Jerry Spinelli

In this story about the perils of popularity, the courage of nonconformity, and the thrill of first love, an eccentric student named Stargirl changes Mica High School forever.

From the Publisher: Just like other kids, Zinkoff rides his bike, hopes for snow days, and wants to be like his dad when he grows up. But Zinkoff also raises his hand with all the wrong answers, trips over his own feet, and falls down with laughter over a word like "Jabip." Other kids have their own word to describe him, but Zinkoff is too busy to hear it. He doesn't know he's not like everyone else. And one winter night, Zinkoff's differences...

"Jake and Lily are twins and have always felt the same--like two halves of one person--but the year they turn eleven and Jake begins hanging out with Bump Stubbins, everything changes"--Publisher.

As Palmer comes of age, he must either accept the violence of being a wringer at his town's annual Pigeon Day or find the courage to oppose it. He did not want to be a wringer. Palmer LaRue is rUnning out of birthdays. For as long as he can remember, he's dreaded the day he turns ten, the day he's supposed to become a wringer. This thing, this not wanting to be a wringer, did it ever knock him from his bike? Unite his sneaker lace? Call him a name?...

Mourning the loss of his mother, nine-year-old David forms an unlikely friendship with independent, quirky thirteen-year-old Primrose, as the two help each other deal with what is missing in their lives.

Set in Nazi-occupied Poland just before the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Spinelli's first historical novel tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival though the eyes of a young orphan.

Cammie O'Reilly lives at the Hancock County Prison - not as a prisoner, she's the warden's daughter. She spends the mornings hanging out with shoplifters and reformed arsonists in the women's excercise yard, which gives Cammie a certain cache with her school friends. But even though Cammie's free to leave the prison, she's still stuck. And sad, and really mad. Her mother died saving her from harm when she was just a baby. You wouldn't think you could...

When the school assigns each eighth-grader the name of a teenager who died in the past year as a lesson in mortality, Worm Tarnauer, who thrives on being invisible, doesn't count on Becca Finch, the seventeen-year-old car crash victim who changes everything.

A little boy ponders the many possible jobs in his future, from paper-plane folder and puppy-dog holder to mixing-bowl licker and tin-can kicker.

The lives of four young people in different circumstances are changed by their encounters with books. Four humorous, poignant stories about how books changed the lives of several youngsters.