From the author of the beloved All-Of-A-Kind Family books comes a timeless story of a family's struggles and triumphs in early twentieth century Eastern Europe. Mama and her two young daughters, Szerena and Gisella, never thought they would be without Papa for five long years. Ever since he left their small farm in Czechoslovakia for America, they have been waiting for him to send for them. In the meantime, with the help of family and neighbors, Mama and the girls work on the farm. While Szerena wishes for "a papa like everyone else," Gisella can't remember their father, and wishes he had not gone away without them. Finally, the big day arrives, and Mama and the girls leave for America to reunite with Papa. What will it be like to travel on a train and a ship? And what will happen when at last they see Papa? A delightful evocation of Jewish life in the "old world," A Papa Like Everyone Else is the perfect companion to the seminal All-Of-A-Kind Family books.

A Papa Like Everyone Else

Children's Books

Taylor, Sydney

Literature & Fiction

Lizzie Skurnick Books

Lilli's Quest

Germany on the cusp of World War II. Hitler has risen to power, and the Jews are being taken away from their homes in the middle of the night, forced to wear yellow stars, their businesses smashed, their lives in ruins. In the middle of all this is Lilli Frankfurter, a half-Jewish girl on the cusp of adolescence, her life and family thrust into the midst of a danger she has only begun to understand.
In the stunning sequel to Isabel's War, Lila Perl, who completed this book just months before her death, brings wartime Germany, England, and America to life through Lilli's eyes. From Kristallnacht to hiding in her grandparents' attic to the Kindertransports that take her to an isolated farm in the English countryside, separated from her family, Lilli must repeatedly hide her identity in order to stay alive. In her final novel, Perl brilliantly evokes Lilli's desperate journey to America—as well as her brave quest back to Europe to find out if anything is left of her family.
Lila Perl published over sixty volumes of fiction and nonfiction for young readers during her long and distinguished career. In addition to the beloved Fat Glenda series, Perl twice received American Library Association Notable awards for nonfiction and was a recipient of the Sidney Taylor Award for Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story. Her penultimate novel, Isabel's War, was named a 2015 Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner in the Teen Readers Category, and was well reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Kirkus, among other places. She died in 2013 at the age of ninety-two.

Perl, Lila.

Louis Duncan's 1958 young adult classic tells the story of what happens when the debutante tradition comes to one small town: the parties, the ball gowns, as well as one girl's growing sense of right and wrong.
Lynn Chambers is popular, wealthy, and going (almost) steady with a handsome college boy. But when she decides not to be a debutante, Lynn finds herself on the outside, which leads her to a side of her town she barely knew existed. There she meets Anna, an artist overlooked by the debutante crowd, and bad boy Dirk Masters, who has a fast car, a quick temper, and a dark secret involving Lynn.

Debutante Hill

Duncan, Lois

Sylvie isn't your average girl. When she dresses up she looks eighteen, and she's spent the last three years in foster care plotting her escape to Hollywood. But as Sylvie quickly learns on the road, zigzagging across the Midwest in a stranger's two-tone blue Pontiac, life isn't like the movies. Left broke and stranded in the middle of the country, she has no choice but to accept the help of Walter Murchison, a Bible salesman who is just a little too good at selling to be trusted.
Set in the 1950s against a backdrop of James Dean billboards and jukeboxes blasting Elvis, Ellen Conford's classic 1982 road novel takes place over the course of five days as we follow the comic misadventures of fifteen-year-old Sylvie on her way from New York to California, dreams of celluloid stardom gleaming in her head.
Ellen Conford is one of the most prolific and successful authors of young adult fiction over the past quarter century. In addition to her popular Jenny Archer and Annabel the Actress series, Conford has written over thirty novels. Her children's book And This is Laura and the story Revenge of the Incredible Dr. Rancid and His Youthful Assistant, Jeffrey became ABC Weekend Specials, while her young adult novels Dear Lovey Hart: I Am Desperate and The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations were used for CBS Schoolbreak Specials.

To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie

Teen & Young Adult

Conford, Ellen

Historical Fiction

One morning, six-year old Sonny is awoken by his crying mother, who tells him that, come tomorrow morning, they are leaving to go to "Gran'mom's" house—without Sonny's father, Eddie. Later that morning, Sonny witnesses a fight between his parents, which revolves around his father having stayed out late the night before because his car had broken down. Eddie has apparently been neglecting his wife and son, devoting his free time instead to repairing his old car. In order to win back his wife, Eddie—with Sonny in tow—pays a visit to Madame Toussaint, an old lady knowledgeable in the ways of voodoo, who tells Eddie that the only way to save his marriage is by burning his car to the ground.
This unforgettable story leads the reader through an eventful day on a Southern sugarcane plantation, and shows, through the eyes of a child, what life was like in the rural South of the 1940s. This new edition of A Long Day in November features Ernest J. Gaines's original introduction, as well as the black-and-white illustrations that accompanied the first edition of the book.
Ernest J. Gaines's 1993 novel A Lesson Before Dying won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and was an Oprah Book Club pick. Gaines has been a MacArthur Foundation fellow, awarded the National Humanities Medal, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier. He lives in Oscar, Louisiana.

