Paragraphs Bookstore

Jack Gantos won this year's Newbery Award for the "most distinguished contribution to American literature" for his novel Dead End in Norvelt. The main character, also named Jack Gantos, starts his summer vacation "grounded for life" and loaned out by his mother to the elderly, obituary-writing next-door neighbor.  Set in 1962, young Jack has more excitement than he could ever have anticipated.  And since Jack's nose bleeds whenever he is stressed or as he says, blood "would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames," there is plenty of gore,  mystery, and laughs in this book.

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai is the second Newbery Honor Book. Saigon has fallen and ten-year old Ha and her family board a ship headed to America. But Alabama is strange. . . the people are cold, the food is bland, and the countryside is strange. This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing.

Blackout - illustrated and written by John Rocco - A Caldecott Honor Book for 2012 One hot summer night in the city, all the power goes out. The TV shuts off and a boy wails, "Mommm!" His sister can no longer use the phone, Mom can't work on her computer, and Dad can't finish cooking dinner. What's a family to do?

Me . . . Jane by Patrick McDonnell is another Caldecott Honor Book. The Jane in question is famed primatologist Jane Goodall, and this picture book / biography illuminates her formative years. Little Jane Goodall and Jubilee (her toy chimpanzee) ramble outside their English country home observing everyday animal miracles and dreaming of a life in Africa. Readers will love seeing Jane as a conventional, buttoned-up child, wearing a plaid skirt, classic bob and hair clip as she squats in a coop to watch a chicken drop an egg.