Bao and Linh have been at war for years. Well, they haven’t been at war, but their parents certainly have.
See, each family has a Pho restaurant and they happen to be across the street from each other! Talk about crazy competition! Bao and Linh years before had one day where they were having fun together at the Buddhist temple years ago, but their parents quickly put a stop to any friendship that they might have begun. So when Bao is closing up his parents’ place late one night, and sees Linh slip out of her parents’ place and appear to be hiding in the alley, he has no real reason to go across the street. Yet he does. Because he knows what it is like to have Vietnamese immigrant parents who only want the best for you, but still put a ton of pressure on you.
That one act of crossing the street and actually talking to Linh for the first time in years changes things! Bao and Linh end up working together on a project for the school newspaper, and Bao begins to wonder if he has found something he is good at, while Linh tries to figure out how to tell her parents just how much her art really means to her. As Bao and Linh get closer together though, they realize that their parents might have more against each other than just running competing restaurants. The question is what?
A Pho Love Story by Loan Le is a fun love story about people getting to know each other, learning family secrets and how to deal with expectations – your family’s and your own.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Maya is looking forward to college as a place to dream big and follow her dreams – as in becoming a film maker. Ever since her father put a camcorder in her hands, she has been hooked. But the problem is, her parents see it as only as a hobby, not a career. With the school year winding down, and her parents clueless as to the fact that she wants to go to New York to study film, not stay in the Chicago area and be close to them, she has her work cut out for her.
#famous by Jilly Gagnon is great if you love stories about social media and the drama of having a crush, you have to read this book! It does have some mature content because the characters are in high school.
maybe something small. If you had a chance to redo it, would you? And just how many times would you want to redo it, if the same result kept happening? How much would you change what you did or didn’t do each time?
Maya and Nicki are named after two of their mother’s favorite poets. And their father is a community activist, always helping somewhere and someone, many of them Maya and Nicki’s friends. Maya has always loved her neighborhood, but over the last four or so years, there have been changes. Many that Nicki seems to embrace, but ones that have Maya concerned. After all, how does one feel when the white people who once fled an area, now decide it is okay to start putting up speciality shops and landlords who decide they don’t want to rent anymore, but would rather sell a home that Maya’s best friend Essence has lived in her whole life – just across the street?
living and while her grandmother isn’t exactly warm and welcoming, she does get her a job for the summer working at a local deli not far from her grandmother’s apartment in New York City. New York is a far cry from her old home in Maine. Still the busy life at the deli helps to make Mia forget, at least temporarily, about the awfulness of her life. And on her first day there, she meets Fig. Fig with the electric blue hair and the family at the deli who is big and boisterous and so full of life that it is hard for Mia to be numb around them. Fig in turn introduces her to a group of friends, one of whom is Cooper, a boy that Mia quickly becomes fascinated with.
there. And it seems she is to be made a meal of by the end of the day for a Dragon no less. However, when the Dragon does come, he isn’t quite what Alys thought he would be.
All she’s known her whole life is Hockey! And yes, it has a capital letter in Holland’s house. Because not only does she play hockey, but her two older brothers and her little brother do as well. Their dad was a big hockey player in his younger years and both he and their mom are super supportive. Especially of the fact that Holland is a girl, playing on the boys varsity team in high school. For Holland it isn’t anything new. She’s always played with the boys, from the time she was little. But while it isn’t really strange for a girl to play on the boys team, it is a little strange because there is a girls team at her high school. Still, Holland has been able to deal with the undercurrent that comes through sometimes from some of the old timers who complain she’s taking a spot away from some boy that could be playing.
He was annoyed and mad, and a bit pissed off. He had only been trying to help when he heard Shannon screaming off on the side of the school parking lot back where the bushes were. Turns out, she and a bunch of other kids had taken the principal’s car and moved it off the parking lot and onto the grass near the bushes. But they’d dropped it right down on Shannon’s foot – hence the screaming. When Elliot arrived to help lift the car off of Shannon’s foot, that is when the principal showed up too. And said that Elliot was just as responsible as Shannon and all the other kids that she wouldn’t name.
Have you ever heard of the expression, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished? Well, Justyce is thinking something along those lines while he sits on the ground in handcuffs after trying to prevent his ex- girlfriend from driving home drunk. Even when parents get involved, the police STILL don’t want to let him go. Finally, one of his friend’s mom’s who is a lawyer comes down and is able to get him out of it. All Justyce keeps thinking is what could have happened. What if the officer had gotten a little trigger happy with his gun and killed him? What then?
Books in the Middle: Reading for Middle School 