Showing results by narrator "Sisi Johnson" in All Categories

Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past. Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. After all, Mare isn’t your typical grandmother. She drives a red sports car, wears stiletto shoes, flippy wigs, and push-up bras, and insists that she’s too young to be called Grandma. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see.

The 19th addition of this annual anthology exhibits a collection of short fiction from award-winning Southern authors and rising stars including Edward P. Jones and Silas House. Each story’s derivation is explained in an illuminating note from the author following the rich and entertaining tales.

Departures, from Adrienne Bellamy, has been compared to such classics as The Women of Brewster Place. This novel is the tale of 10-year-old Amber, whose mother has all but abandoned her and her sisters in an effort to find a man to curl up with at night. Despite her abusive home situation, Amber still has other role models in her Philadelphia neighborhood.

Ryan Hart is caught in the middle. She has an older brother and a new baby sister, and she’s in a friendship tug-of-war with two friends who both want to be her best best friend. How can Ryan think about being kind to a classmate who is relentless with his teasing? Or be her signature sunny self when her brother, Ray, pulls the ultimate prank? But even when it seems like nothing is going her way, Ryan still looks for a way to see the bright side of things, refusing to let anything steal her joy, and finding ways to share it with everyone she meets.

When 12-year-old Della Kelly finds her mother furiously digging black seeds from a watermelon in the middle of the night and talking to people who aren't there, Della worries it’s happening again - that the sickness that put her mama in the hospital four years ago is back. That her mama is going to be hospitalized for months like she was last time. With her daddy struggling to save the farm and her mama in denial about what’s happening, it’s up to Della to heal her mama for good.

NEW YORK CITY, 2000 Twins Trey and Tai are not like other high schoolers. Trey struggles to suppress his surging magical abilities, which continually impede his dream of making first chair cello in orchestra. A budding photographer, Tai just wants to take pictures and maybe find someone to take them with. But disturbing images keep appearing in Tai’s camera lens, reigniting the twins’ search for their mother, who mysteriously disappeared ten years earlier.

It’s been 925 summers since the Jemen introduced zyme, a bioluminescent algae, into the world’s ocean and unwittingly triggered an Ice Age that has consumed most of the planet. All but a handful of Jemen flew to the stars, but before they left, they recreated several extinct species that had thrived in the last Ice Age. After almost a thousand summers, the archaic hominins that struggle along the edges of massive glaciers are dwindling. All they have to save them is a dying quantum computer called Quancee and her student, a Denisovan man named Lynx.

With their first mystery solved and first-day jitters triumphantly behind them, Izzy and her pals - the Solving Mysteries and Revealing Truths Squad - start to settle in to the normal day-to-day at Atom Middle School. Izzy even works up the courage to try out for an all-boys sports team! Things are going well until a mysterious illness threatens to shut down the media center - and maybe the entire school. The S.M.A.R.T. Squad is on the case in a race to figure out what ails them.

Aspiring PI Jolene Kelley is skipping class at her fancy new private school, North Shore Prep, when she witnesses her beloved guidance counselor fall in front of an oncoming L train. The police call Mr. Medina’s death a tragic accident, but Jo knows what she saw: This was murder. With help from her friends Sabrina and Frankie—and the inside scoop from her public-defender parents and her mentor at the state attorney’s office—Jo opens up her own investigation into Mr. Medina’s death.

A crowded new school and a crazy class schedule is enough to make Izzy feel dizzy. It may be the first day of middle school, but as long as her best friends Allie Einstein and Charlie Darwin are by her side, Izzy knows it'll all be okay. However, first-day jitters take an icy turn when Izzy's old pal Marie Curie comes back to town. Instead of a warm welcome, Marie gives her former pal the cold shoulder. The problems pile up when the school's air-conditioning goes on the fritz and the temperature suddenly drops to near freezing.

During the hardships of obtaining emancipation, two couples shared one home in Illinois. Residing with them was a young Black girl named Polly Crocket. But after five years, Polly, along with the two couples, were abducted, placed into a canoe, and taken down South where they became slaves. Polly was then bought by a prior who, after a year, faced setbacks that required him to sell all he owned, including Polly.

What's a Brooklyn girl to do when her best friend is away for the whole summer? Aimless and unhappy with her new foster mother, Kate falls into the hands of a stylish It Chick who whips her into fashionable shape. Armed with new confidence and a game plan to get her man, Kate quickly falls under her new bestie's bad influence. Told through Kate's witty, fearless point of view, this two-in-one edition of Hot Girl and Bad Boy present powerful stories from an important voice in young-adult fiction.

Ryan Hart and her family are back in another instalment of stories about a Black girl finding her way and her voice as she grows through change and challenges. In this book, Ryan finds herself waiting on lots of things - like for her new sister to be born healthy, for her new recipes to turn out right, for that summer camp trip to go better than she fears! And of course Ryan is facing these new challenges and new experiences in her classic style - with a bright outlook and plenty of spirit!

Darrian dreams of writing for the New York Times. To hone his skills and learn more about the power of words, he enrolls in Mr. Ward's class, known for its open-mic poetry and boys vs. girls poetry slam. Everyone in class has something important to say, and in sharing their poetry, they learn that they all face challenges and have a story to tell - whether it's about health problems, aging out of foster care, being bullied for religious beliefs, or having to take on too much responsibility because of an addicted parent.

Angelica Marie Hutcherson only agreed to write 250 words on the Academic Battle for the Homecoming Edition of the school's newspaper because the editor won't accept any of her other stories. But as Angelica starts to do her research, she comes to a startling realization: The Academic Battle, the Homecoming game, and the class election have all accidentally been scheduled on the same day, and it's too late to do anything about it!

Culture shock knocks city girl Agnes "Nes" Murphy-Pujols off-kilter when she's transplanted mid-senior year from Brooklyn to a small Southern town after her mother's relationship with a coworker self-destructs. On top of the move, Nes is nursing a broken heart and severe homesickness, so her plan is simple: keep her head down, graduate, and get out. Too bad that flies out the window on day one, when she opens her smart mouth and pits herself against the school's reigning belle and the principal. Her rebellious streak attracts the attention of local golden boy Doyle Rahn.

Adrienne Bellamy’s debut novel Departures received rave reviews for depicting strong, independent women and delivering unpredictable dialogue. Bellamy brings these spunky ladies together again in Connecting - a story packed with unexpected plot twists and turns. Their reunion is sweet, but life has plenty of new surprises in store for Sheila, Emily and Amber. No matter what obstacles are thrown their way, these indomitable Philly gals prove to be unstoppable.

Frannie doesn't know what to make of the poem she's reading in school. She hasn't thought much about hope. There are so many other things to think about. Each day, her friend Samantha seems a bit more "holy". And there is a new boy in class everyone is calling the Jesus Boy.

A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning author Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller." From Kentucky to the California desert, these 42 short stories - ranging from the '80s and '90s to present day - expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

Things have changed in the Tibbs house, and Mya isn’t happy about it. She’s stuck in the middle between an exceptionally cute baby sister and an exceptionally smart older brother. And her tired parents seem to only notice the "exceptional" kids in the house. So when a class project lassoes Mya into starting her own school newspaper, she’s sure this will earn her the star status she wants from her parents. But the same project also gives Mya’s archenemy, Naomi Jackson, a chance to prove she is a better friend to the twins, Skye and Starr, than Mya is.