Reading@ICS: Golden Cowbell Award 2020-21

It's the night of the annual Autumn Equinox Festival, when the town gathers to float paper lanterns down the river. Legend has it that after drifting out of sight, they'll soar off to the Milky Way and turn into brilliant stars. This year, Ben and his classmates are determined to find out where those lanterns really go, and they made a pact with two simple rules: No one turns for home. No one looks back.The plan is to follow the river on their bikes for as long as it takes to learn the truth, but it isn't long before the pact is broken by all except for Ben and (much to Ben's disappointment) Nathaniel, the one kid who just doesn't seem to fit in. Together, Nathaniel and Ben will travel down a winding road full of magic, wonder, and unexpected friendship.**And a talking bear.

It's 1945, and the world is in the grip of war.

Hideki lives on the island of Okinawa, near Japan. When WWII crashes onto his shores, Hideki is drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps to fight for the Japanese army. He is handed a grenade and a set of instructions: "Don't come back until you've killed an American soldier."

Ray, a young American Marine, has just landed on Okinawa. He doesn't know what to expect -- or if he'll make it out alive. He just knows that the enemy is everywhere.

Hideki and Ray each fight their way across the island, surviving heart-pounding ambushes and dangerous traps. But when the two of them collide in the middle of the battle, the choices they make in that instant will change everything.

Charlie Thorne is a genius. Charlie Thorne is a thief. Charlie Thorne isn't old enough to drive. And now it's up to her to save the world...

Decades ago, Albert Einstein devised an equation that could benefit all life on earth--or destroy it. Fearing what would happen if the equation fell into the wrong hands, he hid it. But now, a diabolical group known as the Furies are closing in on its location. In desperation, a team of CIA agents drags Charlie into the hunt, needing her brilliance to find it first--even though this means placing her life in grave danger. In a breakneck adventure that spans the globe, Charlie must crack a complex code created by Einstein himself, struggle to survive in a world where no one can be trusted, and fight to keep the last equation safe once and for all.

Prairie Lotus is a powerful, touching, multilayered book about a girl determined to fit in and realize her dreams: getting an education, becoming a dressmaker in her father's shop, and making at least one friend.

In a small town in America's heartland in 1880 Hanna is adjusting to her new surroundings, which mostly means negotiating the townspeople's prejudice against Asians.

This is Grandmère's (Julian from from Wonder's Grandmother) story. As a young Jewish girl she was hidden by a family in a Nazi-occupied French village during World War II.

The boy she and her classmates once shunned became her savior and best friend. Sara's experience demonstrates the power of kindness to change hearts, build bridges, and even save lives.

Five years.That's how long twelve-year-old Coyote and her dad, River, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation.It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters.Coyote hasn't been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished--the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box--she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state . . . without him realizing it. On the way they pick up an interesting group of passengers!

Available in paperback, as well as ebook and audiobook on SORA

Fourteen-year-old Ahmed is stuck in a city that wants nothing to do with him. Newly arrived in Brussels, Belgium, Ahmed fled a life of uncertainty and suffering in Syria, only to lose his father on the perilous journey to the shores of Europe. Now Ahmed's struggling to get by on his own, but with no one left to trust and nowhere to go, he's starting to lose hope. Then he meets Max, a thirteen-year-old American boy. Lonely and homesick, Max is struggling at his new school and just can't seem to do anything right. But with one startling discovery,

Max and Ahmed's lives collide and a friendship begins to grow. Together, Max and Ahmed' will defy the odds, learning from each other what it means to be brave and how hope can change your destiny.

More information to be added soon!

Rory Thorne is a princess with thirteen fairy blessings, the most important of which is to see through flattery and platitudes.

As the eldest daughter, she always imagined she'd inherit her father's throne and govern the interplanetary Thorne Consortium. Then Rory is betrothed to the prince of a distant world. and when she arrives in her new home, she uncovers a treacherous plot to unseat her newly betrothed and usurp his throne.

The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the academy would touch ...
A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates A smart-ass tech whiz with the galaxy's biggest chip on his shoulder An alien warrior with anger-management issues A tomboy pilot who's totally not into him, in case you were wondering And Ty's squad isn't even his biggest problem--that'd be Aurora Jie-Lin O'Malley, the girl he's just rescued from interdimensional space.

An ingenious, dystopian novel of one young woman's resistance against the constraints of an oppressive society, from the inventive imagination of Joyce Carol Oates "Time travel" -- and its hazards--are made literal in this astonishing new novel in which a recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America -- "Wainscotia, Wisconsin"--that existed eighty years before.

Meet Rico: high school senior and afternoon-shift cashier at the Gas 'n' Go, who after school and work races home to take care of her younger brother. Every. Single. Day. When Rico sells a jackpot-winning lotto ticket, she thinks maybe her luck will finally change, but only if she--with some assistance from her popular and wildly rich classmate Zan--can find the ticket holder who hasn't claimed the prize.

an epic LGBTQ romantic fantasy about learning to free ourselves from the lies others tell us--and the lies we tell ourselves. Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules, and society's pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and punishing. People of her low status are forbidden from sampling sweets or wearing colors. You either follow the rules, or pay a tithe and suffer the consequences. Nirrim keeps her head down, and a dangerous secret close to her chest. But then she encounters Sid, a rakish traveler from far away, who whispers rumors that the High Kith possess magic. Sid tempts Nirrim to seek that magic for herself. But to do that, Nirrim must surrender her old life. She must place her trust in this sly stranger who asks, above all, not to be trusted.