New Books: Curriculum

A collection of timeless games that guarantees kids a good time- by themselves, with a group of friends, or with family. Includes ball games, card games, sack races, and old favorites such as Red Rover. There is also a chapter for car games. Simple instructions explain the rules, how many people can play, the object of the game, and what you need to play.

When an old woman cooks and eats a piece of meat she finds, a spooky visitor comes to her house that night. A retelling of an Appalachian ghost story that has parallels in English folktales such as "The Golden Arm" and "Teeny Tiny."

Edited by award-winning and bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of intersecting stories by both new and veteran Native writers bursts with hope, joy, resilience, the strength of community, and Native pride. Young protagonists will meet relatives from faraway, mysterious strangers, and sometimes one another (plus one scrappy rez dog). They are the heroes of their own stories.

Ursula K. Le Guin's trilogy of coming-of-age novels set in the far-flung Western Shore. Gifts: When a young man in the Uplands blinds himself rather than use his gift of "unmaking"--a violent talent shared by members of his family--he upsets the precarious balance of power among rival, feuding families, each of which has a strange and deadly talent of its own. Voices: Young Memer takes on a pivotal role in freeing her war-torn homeland from its oppressive captors. Powers: When young Gavir's sister is brutally killed, he escapes from slavery and sets out to explore the world and his own psychic abilities.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories, presented here from nations and cultures across our two continents -- the Sea-Ringed World, as the Aztecs called it.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now intertwined.

It's the summer before middle school and eleven-year-old Bug's best friend Moira has decided the two of them need to use the next few months to prepare. For Moira, this means figuring out the right clothes to wear, learning how to put on makeup, and deciding which boys are cuter in their yearbook photos than in real life. But none of this is all that appealing to Bug, who doesn't particularly want to spend more time trying to understand how to be a girl. Besides, there's something more important to worry about: a ghost is haunting Bug's eerie old house in rural Vermont...and maybe haunting Bug in particular.

Los Angeles, 1992. It's the end of senior year and Ashley Bennett and her friends are spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. When four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death, violent protests engulf LA and the city burns. Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal; her sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. The model black family façade her wealthy and prominent parents built starts to crumble. Her friends are spreading a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson. Now, who is the us? And who is the them?

In Youth to Power, Jamie Margolin presents the essential guide to changemaking, with advice on writing and pitching op-eds, organizing successful events and peaceful protests, time management as a student activist, utilizing social media and traditional media to spread a message, and sustaining long-term action. She features interviews with prominent young activists who give guidance on handling backlash, keeping your mental health a priority, and how to avoid getting taken advantage of. Jamie walks readers through every step of what effective, healthy, intersectional activism looks like.

Playing out themes of memory, folklore, and tradition in enthralling, often wildly inventive stories, Virginia Hamilton transformed American children's literature in the 1960s and 70s. Her award-winning novels brought Black characters center stage, creating a multifaceted portrait of African American life that she called "liberation literature." This volume collects five of her best known and most beloved works: Zeely (1967), Edgar Award-winning The House of Dies Drear (1968), The Planet of Junior Brown (1971), National Book Award-winning M.C. Higgins, The Great (1974), and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982).