Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

A few weeks after he was born, Alex Rider’s parents were tragically killed in a plane crash. For the last fourteen years he has lived with his wealthy uncle Ian Rider in London. Suddenly his uncle is killed in an automobile accident, and fourteen-year-old Alex Rider’s is left on his own. The police say his uncle wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Alex finds this news almost impossible to believe. He knows how conscientious his uncle was about wearing seatbelts. After the funeral, Alex returns home to find someone has broken in and cleaned everything out of his uncle’s study. Now Alex really knows there is something mysterious about his uncle’s death. Alex decides to do a little investigating, locates his uncle’s car, and finds no sign of an accident but does find a flurry of bullet holes in the driver’s side door. When Alex visits Royal & General Bank, his uncle’s place of employment, he learns that his uncle wasn’t a banker at all and that Royal & General isn’t even really a bank, but a cover for MI6, England’s top-secret intelligence agency. There he also learns his uncle was actually murdered while on a mission for MI6. Only Alex can finish his uncle’s mission and find his uncle’s murderers. After having already narrowly escaping a car crusher’s jaws, crawling through a window on the fifteenth floor of the MI6 headquarters, the next few weeks of Alex’s life are filled with giant killer jelly fish, exploding zit cream, a Nintendo with X-ray vision, a scrap of paper with a strange drawing, underwater caverns, a deadly ATV ride, and a leap from an airplane. Can Alex survive all this and still save England from a mad man with a grudge against the British? Read Anthony Horowitz’s Stormbreaker, and follow Alex Rider on the adventure of a lifetime.

Make Lemonade by Virginia Ewer Wolff

BABYSITTER WANTED BAD read the notice on the school bulletin board. LaVaughn is fourteen. Jolly the owner of the bulletin board notice is only seventeen with one not quite three and the other not quite crawling. Jolly is in a bad situation. Her apartment is a wreck. Her life is a wreck. LaVaughn can clearly see Jolly desperately needs help. LaVaughn convinces her mother that she can handle the job and still keep her grades up. And besides, this job will help her make some money to save up for her dreams of college. LaVaughn’s mother knows this is true. It is the thing that finally convinces her. LaVaughn’s mother has a good job and works hard to provide for herself and her daughter. But since LaVaughn’s dad died, money is tight, and there is no way her mom can pay for LaVaughn’s college education on her own. LaVaughn’s mom wants her to have a better life than her own beyond government housing and gang writing on the walls. Things go okay for a while until Jolly comes home late one night with a face like hamburger. Another night she doesn’t come home at all. Finally Jolly comes home and says she’s been fired. She can’t pay LaVaughn to sit with her children anymore, but she can’t look for another job without a sitter. Jolly refuses to go to the welfare office. She fears they will take her children away. LaVaughn has really become fond of Jolly and her children, but she can’t keep her children for free. Should she give Jolly her college savings? What good would that do? LaVaughn doesn’t want herself to end up like Jolly, poor, uneducated, and hopeless. LaVaughn must find a way for Jolly to help herself, but how? Read Virginia Euwer Wolff’s Make Lemonade. Can LaVaughn get Jolly the help she must have? Will Jolly have the will power to do what she must to keep her children and raise them all above poverty and despair?

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

Prosper and Bo are on the run. Their mother is dead, and they have been entrusted to their grouchy aunt Esther and her husband Max. Aunt Esther is interested only in five-year-old Bo with his angelic golden curls. Her plan for twelve-year-old Prosper is a far away boarding school. Prosper must do everything possible to keep Bo and himself together even if it means traveling all the way from Hamburg, Germany, to Venice, Italy, the city of their mother’s dreams. Throughout their childhoods, their mother filled their own dreams with tales of this magical city with its winged lions, magnificent cathedrals, and winding canals. While in Venice, Prosper and Bo join up with a band of homeless runaways like themselves, Hornet, Mosca, Riccio, and their shadowy leader the Thief Lord. Together this band of thieves must outrun a detective hired by Prosper and Bo’s aunt and steal a mysterious object for an even more mysterious client. All of their adventures lead them to an enchanted island. What they encounter there will change their lives forever. Will Prosper and Bo be found and returned to their hateful aunt? What is the true identity of their mysterious client and the even more mysterious Thief Lord? Read Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord and follow this winding plot that is as tangled as the streets and canals of Venice.