In this poignant and timely memoir—written with the searing power of Beautiful Struggle and Born a Crime—Degrassi Junior High star Anais Granofsky contemplates the lingering impact of a childhood spent in two opposite and warring worlds. Though recognized around the world for her role as Lucy Hernandez on the hit show Degrassi, Anais Granofsky’s true childhood story is largely unknown. Growing up, Anais was caught between two vastly different worlds: her father, Stanley, came from a wealthy, prominent, white Jewish family in Toronto. Her mother, Jean, was one of 15 children from a poor Black Methodist family in Ohio directly descended from freed Randolph slaves. When Anais’s parents met at Antioch College in the early 1970s and soon had their first child, they didn’t anticipate being cut off by the wealthy Granofskys, or that Stanley would find his calling in the spiritual teaching of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, change his name to Fakeer, and leave his family for an ashram in India. Young Anais and her mother teetered on the abyss of poverty, sharing a mattress in a single room in social housing in Toronto, while her grandparents lived in a mansion that was 20 minutes away. As Anais grew up, she spent weekends with her wealthy Granofsky grandparents. On Saturdays and Sundays she would wear expensive clothes and eat lunch by the pool. In the weeks between, she and her mother lived day by day penniless, rarely knowing where their next meal would come from. From her earliest youth, Anais realized that if she wanted to be loved, she had to keep her two lives separate, learning to code switch between her Jewish identity on the weekend and her Black one during the week. Her life was compartmentalized, until at age 12, Anais was cast in the internationally successful television show Degrassi Junior High. The Girl in the Middle is a tale of two vastly different families and the granddaughter they shared and clashed over. Compassionate and vivid, Anais’s story is a powerful lens revealing two divided families and the systematic, generational oppression that separated them. As Anais shares her experiences growing up in opposing worlds, she offers a heart-wrenching exploration of generational trauma, love, shame, grief, and prejudice—and essential insight for healing and acceptance.

The new superstars in sports are women, and pro beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece is the hottest of them all. At six-foot-three, 170 pounds, Gabby Reece is at once beautiful and brutish, feminine and rowdy, accessible and intimidating--a woman who is exploding female stereotypes and redefining our image of the female athlete. "A young girl doesn't get many chances to exercise the character muscle via sports, whereas for young boys, it's part of their everyday lives. For girls, it's especially good for them to be forced to work as a team with other girls, to work together under every possible condition--winning, losing, tired, grumpy, happy. It forces them to deal with unpleasant, ungracious emotions and get over it. It forces girls to rely on each other. It gives them confidence in other girls, which ultimately gives them confidence in themselves." "Everything a woman does has an emotional component. Paying attention to my emotional side without surrendering to it is one of the toughest parts of playing professional sports." "I don't like this 'Fear of Being Big' thing because it feeds into the general female thing of wanting to be less--less powerful, less assertive, less demanding, less opinionated, less present, less big." From the Trade Paperback edition.

When a new class seating chart takes over Minnie's world, she could not of expected the trials and tribulations that comes along with it. Stuck in the middle between a "troublemaker" and a "bucket load of distractions," her once calm world turns upside down. Social situations become increasingly tricky and peer pressure presents itself in both subtle and overt ways. The desire to be popular and true to oneself is a test Minnie has to take. Along the way, Minnie embraces a revelation that explains what makes her different. The wisdom she gains in her last year of middle school will carry forward through the rest of her life.

JANIE WHO? It's hard enough being the new kid in school. It's even tougher when all of your new classmates live in big houses and wear expensive clothes, while your parents have little and are risking everything just to give you a chance at a better life. Now Janie's about to do something that will make her stand out even more among the rich kids at Satterthwaite School. Something that will have everyone wondering just who Janie Sams really is. And something that will mean totally unexpected changes for Janie and her family.

