TEEN EVENTS & PROGRAMS

My name is Amy Gumm--and I'm the other girl from Kansas. I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. I've been trained to fight. And I have a mission: Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. And--Dorothy must die. I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero. But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado--taking you with it--you have no choice but to go along, you know Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still a road of yellow brick--but even that's crumbling. What happened Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

October 11th, 1943--A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun. When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution. As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Something is wrong at Ellingham Academy: Its murderous past won't stay in the past. Ellingham Academy is the famous private school in Vermont where the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists who will change the world are admitted for two years before college. Shortly after the school was founded in the early twentieth century by millionaire philanthropist Edward J. Ellingham, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. Ransom notes were signed with the closing "Truly Devious," but no matter how much money Ellingham paid, the victims were never returned and the identity of Truly Devious remained a mystery. Stevie Bell's passion is true crime. When Stevie begins her first year at Ellingham Academy, she sets out to solve the Ellingham murder mystery, even though it's a cold case that's eighty years old. Then her fellow classmate and internet star, Mayes Major, turns up dead--and Stevie has a brand new crime to solve. Could Truly Devious be at work again?

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.