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City Spies by James Ponti

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πŸ“—πŸ“˜πŸ“™πŸ“•πŸ“’ City Spies is a magical yet believable book about persistence, perseverance and how important friendship is. I love how the author is sympathetic to the main character, Sara, while also writing a cunning, clever and altogether amazing book . Sara has lived in many foster homes, but this one is by far the most terrible. Sara is a middle schooler and one of the best hackers in the world, but her world is about to change. When Sara hacks into the juvenile detention mainframe she reports a large case of child abuse by her foster parents, Deborah and Leonard Clark.  They were locking kids in closets and on the roof. Instead of taking her foster parents into custody, the police take Sarah into custody. When Sarah arrives at Juvenile Hall, a fancy lawyer helps Sara out of prison, but it turns out he is not a lawyer at all. He is an M15 agent named Mother and he has asked Sara to join M15's cause in taking down an evil organization named Umbra. Her life is about to change, but c...

MaΓ±analand by Pam Munoz Ryan

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πŸ“—πŸ“˜πŸ“™πŸ“•                 Man analand is a magical book about justice and doing the right thing: Not to be selfish and  rather to save someone even though there is nothing that you gain by it.  Just because the law says something is right  doesn't make it right.  This highlights  some  of the qualities that this book has. This is an amazing heartfelt book based in Santa Maria. It is about guardians and the hidden ones (refugees) sneaking away from a place nearby lead by a horrible dictator. Max is about to help.       Max loved soccer and the ruins. He always wanted to be the first kid to enter.  "Papa, may I please, please, please, go to the soccer clinic! Otis's Cousin is the head and it's only forty five minutes away!" Max pleaded to his father.      "A lot can happen in 45 minutes," father said, already making up his mind.      "Papa you wen...

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

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πŸ“—πŸ“˜πŸ“™πŸ“•πŸ“’      Sophie Foster is not normal, because how can you be normal if you can read minds? She is a twelve year old genius because of her photographic memory, and she is typically smarter than the teachers. But sometimes that can be bad, especially when a boy that looks like a movie star calls her over. Her mother's #1 rule is "Not to talk to strangers," but this is an occasion, and she felt a connection with the boy, something that know one else had.       Her head was all ways thumping with  headaches because of the thousands of human thoughts that kept crashing into her head with great big booms. This boy seemed to have the same headache so she disobeyed her mother and walked up closer to confront him.      "Is this you?" the boy asked, gesturing to the front page of the newspaper whether it was her in the picture.      "Yeah."      "Well then we need to tal...

Short by Holly Goldberg Sloan

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πŸ“—πŸ“˜πŸ“™πŸ“•                          Have you ever "looked up" without being on the internet or at a role model? Julia Marks literally has and it hasn't always made her happy. For example her friends never choose her to be on their team for team sports, and her parents whisper about her and say that they're lucky that she isn't a boy -- just because of her height.                         Julia's mom makes her audition for the local Wizard of Oz play because a famous broadway director is directing it (Shawn Barr). Julia is a little quiet and closed in the beginning but pops open like a walnut when she makes the part as the munchkin and finds that her director is really supportive and cheery. And she just had call out, "We were inspired, and we could watch a little more Wizard of Oz if that would help."      ...