6), who is also “ with powers of squirrel and powers of girl” (259). Despite her super hero abilities, Doreen has realistic and adolescent relatable life-dilemmas—she has body image issues and friendship challenges at UnionRead More →

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Sixth grader Molly Cooke and her twelve-year-old brother Addison—who enjoys inadvisable adventures and has a “stunning capacity for getting himself into trouble” (60)—attend Theodore Roosevelt Middle School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Because they are Cookes born into a long line of archeologists, they have grown up on archaeology digs and in museums.  Consequently, Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas by Jonathan W. Stokes is rich with geography lessons, historical allusions, and opportunities to learn about cultural artifacts. When the tweens’ Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel get kidnapped by treasure hunters and thieves, Addison calls a Code Blue—a mission of theRead More →

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It’s that time of year again: the PBC Preferred Collections are here! It’s easy to stay current with all the new books you NEED to see, just use the PBC Preferred Collections! 3 Easy Ways to Stay Current 1.) Pick your own titles using our handy order forms. These are the Featured Collections, a.k.a. the FULL lists. 2016-2017 Elementary PBC Featured Collection 2016-2017 Middle School PBC Featured Collection 2016-2017 High School PBC Featured Collection *These are the Excel order forms for the full lists, plus the preferred collections. 2.) One form and you’re done for the whole year! Use the three levels of PBC Preferred Collections. We combed through our featured collectionsRead More →

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Willa Parker’s life is becoming one all about “should’s” and “supposed to’s” and it’s all her mother’s fault. Willa is a junior in High School, not exactly happy with her spot at the Freak Table, but she’s also not complaining. She’s content with her social standing and the life that she’s built with her dad in the small town of What Cheer, Iowa. Her mother, living in Paris after deserting Willa as a child, has other plans for her, though. These plans involve Willa having to move to the East Coast to attend the uber-exclusive Pembroke Prep, leaving her friends and her father behind toRead More →

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Seventeen year old JT Barnett is gay, but that’s not how he defines himself. He’s known from a young age that he likes boys and hasn’t really had any problems coming to terms with it; it’s just a part of who he is. No, for JT, his main struggle in life is with his own confidence. JT has a great best friend, Heather, and a loving boyfriend, Seth, but he’s plagued by doubts about his uninterested parents and his above average body weight. JT has love and support, but he’s looking for a way out. There’s no way that he’s going to end up workingRead More →

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At the end of her sophomore year, Summer Everett will travel to France to visit her father, a famous but somewhat flaky artist.  She will be spending her sixteenth birthday away from all that is familiar in Hudsonville, New York, where her mom is a philosophy professor.  In Provence, she anticipates a summer of possibility, inundated with wild surprises, maybe even her first kiss.  But without the abundant confidence and curvy figure of her BFF, Ruby Singh, Summer is plagued with uncertainty.  In fact, Summer’s favorite question is what if: What if I answer my cell phone before I board the plane for France? OrRead More →

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Preening, posing, and shallow small talk aren’t really Josie Browning’s scene, but when her editor Liani gives this junior writer for the online magazine, indi 18 days to plan a revolutionary launch for the magazine, Josie gets a crash course in schmoozing. As she works to make this an epic launch, Josie rubs elbows with plenty of mag hags—polished, glamorous, and arrogant women with vicious reputations for pedestal grubbing.  Along the way, Josie—who claims to be missing the charm gene—makes plenty of mistakes until she feels as if she’s only one embarrassing email or magazine event encounter away from losing everything—including the love of herRead More →

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Nervy but not nuts, Buck Anderson craves adventure.  Most comfortable surrounded by rock and roots and earth, Buck’s passion is caving.  And living in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian foothills, this stubborn, risk-taker has many opportunities for discovering, exploring, and hoping to make history.  When his best friend David Weinstein moves away, thirteen-year-old Buck loses his cautious cave-exploring partner, and “the first rule of caving is never—not ever—do it alone” (2). Although Buck disobeys this rule more than once, his fascination with caves and their potential danger is only one strand of the plot in Going Where It’s Dark by Newbery Award-winning author Phyllis ReynoldsRead More →

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Late last month, a new release from New York Times bestselling author of the Tiger’s Curse series, Colleen Houck, hit the shelves.  Packed with action and adventure, Reawakened awakens the reader to diverse ways of being in the world and imparts considerable knowledge about Egyptian culture and history. Houck’s book features image conscious, seventeen year old Lilliana Young who enjoys studying people.  During spring break of her senior year, Lilliana is trying to determine a career path.  While psychology and counselling are likely choices, she knows her parents want her to major in something that would make them proud, like medicine, business, or politics.  ToRead More →