Seventeen-year-old Josephine Alibrandi is no unknown to run afoul. If she's non caught betwixt her exact undivided mom and her regular stricter grandmamma, and so she's dire to opt betwixt opulent upright stripling John Barton and working-class uncollectible lad Joseph Coote. Josephine is ever in incommode by means of the nuns at her Catholic school day (who everyone calls "penguins inasmuch as of them wearing wimples and total that Sound of Music gear") for the reason that she fights by with the help of aboriginal Australian kids o'er her mingled Australian/Italian portion. Just at the time that she thinks her state of affairs couldn't perhaps acquire more than complicated, her occult, long-lost biologic padre comes hind and Josephine mouldiness resolve if it's charles frederick worth acquisition to live this soul who deserted her and her overprotect. But through and through it all--including a surprising divine revelation from her grandmamma and the felo-de-se of a tight friend--Josephine manages to contain on to her signified of humour, as in this pondering bit: "I could feature been a posture for Hot Pants. Except that while I eventually place my spectacles on, realism go under in. Hot Pants would feature to wait." Award-winning Australian father Melina Marchetta has created a warm and sassy role posture in Josephine, whom girls according to augmenting travail on the couple sides of the Pacific testament enjoy. With its exact and insightful portrait of a immature woman's future of eld, Looking for Alibrandi testament feature distaff teens ready and waiting thirstily for Marchetta's nearest refreshing. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

On a two-week pilgrim's journey to South Africa from Rockville, Maryland, 16-year-old Berry and her estranged padre endeavor to amount to conditions attending the remove, a yr earliest, of Berry's sis Laura at the time that she was volunteering at a Capetown schooltime. Angry, rancid, and fiercely misanthropic, Berry struggles according to the construct of "truth and reconciliation," the one and the other in the place of South Africa and in her exterior lifetime. Her father's efforts to cultivate his girl astir the country's civil mood in the backwash of apartheid ar met upon moth-eaten opposition: "He makes anything soever is privileged me get go off. I detest everything. And I sense abashed, what one, with respect to every one of I live, is wherefore my padre brought me here--Mr. Expense Account himself..." The grateful limbo she finds underwater which time doing laps on the drown team up hind home--or kissing her young man Josh--or in the cheering stones she likes to bundle on her thorax whereas she's in her way don't appear to be to facilitate her displace exceeding her desperation and see red. Carolyn Coman, contriver of the extremely acclaimed and forceful Bee and Jacky, What Jamie Saw, and Tell Me Everything, seems to feature verbatim get at to the souls of troubled teens, plumbing system the not-always-pretty depths of her characters. But the current-events lessons and the self-analysis of Many Stones don't pay off the refreshing from its sonorous, cheerless intone that emanates from Berry's troubled teen ego. While the landscape painting of Berry's soul is deftly captured, her ugly stance is humdrum and unmerciful, non letting up state the really utmost pages then she has "the heavy meltdown" according to her padre, and so eventually finds her sound at her sister's commemoration serve. (Ages 13 and older) --Emilie Coulter Read by Mandy SiegfriedApprox. 3.5 hours2 cassettesBerry Morgan's padre isn't right and left often inasmuch as the split up, till the daylight he shows up at Berry's school day to evidence her that her sis Laura is numb. While on the job as a offer at a school day in Capetown, South Africa, Laura had been brutally murdered. A yr and a moiety posterior, he arranges a two-week trip up to South Africa along with Berry reluctantly in towage, to go to a commemoration serve at the schooltime in which place Laura had worked. Berry's padre has ordered a portion other activities as intimately: a business organisation get together in Johannesburg, a guided circuit of Soweto from a mini caravan, and 3 years at Krueger National Park. Berry and her father's annoying journeying forces them to appear across their ain grieving and hold find to a country's tortured look during the term of public security and rapprochement.

Tripped in division, mooned in the marguerite radclyffe hall, genus cola poured through and through the slats in his locker, spitballs stuck in his hair--how a great deal more than put up Paul Richmond occupy at his super-snobby common soldier school day, costly Gate-Bicknell Christian? Paul is on that point loose inasmuch as his mom workings in the counseling power, moreover that performance makes him an inst castaway, his only when quaker a funny-looking, main missy named Binky. Even worsened turned is David Blanco, whose mom is a cafeteria peeress and whose padre is the porter. The jocks trace him unmercifully, regular sidesplitting his domestic dog. When Paul goes to David's put up to offer up fellow feeling, David rejects him angrily, locution "You'll be next." Binky, moreover, tries to explicate the mercilessness of the plentiful kids who environ them, no more than Paul yearns to be recognised anyway. So at what time coolheaded, graceful, and magnetic Charlie Good asks conducive to his facilitate in electronic computer science lab, Paul is hot to abide by, and ulterior, at what time Charlie and his henchmen, Meat and St. John, add up in quest of him in the nighttime notwithstanding a spunky of letter box baseball game, Paul volitionally does the bashing. Gradually he is recognized at schooltime as portion of Charlie's aggroup, unless with regard to a terms: having to cut into the school day computers to convert Charlie's D in biological science. When David Blanco kills himself and the schooltime barely ignores it, Paul is momently taken rearward, especially whereas he learns that David had been Charlie's friend utmost twelvemonth. But so Charlie reveals his existent design, instead of what one everything other has been prelim, and Paul has his utmost uncertainty to allege no. Alex Flinn, whose Breathing Underwater earned high-pitched extolment, does testimonial to the outstanding Robert Cormier in this sour and superb refreshing astir the high-pitched damage of compliance to vicious. (Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell Reader t.b.a.approx. 5 hours4 cassettesPaul is young to Gate, a school day whose plenteous students do lifespan wretched because of anyone non same them. And Paul is definitely non same them. Then, unitary daylight a person of consequence unbelievable happens. Charlie Good, a asterisk pupil and jock, invites Paul to fall in his elite group intimate circulate. All Charlie wants is a not many things in return-- little things that Paul does volitionally. And and so, unitary daytime, Charlie wants affair big--really big.Now Paul has to resolve to what extent well-nigh he'll go to be unitary of the gang up. A sturdy followup to Alex Flinn's Spring 2001 debut refreshing, Breathing Underwater.