Iguana Manana, by Ann Whitford and Ethan Long.
This year's PTO Community Read - support community literacy and read this book to a younger member of your family.  This lively tale starring an industrious iguana and her fun-loving but lazy friends does the Little Red Hen with a Latin beat and a positive spin.

Life Is So Good, by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman
One Book, One Region Selection for 2008.  Dawson, a black manual laborer who learned to read at age 98, has written a memoir that stands apart from other end-of-the-century texts and from the history generally recorded in textbooks - but is essential to an accurate understanding of this century.  The product of collaboration between Dawson and high school history teacher Glaubman, the book juxtaposes significant events of the century with Dawson's personal experiences.

The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean
Fourteen-year-old Symone's exciting vacation to Antarctica turns into a desperate struggle for survival when her uncle's obsessive quest leads them across the frozen wilderness into danger.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love.  What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbina, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength.  Also available in Spanish.  (F GARCIA MARQUEZ)

November Blues, by Sharon Draper
When November Nelson loses her boyfriend, Josh, to a pledge stunt gone horribly wrong, she thinks her life can't possibly get any worse.  But Josh left something behind that will change November's life forever, and now she's faced with the biggest decision she could ever imagine.  How in the world will she tell her mom and how will Josh's parents take the news?  She'd never needed a friend more.  (Y/DRA)

Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult
Picoult's story tackles a triple-whammy of hot-button issues - the death penalty, bioethics, and religious freedom.  Shay, a condemned inmate, wishes to donate his heart to the sister of his murder victim after he is executed.  A mesmerizing page-turner, Change of Heart examines the topic of religious dogma against the plight of a child's struggle with life and death.  (F PICOULT)

Knife Edge, by Malorie Blackman
In this sequel to Naughts and Crosses, Persephone Hadley, now an 18-year-old single parent, is raising her biracial daughter in a sharply divided alternate England, where black Crosses suppress the white Naughts.  She faces pressure from both her less-than-understanding Cross family and her disintegrating Naught family, and everyone inbetween.  When her brother-in-law's violet behavior leads to murder, Sephy provides a false alibi to save Jude, but doing so irreparably damages other lives.  (Y/BLA)

Imani All Mine, by Connie Rose Porter
Imani's name means "faith," and her mother, Tasha, is a 15-year-old African-American high school honors student.  Tasha's mother is emotionally distant and the teen resolutely turns away from the attempts of other well-meaning adults to help her.

Under the Same Sky, by Cynthia DeFelice
Joe Pedersen, 14, begrudgingly joins the migrant workers on his father's upstate New York farm to earn the $1,000 he needs to buy a Thunderbird motorbike.  When immigration officials suddenly arrive at the farm, Joe discovers the fragile status of three workers who carry false papers in a desperate attempt to support their families back in Mexico.  (Y/DEF)

One Whole and Perfect Day, by Judith Clarke
Lily feels both love for and embarrassment about her eccentric family: a grandmother with an imaginary friend, an axe-brandishing grandfather, a mother who brings home patients from the elder-care facility where she works, and an estranged older brother, Lonnie, who still can't seem to get his life together.  (Y/CLA)

River Secrets, by Shannon Hale
Enna and Isi's friend Razo is small and bullied; he has always considered himself pretty useless, so he is thrilled to be chosen as one of a hundred Bayern soldiers accompanying an ambassador on a peacekeeping mission to the Tiran capital.  (Y/HAL)

Secrets in the Shadows (Bluford series), by Anne Schraff and Paul Langan
Roylin Bailey is living a nightmare - and it's his fault.  It started when the new student, Korie Archer, arrived in his history class.

How to Ruin My Teenage Life, by Simone Elkeles
In this sequel to How to Ruin a Summer Vacation, everything in sixteen-year-old Amy Nelson Barak's life is going wrong!  Her mom got married and moved to the suburbs, and now they are going to have a baby.  Amy moves in with her dad in Chicago and signs him up for an online dating service.

Game, by Walter Dean Myers
Drew Lawson knows basketball is taking him places.  It has to, because his grades certainly aren't.  But lately his plan has run squarely into a pick.  Coach's new offense has made another player a star, and Drew won't let anyone disrespect his game.  Just as his team makes the playoffs, Drew must come up with something big to save his fading college prospects.  It's all up to Drew to find out just how deep his game really is.

Re-Gifters, by Mike Carey
Korean American teenager Dixie and her best friend, Avril, practice Hapkido, a martial art.  There is a big Hapkido tournament coming up in their South Central Los Angeles neighborhood, but Dixie, who has a fiery disposition, loses her focus when she develops a crush on another teen Hapkido artist, Adam.  (COMIC/CAR)