From the percussion section at the back of room 217, Carmen Trochez keeps the Benton Bluff Junior High band steady. But when a student teacher enters the scene, the band’s loyalties are divided. Carmen is usually the glue. Can she keep everything from falling apart? Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards.
Brand new pop star Cadence Hudson is on the hottest tour of the summer. When another singer writes a revenge song about her, she turns to her best friends, Maisey Lopez and Kenya Jackson. They’re along for the ride, helping her stay grounded as her whole world changes. Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Book 1 in the series
Maisey Lopez loves fashion. When her best friend, pop star Cadence Hudson, faces a fashion emergency Maisey steps up to help. But the real Cadence may get lost beneath the makeover! Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Book 2 in the series
With the concert tour coming to an end, Cadence Hudson, Maisey Lopez, and Kenya Jackson are heading in opposite directions. They’re hoping they can grow up, without growing apart. Because when something ends, doesn’t that mean something new is beginning? Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Book 4 in the series
Kenya Jackson is a dancer. She can’t help but groove to the beat of her best friend Cadence Hudson’s summer concert tour sounds. But only offstage. That is, until the day Cadence needs her more than ever. Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Book 3 in the series
Kat and Allie have been friends forever. But when Allie returns from a summer away, everything changes. Allie’s different. Too different. And Kat begins to wonder: who is this girl and what has she done with her best friend?
Sawdust in his locker and weird music on his MP3 player—someone is messing with Grady Hopkins. Determined to put an end to the pranks, Grady enlists friends Marco and Ava to help him decode anagrams left by the culprit. Will he solve the mystery before the trickster strikes again?
After a hacker breaches the school’s grading system and gives students failing grades, Grady Hopkins wants to set the record straight. Along with coders Ava and Marco, Grady follows a trail of IP addresses as he searches for the perpetrator. Will they find the truth before everyone flunks sixth grade?
When a mysterious lunch thief leaves behind a card with a website address, Ava Rhodes can’t help but check it out. After the site leads her to a really boring online video game, she’s even more determined. Can GPS tracking help Ava and her friends find the thief? Or will more lunches go missing?
When Ava Rhodes’s brand new tablet computer goes missing, she’s desperate to solve the mystery. Can her fellow coding club members Marco and Grady and some quick coding help her? Or is everyone a suspect?
When his little brother loses the class hamster, Marco Martinez comes to the rescue with a robot and some coding tricks. But will a robot rescue mission be enough to catch this speedy rodent?
When weird noises in the school’s media center have students spooked, Marco Martinez is on the case. Marco writes up a code to alert him of any ghost-like activity. But does he have more than ghosts to be afraid of?
Brielle and Tawni have played cello side by side in orchestras since they were nine years old. Brielle has always played second chair to Tawni's first, and she's been happy with that arrangement. When Tawni is injured, Brielle suddenly finds herself principal cellist. Not only does that mean she'll be thrust into the spotlight, but it also means she is now leader of the cello section. Brielle is terrified. Is she good enough? Will the other musicians accept her? What if she screws up? Despite her fears, Brielle rises to the occasion. Her cello skills, and her leadership skills, improve as she grows into her new role. But just as Brielle is beginning to feel confident, Tawni returns. And she wants her job back. If Brielle steps down now, she'll lose her place in the spotlight. If she doesn't, her friendship could be in jeopardy.
Thirteen-year-old Nate needs a break from looking after his newly disabled mom. One day when his mom thinks he's at a cross-country meet, he goes to the mall with a friend he's forbidden to have contact with. At the skate shop he sees a new board he can't afford but has to have, and Nate gets talked into running a scam. It turns out Nate looks a lot like a teen TV star filming in the area. So he and his buddy get girls to pay cash to be extras on set. It's all fine until Nate meets a girl he really likes. Nate knows he has to tell her the truth, but he's not sure he has what it takes to come clean.
Daniel Abel is surprised when, instead of being punished for "pantsing" another eighth-grader, he is invited to become an ambassador of Mountview High at the school's upcoming open house. What he doesn't realize is that he is part of a social experiment on bullying being conducted by the local university. He is a little nervous to learn he will be working with Jeff Kover, a tenth-grader with a reputation for being the biggest bully in the school. Daniel has never thought of himself as a bully. He just likes kidding around. But hanging out with Jeff will change Daniel's perspective on bullying and force him to examine his own behavior.
Ayla loves climbing. But she prefers to climb indoors, with all her safety harnesses in place and soft mats to land on. Her climbing partner and best friend, Lissy, is much more adventurous and loves the outdoors. When Lissy starts hanging out with Carlos, the new thrill-seeking guy in town, Ayla wants to keep an eye on her and finds herself tagging along on a weekend climbing trip up Black Dog Mountain. But things go very wrong when Lissy and her dad, the only adult in the group, are badly injured high on the side of the mountain. Suddenly the risks of climbing become very real. Ayla and Carlos need to figure out how to get help, and every decision they make could have catastrophic consequences.
