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Audiobooks by Frances O'Roark Dowell
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A kid filled with rage, kicked off the football team for unsportsmanlike conduct, and his father, newly home from the war in Afghanistan, reckon with the injuries they've caused to others and themselves in this unflinching middle grade novel in verse about love and forgiveness.
Everybody knows Hazard Stokes has mad football skills. A defensive back, he's never played dirty (no need for that when you're as good as he is) so it's a shock when he makes a bad hit the first game of the season and gets thrown off the field.
Now Coach won't let him back on the team until a therapist gives the thumbs up. At first, Haz denies there's a problem, but over time he starts to get it: When your dad's at Walter Reed Medical Center getting fitted for a prosthetic limb to replace a leg lost in an IED blast (and won't let you come visit him while he's there), it might make you angry enough to hurt somebody.
On top of that, Haz discovers his dad's dealing with wounds that go deeper than the loss of a leg. What happens when a soldier makes a split-second decision that haunts him long after the battle is over?
Through emails, texts, and family interviews, Haz slowly begins to understand how the body keeps score when bad things happen to people you love, and how the anger and confusion you feel can become the violence you commit. Both Hazard and his dad have to come to terms with the suffering they've caused other people—and themselves.
'A complex, thought-provoking, and entertaining view of middle school.' --Publishers Weekly
Twenty kids. Twenty points of view. One rambunctious, brilliantly conceived novel that corrals the seeming chaos (c'mon, TWENTY points of view!) into one effervescent story.
Sixth grade is a MOST confusing time. Best friends aren't friends anymore. Worst enemies suddenly want to be partners in crime. And classmates you thought you knew have all sorts of surprising stuff going on. The kids in Mrs. Herrera's class are dealing with all this and more--specifically:
1. There's a new girl who just seems to be spying on them all and scribbling things in a notebook. Maybe she IS a spy?
2. Someone is stealing Mrs. Herrera's most treasured items.
3. Their old classmate, Sam, keeps showing up and no one knows why...until they do.
Which leads to a fourth problem. But we can't tell you about that yet. The twenty kids in Mrs. Herrera's classroom can, though, and they do.
Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
Can one mistake destroy the chance of a lifetime? A girl discovers there are many ways of being true in this magnificent ode to handwritten letters and the shining power of friendship from the author of "Dovey Coe," set in the Appalachian mountains of 1920s North Carolina. One true friend. Someone shining. That's all twelve-year-old Arie Mae wants. But shining true friends are hard to come by deep in the mountains of western North Carolina, so she sets her sights on a cousin unseen, someone who lives all the way away in the big city of Baltimore, Maryland. Three unanswered letters later, Arie Mae learns that a group of kids from Baltimore are coming to spend a summer on the mountain. Arie Mae loves her smudge of a town--she knows there's nothing finer than Pa's fiddling and Mama's apple cake, but she also knows Big City folk might feel differently.
How else to explain the song catcher ladies who have descended upon the village in search of "traditional tunes" and their intention to help "save" the townspeople? But when the group from Baltimore arrives, it seems there just might be a gem among them, one shining boy who doesn't seem to notice Arie Mae wears the same dress every day and prefers to go barefoot. So what if he has a bit of a limp and a rumored heart problem--he also is keen about "everything "Arie Mae is keen about, and has all the makings of a true friend. And so what if the boy's mother warns him not to exert himself? He and Arie Mae have adventures to go on! In between writing letters to her cousin, Arie Mae leads her one shining friend on ghost hunts and bear chases. But it turns out those warnings were for a reason...
Is it possible to start afresh when you're thoroughly weighted down? Seventeen pounds. That's the difference between Abigail Walker and Kristen Gorzca. Between chubby and slim, between teased and taunting. Abby is fine with her body and sick of seventeen pounds making her miserable, so she speaks out against Kristen and her groupies--and becomes officially unpopular. Embracing her new status, Abby heads to an abandoned lot across the street and crosses an unfamiliar stream that leads her to a boy who's as different as they come. Anders is home-schooled, and while he's worried that Abby's former friends are out to get her, he's even more worried about his dad, a war veteran home from Iraq who is dangerously disillusioned with life. But if his dad can finish his poem about the expedition of Lewis and Clark, if he can effectively imagine what it is to experience freshness and innocence, maybe he will be okay. As Abby dives into the unexpected role as research assistant, she just as unexpectedly discovers that by helping someone else find hope in the world, there is plenty there for herself, as well.