A Long Day in November

Gaines, Ernest J.

She's fat. She's loud-mouthed. She's pushy. She's opinionated. She's prejudiced. She has a "creative" way with the truth. She is madly in love with your sixteen-year-old brother. All the other kids in seventh-grade hate her and she hates them. Her mother has a petition going to try to force your family out of the neighborhood. . . . And she's your best friend! There's no one like Fat Glenda. In Lila Perl's 1972 comedy, while Sara has to cope with her family's unorthodox ways and the town's prejudice against them, it's her new friend Glenda who Sara has to really watch out for. For Glenda has a secret, and everyone in town knows it . . . but Sara!
Lila Perl has published over sixty volumes of fiction and nonfiction for young readers. In addition to the successful Fat Glenda series, Perl has twice received American Library Association Notable awards for nonfiction and is the recipient of the Sidney Taylor Award for Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story.

Me and Fat Glenda (Fat Glenda Series)

Growing Up & Facts of Life

It’s their last summer before college, and Jaret and Peggy have fallen deeply in love. They exchange love letters, have pet names, and spend hours alone in their special clearing in the woods. For once, life is perfect. But Jaret and Peggy live in Gardener’s Point, a small town a hundred miles from New York City, and a place where girls only date boys. In Gardener’s Point, being different isn’t easybut nothing could prepare them for the danger that lies ahead. A novel ahead of its time, Sandra Scoppettone’s 1978 lesbian young adult romance shows how Jaret and Peggy’s relationship affects their friends, family, and town, and how, when Jaret is assaulted by a classmate, love and friendship win out.

Happy Endings Are All Alike

SCOPPETTONE, SANDRA

Set against the backdrop of 1930s New Orleans, Berthe Amoss's 1979 young adult mystery follows twelve-year-old Addie Agnew as she struggles to uncover the secret of her mother's death. Living with her spinster aunts in a house that's practically haunted, Addie was always told her mother was perfect and was swept off to sea with Addie's father in a Honduran tidal wave. But Addie suspects there's something her aunts aren't telling her, and it has something to do with the locked trunk in the attic. What's in the trunk? And what really happened to Addie's parents? In this classic story about family secrets and growing up, Addie will stop at nothing to discover truth about her mother, even if learning the truth will change everything forever.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Berthe Amoss has never stopped writing about her home city. She is the author and illustrator of twenty-eight children's and young adult books. Her picture book The Cajun Gingerbread Boy won a Children's Choice Award and The Chalk Cross was a finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe Award.

Secret Lives

Amoss, Berthe

I'll Love You When You're More Like Me

Sabra St. Amour, reluctant teenage soap opera star, is spending the summer in the Hamptons with her domineering mother, recuperating from an ulcer and a nervous breakdown. Walking on the beach one day, Sabra meets Wally Witherspoon, son of the local undertaker, and his best friend Charlie. Wally has problems of his own, including being engaged to a girl he doesn't love while still pining for his ex, and his father's insistence that he follow him into the family business, which Wally detests. Charlie has just come out of the closet, which earned him a broken nose, care of his father. As the lives of these three teenagers collide over the course of one memorable summer, they are forced to choose between the future their parents want for them, and the life they want for themselves.

Kerr, M.E.

Written in the Stars

What makes Written in the Stars’ striking and quite wonderful is the ease and sagacity with which Ms. Duncan writes about adolescence (at an astonishingly young authorial age) and the emotional resonance she creates with characters we will know only brieflyfor such is the nature of short stories.”Wall Street Journal An extraordinary look at the genesis of a great writer’s career, Written in the Stars is a collection of Lois Duncan’s earliest stories. composed from the ages of 13 through 22. From family relationships, to the joy and angst of first love, to the struggles of a young soldier returning from war with PTSD, this unique book, whose stories originally appeared in magazines such as Seventeen and American Girl, is a marvelous portrait of the depth and breadth of Duncan’s youthful work. As a special bonus, Lois has followed each story with a brief essay describing her work and life at the time the story was written. Written in the Stars is a must-have addition to the library of work from this spectacular and groundbreaking young adult author.

Written In The Stars

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