A sheltered girl. A wild horse. An unforgettable journey.
Maya lives like a captive. At Grandmother's house in California, everything is forbidden: friends, fun, even memories. And her life is built on lies: lies Grandmother tells her about her dead mother, lies Maya tells to impress or manipulate. But then she moves to the vast Wyoming wilderness where her mother's family awaits - kind, rugged people who have no tolerance for lies. They challenge Maya to confront the truth about who she is. And a mysterious mustang called Artemisia waits, too. She holds the key to Maya's freedom. But to find it, Maya will have to risk everything, including her life.

Spanish language edition. Relive a day at the beach with this lovely book of memories. You can almost feel the salt spray on your face and smell the musky scent of ocean in the cool morning air. Remember how the sand squishes between your toes as the tide rushes to shore and taste the tang of the ocean on your lips. HELLO OCEAN is a joy-filled and playful poem about the draw of the shore and the effect the ocean has on all five senses. Spirited language evokes a sense of closeness and nostalgia for an old friend. The inspiration of the ocean will make learning the five senses as easy as a day at the beach.
Crisp, realistic illustrations fill the pages with the rush of surf and the warmth of sun-baked sand. The sights and smells and sensations of the ocean become vividly clear in these beautifully rendered paintings.

Winner of the 2011 Pure Belpre Award for fiction now in an elegant paperback edition
From the time he is a young boy, Neftali hears the call of a mysterious voice. He knows he must follow it--even when the neighborhood children taunt him, and when his harsh, authoritarian father ridicules him, and when he doubts himself. It leads him under the canopy of the lush rain forest, into the fearsome sea, and through the persistent Chilean rain, until finally, he discovers its source.
Combining elements of magical realism with biography, poetry, literary fiction, and sensorial, transporting illustrations, Pam Munoz Ryan and Peter Sis take readers on a rare journey of the heart and imagination.

Her father's brutal murder tears 14-year-old Esperanza from her life of privilege in Mexico, forcing her to help her mother create a new life in Great Depression America. Despite many difficulties, Esperanza manages to embrace her new farm-labor-camp community, and dream of a better future. Offer your child the perspective of a culture whose stories are not often told.

Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw has had a lot to contend with in her young life, her name for a start. Then, there are her clothes (sewn in polyester by Gram), her difficulty speaking up, and her status at school as "nobody special." But according to Gram, most problems can be overcome with positive thinking. And with Gram and her little brother, Owen, life at Avocado Acres Trailer Rancho in California is happy and peaceful...until their mother reappears after seven years, stirring up all sorts of questions and challenging Naomi to discover who she really is.

Spanish title: Yo, Naomi Leon

Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw ha tenido que enfrentarse a mucho en su corta vida, empezando por su nombre. Tambien esta el problema de su ropa (hechas por su abuela en tela de poliester), su timidez y la fama que tiene en la escuela de no ser nadie especial. Pero segun su abuela, la mayoria de los problemas se solucionan con mentalidad positiva. Y su vida, junto a su abuela y su pequeno hermano, Owen, en el parque de casas moviles Avocado Acres, es tranquila y feliz... hasta que su mama aparece luego de siete anos, creando confusion y retando a Naomi a que averigue quien es.

"Hello, ocean,
my old best friend."
Relive a day at the beach with this lovely book of memories. You can almost feel the salt spray on your face and smell the musky scent of ocean in the cool morning air. Remember how the sand squishes between your toes as the tide rushes to shore and taste the tang of the ocean on your lips. HELLO OCEAN is a joy-filled and playful poem about the draw of the shore and the effect the ocean has on all five senses. Spirited language evokes a sense of closeness and nostalgia for an old friend. The inspiration of the ocean will make learning the five senses as easy as a day at the beach.
Crisp, realistic illustrations fill the pages with the rush of surf and the warmth of sun-baked sand. The sights and smells and sensations of the ocean become vividly clear in these beautifully rendered paintings.