New York Times best-selling author Frances O'Roark Dowell has garnered the Edgar Award and the Christopher Medal for her keen-eyed, humorous fiction. Embarrassed by her family's offbeat lifestyle, Janie Gorman lives with her modern-hippy parents on a rustic goat farm. Smart, creative, and a bit quirky, Janie longs to be seen as normal. But having to milk goats every day is not helping her reach that goal.
Edgar Award-winning author Frances O'Roark Dowell pens this imaginative tale that evokes such delightful classics as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. While waiting outside the principal's office at school, Isabelle Bean stumbles upon another world. It's just like a fairy tale-until Isabelle is mistaken for a witch, all thanks to her favorite pair of boots.
Having spent her youth travelling the world, Edgar Award winner Frances O'Roark Dowell is the author of the critically acclaimed Shooting the Moon. A compelling coming-of-age story, The Kind of Friends We Used to Be will resonate in the minds of listeners of all ages long after its conclusion.
Edgar Award-winning author Frances O'Roark Dowell is acclaimed for the rich characterizations in her poignant coming-of-age novels. Drawing on her experience as a colonel's daughter, Dowell delivers an evocative portrait of a 12-year-old girl whose view of life, war, and her dad- Fort Hood's base commander-changes as her corpsman brother sends home haunting images from Vietnam. An eloquent narration captures the emotional intensity of the novel's gripping prose.
Tobin McCauley’s got a near-certifiable grandmother, a pack of juvenile-delinquent siblings, and a dad who’s not going to win father of the year any time soon. To top it off, Tobin’s only friend truly believes that the study of chickens will reveal . . . the meaning of life? Getting through seventh grade isn’t easy for anyone, son, but when the first day of school starts out with your granny’s arrest, you know you’ve got real problems. Throw on a five-day suspension (for defending your English teacher’s honor), a chicken that lays green eggs, and a family feud that’s tearing everyone to pieces, and you’re in for one heck of a ride.
With her remarkable ability to create characters you wish could be part of your life forever, Frances O’Roark Dowell introduces Tobin McCauley, Chicken Boy.
Kate and Marylin have always been the kind of best friends who don't need words to talk to one another; they always just knew what the other was thinking. But lately it's starting to feel as though they don't know each other at all anymore. Marylin decides Kate (who still chases fireflies!) still acts like a baby, while Kate doesn't understand Marylin's new obsession with painting her toenails or wanting to be a cheerleader (and becoming on eof those people who only thinks about her hair!). And even though, secretly, they both wish things could be the way they were, neither one of them know how to get back there.
A ghost saved12-year-old Maddie's life when she was an infant, her Granny Lane claims, so Maddie must always remember that she is special. But it's hard to feel special when you've spent your life being shuttled from one foster home to another. And now that she's at the East Tennessee Children's Home, Maddie feels, well, less than ordinary. Six-year-old Ricky Ray, who came to the Home after his parents failed to come back from a party, thinks Maddie's the cat's meow. But what does a little boy like that know?
Maddie can't stop looking for a place to call home or for people who feel like home. She even makes a "book of houses," where she glues pictures of places in which she yearns to live. Then one day, a new girl, Murphy, shows up at the Home armed with tales about exotic travels, being able to fly, and boys who recite poetry to wild horses. Maddie is enchanted....Maybe, just maybe, she's found someone who feels like home and she lets her guard down. She shows Murphy her beloved scrapbook, never anticipating that this one gesture will challenge her very ideas of what home, and family, are all about.
With her astonishing ability to create characters who linger with you long after you turn the last page, Frances O'Roark Dowell explores the many definitions, both heartbreaking and awe-inspiring, of home and family.