For every reader who grew up loving R.J. Palacio’s Wonder comes a hilarious, heartbreaking, and magical YA debut about what it means to accept the body you’re given. What if the empty space was what made you whole? Morgan Stone was born with a hole in her middle: a perfectly smooth, sealed, fist-sized chunk of nothing near her belly button. After seventeen years of hiding behind lumpy sweaters and a smart mouth, she decides to bare all. At first she feels liberated . . . until a few online photos snowball into a media frenzy. Now Morgan is desperate to return to her own strange version of normal—when only her doctors, her divorced parents, and her best friend, Caro, knew the truth. Then a new doctor appears with a boy who may be both Morgan’s cure and her destiny. But what happens when you meet the person who is—literally—your perfect match? Is being whole really all it’s cracked up to be?

Ghost story master Mary Downing Hahn unrolls the suspenseful, spine-chilling yarn of a girl imprisoned for more than a century, the terrifying events that put her there, and a friendship that crosses the boundary between past and present. A family moves into an old, abandoned house. Jules's parents love the house, but Jules is frightened and feels a sense of foreboding. When she sees a pale face in an upstairs window, though, she can't stop wondering about the eerie presence on the top floor—in a room with a locked door. Could it be someone who lived in the house a century earlier? Her fear replaced by fascination, Jules is determined to make contact with the mysterious figure and help unlock the door. Past and present intersect as she and her ghostly friend discover—and change—the fate of the family who lived in the house all those many years ago. A thrilling and unputdownable spinetingling ghost story from a bestselling master of the genre!

It's the annual statewide history test challenge, and Joyce Kilmer Middle School has never had a finalist-- until now! This year, there are two finalists, and they're both Jenny's friends. But one finalist isn't known for finishing at the top of the class, and The Pops figure someone must have cheated. The next day, the word is out all over the school! Could it be true? Is one of Jenny's friends a cheater?

When you move somewhere new, you get to be someone new. I was ready. Sixth-grader Kammie Summers’s plan to be one of the popular girls at school hasn’t gone the way she hoped. She’s fallen into a well during a (fake) initiation into the Girls’ club. Now she’s trapped in the dark, counting the hours, hoping to be rescued. (The Girls have gone for help, haven’t they?) As the hours go by, Kammie’s real-life trouble mixes with memories of the best and worst moments of her life so far, including the awful reasons her family moved to this new town in the first place. And as she begins to feel hungry and thirsty and dizzy, Kammie discovers she does have visitors, including a French-speaking coyote and goats that just might be zombies. But they can’t get her out of the well. (Those Girls are coming back, aren’t they?) “Moving, suspenseful, and impossible to put down.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Darkly humorous . . . Honest and forthcoming.” —The New York Times Book Review “I dare you to pick up this riveting novel without reading straight through to its heart-stopping conclusion.” —Katherine Applegate, Newbery Medal–winning author of The One and Only Ivan

A magical adventure for fans of Katherine Applegate and Jennifer Holm about a girl with a mysterious connection to the elephant who saved her life. An elephant never forgets, but Lexington Willow can't remember her past. Swept away by a tornado as a toddler, she was dropped in a nearby Nebraska zoo, where an elephant named Nyah protected her from the storm. With no trace of her family, Lex grew up at the zoo with her foster father, Roger; her best friend, Fisher; and the wind whispering in her ear. Years later, Nyah sends Lex a telepathic image of the woods outside the zoo. Soon, Lex is wrapped up in an adventure involving ghosts, lost treasure, and a puzzle that might be the key to finding her family. Can Lex summon the courage to discover who she really is--and why the tornado brought her here all those years ago?

The transition from elementary school to middle school skirts the borders of traumatic for many girls. Their bodies are changing, their moods are shifting, their friendships are tested, and boys can become a big distraction. Girls may begin to struggle with grades, behavior, and relationships with family and friends. How do they know what to do and what not to do in this new environment with new expectations? Erica and Jonathan Catherman offer girls ages ten to twelve the practical help they need to make the move to middle school as painless as possible. The "do this, not that" format covers a hundred relevant topics and situations middle school girls will face, including the first day, bullies, test taking, cell phone use, homework, gossip, leadership, respect, sports, PDA, and many more.