Sweep your child back to the time of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. Based on a little-known event, readers discover how the two women left a White House dinner for an impromptu flight around Washington. Through dynamic text and line-drawings that pulse with energy, the story of these remarkable role models will inspire your child to reach for the stars herself.

Heroes and Villains, the seventh volume in Jon Scieszka's Guys Read Library of Great Reading, is chock-full of adventure featuring an array of characters-with and without capes. Featuring ten all-new, original stories that run the gamut from fantasy to comics to contemporary adventure to nonfiction, and featuring eleven of the most acclaimed, exciting writers for kids working today, this collection is the perfect book for you, whether you use your powers for good-or evil. Authors include Laurie Halse Anderson, Cathy Camper and Raul Gonzalez, Sharon Creech, Jack Gantos, Christopher Healy, Deborah Hopkinson, Ingrid Law, Pam Munoz Ryan, Lemony Snicket, and Eugene Yelchin, with illustrations by Jeff Stokely.

Using rhyming text, a child describes the wonder of the ocean experienced through each of her five senses.

Her father's brutal murder tears 14-year-old Esperanza from her life of privilege in Mexico, forcing her to help her mother create a new life in Great Depression America. Despite many difficulties, Esperanza manages to embrace her new farm-labor-camp community, and dream of a better future. Offer your child the perspective of a culture whose stories are not often told.

Re-illustrated and re-designed, OUR CALIFORNIA (previously CALIFORNIA, HERE WE COME ) is a lively tour of award-winning author Pam Munoz Ryan's home state. Spirited poems celebrate California's major cities and regions. Backmatter includes state symbols and additional information about each place.
Bold paintings by illustrator Rafael Lopez capture the spirit of the land.

Neftali siente admiracion y curiosidad por todo: los colores del aceite en un charco, un guante perdido, el viento al navegar, el canto de los pajaros. A Neftali le encanta coleccionar tesoros, sonar despierto y escribir -pasatiempos que su padre piensa que le hacen perder el tiempo. Sin embargo, a pesar de todas las adversidades, el espiritu de Neftali prevalece a pesar de su timidez y la crueldad de su padre hasta llegar a convertirse en uno de los poetas mas leidos en todo el mundo, Pablo Neruda. Este libro inspirara' a jovenes escritores y artistas.

Neftali finds beauty and wonder everywhere: in the oily colors of mud puddles; a lost glove, sailing on the wind; the music of birds and language. He loves to collect treasures, daydream, and write--pastimes his authoritarian father thinks are for fools. Against all odds, Neftali prevails against his father's cruelty and his own crippling shyness to become one of the most widely read poets in the world, Pablo Neruda. This moving story about the birth of an artist is also a celebration of childhood, imagination, & the strength of the creative spirit. Sure to inspire young writers & artists.

We dream of a time when all students will be confident, capable readers and writers. When we teach students to read as writers using mentor texts, we awaken that dream and make it real. Imagine the power of providing students with books that show them their faces, their culture, their lives on every page. And imagine how every classroom's collection of mentor texts can grow by adding books that celebrate diversity. In Dream Wakers: Mentor Texts That Celebrate Latino Culture, Ruth Culham focuses her love of children's literature-and her decades of work developing the traits of writing-on books that celebrate Latino life and culture. She provides a wide variety of ideas to teach writing using some of the richest and most beautiful children's books available. Dream Wakers gives you: An annotated list of more than 120 books with do-it-today lesson ideas for teaching the traits of writing-Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions. More than half of the books listed are bilingual or offer English and/or Spanish editions. Eleven original, insightful essays by renowned children's authors of some of the featured books A handy reference chart that helps teachers locate books quickly by trait, genre, language, and author/publisher information. Ruth encourages all of us to make sure students of all backgrounds have access to high-quality, culturally diverse texts and recognize the difference those texts will make in their reading lives, as well as in their perception of themselves as a thinkers, learners, and citizens.