chapter books, ages 7-10

BIGFOOT AND THE GOLD STAR KID

by Shelley Anne Richter

34 pages

Winner of the 2022 OWFI award for Best Published Juvenile Book

Heistin isn’t usually afraid of coming home to an empty house, even though he and his mom live next to a swamp. After all, he is twelve years old. But one evening, while waiting for his mom to get home from work, Heistin hears a noise outside. Someone is rattling the doorknob! When his neighbor comes over to check it out, he tells Heistin about a creature called Bigfoot and how the man-ape saved a soldier from a bear trap.

Could someone be playing a prank on him?

Or is it really Bigfoot?

$14.99, hard cover

$9.99, soft cover

KEEPERS OF THE SECRET CODE

by KJ Williams and Teresa R. Kemp

116 pages

Peter Farrow is a slave on Dover Plantation, South Carolina. He does small jobs and helps around the big house and the dairy. When he’s not working, Peter likes to play with the other enslaved children, or go fishing with the master’s daughter, Emily. His mother decides it’s time for Peter to learn his family’s secret: sewing patterns into quilts to warn, or give directions to, runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.

But at almost twelve years old, it’s time Peter learns a trade. The master has agreed for Peter to apprentice with Samuel, the plantation’s carpenter. John, the cruel overseer, has other plans. He wants Peter out in the fields, close enough to feel his whip and doing the backbreaking work of a grownup slave. So, when Peter comes between Samuel and the overseer’s whip, he makes a terrible enemy. He must now run away or be sold down south.

Based on a true story.

$16.99, hard cover

$10.99, soft cover

CAMP NOT ALLOWED

by KJ Williams, illustrated by Dorothy Shaw

48 pages

Bored with their usual summer games, Kat and Tanya want to play with the neighborhood boys. The boys a real teepee in their backyard! But they refuse, saying it’s for Native American boys only. The girls resort to desperate measures and blackmail the boys into including them. But “Chief” Randy isn’t ready to surrender. He creates three initiation tests for the sisters to pass.

Can the girls pull a few tricks from their sleeve and become tribe members in this boy versus girl war of the summer?

$14.00, hard cover

$8.99, soft cover

STONE GIRL

by Susan York Meyers

96 pages

At almost fourteen, Myra shops in the fat girl department. No one, least of all her mother, let’s her forget it. Except for Myra’s almost-imaginary friend, a statue of a girl out in the woods.

So when Myra finally finds a friend who wants to spend time with her, and doesn’t mind being seen with her, she wonders if it’s for real. Or will her new friend be like all the other kids, and make fun of her for being fat?

And who is answering the notes Myra leaves at the statue? Is the writer a friend or a foe?

She may have to choose between a longed-for friendship and doing the right thing.

$14.99, hard cover

$9.99, soft cover