Synopsis: Stock car racing fans should not have been surprised when 24-year-old Jeff Gordon upset ace driver Dale Earnhardt to win the 1995 Winston Cup point championship. After all, Jeff started racing at age five and had won over 500 "short track" motorcross, sprint car, and NASCAR races by the time he was 20 years old. What's in store for this young auto racing superstar? Jeff Gordon, for one, is not looking ahead. "We don't think about championships…

Synopsis: On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable ... This is their story…

Synopsis: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed author of Red at the Bone tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing poems.A NEWBERY HONOR BOOK • WINNER OF THE CORETTA SCOTT KING BOOK AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST MIDDLE GRADE BOOK OF THE CENTURY“Moving and resonant . . . captivating.”—The Wall Street JournalI am born in Ohio butthe stories of South Carolina already runlike riversthrough my veins.Raised in…

Synopsis: In May 1996 the media scrambled to document the gripping story of sixteen-year-old Mark Pfetzer's expedition to Mount Everest. Not only was he the youngest climber ever to attempt the summit, he also witnessed the tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, in which eight climbers perished in a sudden storm. Within Reach is Mark's extraordinary account of this experience and of his triumphs over several other challenging peaks. At once…

Synopsis: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER “A classic, for a reason.” —Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts, via TwitterAs…

Synopsis: Guess what -- Gary Paulsen was being kind to Brian. In Guts, Gary tells the real stories behind the Brian books, the stories of the adventures that inspired him to write Brian Robeson's story: working as an emergency volunteer; the death that inspired the pilot's death in Hatchet; plane crashes he has seen and near-misses of his own. He describes how he made his own bows and arrows, and takes readers on his first hunting trips, showing the…

Synopsis: October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--a tempest that may happen only once in a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards…

Synopsis: October, 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--A tempest that may happen only once a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards…

Synopsis: Strong parental guidance and a spiritual upbringing are common threads in the inspirational lives of many courageous leaders portrayed in Great African Americans in Civil Rights. Major profiles in this book include: - Ralph David Abernathy - Marian Wright Edelman - Coretta Scott King - Rosa Parks - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Thurgood Marshall - Malcolm X - plus six additional shorter profiles