Mary Amato

A "sweet story of two different loners finding their counterpoint" (School Library Journal) from a star of state master and children's choice lists making her YA debut. Clean YA with the emotional resonancy of John Green and Sarah Dessen.On odd days, Tripp Broody uses a school practice room to let loose on a borrowed guitar. Eyes closed, strumming that beat-up instrument, Tripp escapes to a world where only the music matters.On even days, Lyla Marks...

Life is miserable for sixth grader Lerner Chanse at her new school. It looks like Lerner is sedtined to be a SLUG (Sorry Losers Under Ground) until she finds a magical worm that eats printed words instead of dirt. If Fip eats a word, that item simply disappears fromt he world - forever. Now that Lerner knows about Fip's magic, she has some big decisions to make. Should she eliminate crime? Or will destorying anything cause effects that she can't imagine...

Sixteen-year-old Lacy Brink, surprised to find herself dead and buried at Baltimore's Westminster Cemetery, recruits fellow poets Sam and Edgar Allan Poe in resisting tyrannical Mrs. Steele's rules by having an open mic night.

When her father begins a long-distance romance with a Washington, D.C. zookeeper, twelve-year-old Frankie sends fabricated email letters to the zookeeper in an attempt to end the relationship.

When Ms. Wurtz leaves a blank book in the Writer's Corner with a note encouraging those who find it to "talk to each other" in its pages, the student's entries spark a classroom-wide battle.

"Albert, a 7th grader, is abducted by aliens who recruit him to play Star Striker for their interplanetary soccer team, but it isn't until after he agrees that he discovers that someone or something is trying to kill him"--

"A talent contest brings out the worst in Lucy McGee and her fourth-grade classmates"--