From the Edgar-nominated author Bruce Hale comes a hilarious story about a kid who likes to break the rules . . . until the rules try to break him.
SUPER TROOP
by Bruce Hale
Scholastic Press, April 2022
(via Writers House)
Cooper just wants to spend the summer before 7th grade drawing and having adventures with his best friend, Nacho. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that his dad’s new girlfriend and his mom’s announcement that she’s going to start dating. But when one of his adventures with Nacho goes too far, Cooper’s parents freak out. Either he joins the Boy Rangers, a dorky club that’s all about discipline and rules, or that dream cartooning camp at the end of his summer? Will get erased. At first it’s not so bad―the troop is a disorganized mess. But then a new scoutmaster starts. Mr. Pierce is a gruff ex-Marine who’s never worked with kids before, especially not a ragtag team of misfits like Troop 19. As he tries turning them into a lean, mean, badge-earning machine, Cooper longs for freedom. He doesn’t want to break the rules, but the rules are going to break him!
Bruce Hale is the Edgar-nominated author and/or illustrator of more than 40 seriously funny books for children, including Big Bad Detective Agency and the Chet Gecko, School for S.P.I.E.S., and Clark the Shark series. He lives in Southern California, where he is also an actor, Latin jazz musician, and award-winning storyteller.
Zia remembers the exact night the Shadoom arrived. One moment she was laughing with her best friends, and the next a dark room of shadows had crept into her chest. Zia has always loved words, but she can’t find a real one for the fear growing inside her. How can you defeat something if you don’t know its name? After Zia’s mom announces that her grouchy Greek yiayia is moving into their tiny apartment, the Shadoom seems here to stay. Until Zia discovers an old family heirloom: The C. Scuro Dictionary, 13th Edition. This is no ordinary dictionary. Hidden within its magical pages is a mysterious blue eraser shaped like an evil eye. When Zia starts to erase words that remind her of the Shadoom, they disappear one by one from the world around her. She finally has the confidence to befriend Alice, the new girl in sixth grade, and to perform at the Story Jamboree. But things quickly dissolve into chaos, as the words she erases turn out to be more vital than Zia knew.
DIANAWORLD is a fascinating, multi-faceted portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales—the person, the cultural figure, and the enduring mythology of the “People’s Princess”—exploring her relationships with those who knew her intimately, those who worked with and for her, and the many ordinary people from Britain, America, and elsewhere who felt connected to her. In some chapters, White will pay particular attention to Diana’s relationship with one person; in others, there will be a wider cast of characters. But in each case these relationships will connect to a theme highly germane to her private life, and her public reputation, providing an opportunity to question unexamined assumptions, as well as branching out into areas unexplored by straightforward biographies of Diana. This is a book about what Diana means to “us.”
Taking over the world is a lot of work. Any supervillain is bound to have questions: What’s the perfect location for a floating secret base? What zany heist will fund my immoral plans? How do I control the weather, destroy the internet, and never, ever die? In How to Take Over the World, bestselling author and award-winning comics writer Ryan North details a number of outlandish villainous schemes, drawing on known science and real-world technologies. Picking up where How to Invent Everything left off, his explanations are as fun and informative as they are completely absurd. As he instructs readers on how to take over the world, North also reveals how we can save it. This sly guide to some of the greatest challenges and existential threats facing humanity accessibly explores ways to mitigate climate change, improve human life spans, prevent cyberterrorism, and finally make Jurassic Park a reality.
After living through the massive global shock and trauma of Covid-19, one of the most disruptive events in human history, we need to find a way to face the future with optimism. But how can we plan for a better future when it feels impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year or in the next decade? What we need are new tools to help us recover our confidence, creativity, and hope in the face of an uncertain future. In Imaginable, world-renowned future forecaster and game designer Jane McGonigal draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our brains to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. Using gaming strategies and fun, thought-provoking challenges that she designed specifically for this book, she helps us build our collective imagination to dive into the future before we live it and envision, in surprising detail, what our lives will look like ten years out.