It really seems like Dani's dad has gone around the bend. Ever since Dani's mother died of cancer, all her dad does is stand around on street corners with his crazy signs, proclaiming that processed foods mean the end of the world. The Food Freak, as he is known, has already scared away all of Dani's friends at her old school. But it's a new year, and Dani is at a new school in a different part of town. Maybe things will be better now. Dani just needs to keep her head down and avoid making any friends. That way, nobody will find out about her dad and his insane protests. The plan seems to be working fine until one day Dani meets a boy who helps her see things in a different light.
Jane has no interest in boys. Her mom, Sherry, has brought home so many creeps over the years that Jane has decided to focus for the next five years on her studies. Her best friend, the boy-crazy Kiara, is obsessed with online quizzes and convinces Jane to help her create a questionnaire that will determine whether muscular Liam or Omar with the cute eyes is her true soul mate. Their friendship is tested when the answers come back with a surprising third option, the quiet and awkward Javier. Jane fails to reveal the results, which leads to some heated words being exchanged and long-held resentments (and possible secret crushes) being revealed. One of the besties will have to swallow her pride to make the first move and try to repair the damage.
Even though he's secretly terrified of deep water, and all the scary things that swim below, Tate wants to shake his boring reputation, and he agrees to travel with his class up the Amazon River to help build a village school. He has his fingers and toes crossed that he won't see any giant snakes or hungry piranhas. But there are even scarier things than anacondas lurking in the jungles of South America, and Tate soon learns of the legend of El Tunchi, a vengeful spirit that terrorizes those who harm the rainforest. When creepy things start happening and Tate keeps hearing El Tunchi's haunting whistle, he's sure the group must have angered someone. Or something. He and his friends need to figure out a way to make amends and get out of the jungle alive.
Fourteen-year-old Taz knows one thing for sure: she's a perfect disaster in the kitchen. Every time she tries to cook, chaos ensues. After fires, toxins and more than one minor injury, Taz will be happy if she makes it through her food-science class in one piece. But when the class enters a competitive race for a coveted program and Taz is put in a group that expects to win, the pressure is on. As the competition heats up, Taz is desperate to hold her own and not let her team down.
Hailey McEwan has many interests - soccer, field hockey, animation. She'd probably never have started singing if her best friend, Crissy, hadn't persuaded her to take singing lessons and join her choir. No one had any idea that Hailey would be such a natural, least of all Hailey herself. A shared love of music from pop to opera has been a big part of the girls' friendship, but when the two face off in a competition for a role in a production of The Marriage of Figaro, their closeness turns into a bitter rivalry. Hailey will have to make a tough decision. Is opera as important to her as it is to Crissy? And is landing a role worth losing her best friend?
Adina has always wanted to be a part of the annual fashion show at her school for the arts. Now that she's finally in the ninth grade, she and her friends can audition. She knows their act could be perfect. They've got great music, gorgeous costumes and wicked dance moves. But Willow is being her usual flaky self, and Sandra's getting touchy. Maybe even a bit mean. Luckily, Seth remains steady and reliable. Their biggest competition is the annoyingly perfect Prima Donnas, who are doing everything they can to undermine Adina and her friends. Adina is used to working hard at everything she does, including her violin, art, drama and singing classes. But her friends are getting sick of her ordering them around. They just don't get what a huge deal this is. When one of the Prima Donnas gets injured during their audition, minutes after Sandra storms off in a huff, the two groups realize that in order to succeed, they may have to work together.
Melissa is waiting for the "new life" that her mother Sharlene has promised her since a fire devastated their family. But nothing ever seems to change. Melissa has difficulty making friends at school, they never have enough money and her little brother Cody is a brat. When Sharlene announces that they will be spending the month of August at a remote cabin on a wilderness lake, Melissa is less than thrilled. But there is more to do at the lake than she expected, and she is surprised to learn that her mother knows how to paddle a canoe, fish and make bannock and s'mores. On an island in the middle of the lake, Melissa meets Alice, a strange girl who is writing a fantasy novel. Alice shares her tree fort on the island with Melissa, and while at first Melissa is attracted to Alice's strong personality and her stories of her "perfect family," she becomes increasingly uneasy around Alice. As Melissa's relationship with her mother improves and her confidence increases, she is able to hold her own with Alice and start to appreciate her own imperfect family.
Readers will enjoy exploring hidden aspects of their personality as they discover what kind of friend they are in this engaging quiz book. Written in the high-low format, this book has a HIGH interest level to appeal to a more mature audience but maintains a LOW level of complexity and clear visuals to help struggling readers along. Best Quiz Ever: What Kind of Friend Are You? includes fun questions to share with friends as well as trivia throughout the book. A perfect read for the classroom, library, sleepovers, or reading resource rooms. A table of contents, glossary with simplified pronunciations, and index all enhance comprehension.
Thea and her dad are always on the move, from one small Cariboo town to another, trying to leave behind the pain of Thea's mom's death. They never stay long enough in one place for Thea to make friends, but when her dad gets work renovating a guest ranch on Gumboot Lake, she dares to hope that their wandering days are over. At the ranch she makes friends with Van, a local boy, and works hard to build the trust of an abused horse named Renegade. When Thea unearths the decades-old story of a four-year-old girl who disappeared from the ranch and was never seen again, she enlists Van to help her solve the mystery. When some disturbing facts come to light, she finally starts to come to terms with the losses in her own life.
