middle grade Archives - Page 330 of 363

A Long Pitch Home
by Natalie Dias Lorenzi (Author)

Booktalk: Ten-year-old Bilal liked his life back home in Pakistan. He was a star on his cricket team. But when his father suddenly sends the family to live with their aunt and uncle in America, nothing is familiar. While Bilal tries to keep up with his cousin Jalaal by joining a baseball league and practicing his English, he wonders when his father will join the family in Virginia. Maybe if Bilal can prove himself on the pitcher’s mound, his father will make it to see him play. But playing baseball means navigating relationships with the guys, and with Jordan, the only girl on the team-—the player no one but Bilal wants to be friends with.

Snippet: Akash punches his glove, waiting for me to throw the ball. I know now that I am supposed to pitch the ball, not bowl it as I did in cricket. Eyeing Akash’s glove, I pull back my arm and take a step as I let the ball fly. Akash barely has to move, becuse the ball finds it way right where I told it to go–into the soft leather center of his glove.

Akash stands up straight and pushes his hat back. “Man! Nice one, Bilal.”

Natalie is one of my former students!

The Inside Job: (And Other Skills I Learned as a Superspy)
by Jackson Pearce (Author)

Booktalk: Hale, who turned double-agent against the corrupt spy organization he was raised in, knows his super-spy parents can’t come home until the Sub Rosa Society is neutralized–and that he and his friends are all that’s standing between SRS and their worldwide crimes. So Hale wants to hit the bad guys where it hurts: their bank account.

Hale and his allies all travel to Switzerland and discover that this won’t be a smash-and-grab job like they expected. SRS doesn’t have any actual money that can be taken–it’s all hidden in secret digital accounts. Oh, and some super heavy gold bars. To take them down, Hale’s crew will have to undo SRS’s crimes and get to the inside man at the bank, all while artfully evading SRS’s notice.

Snippet: “That doesn’t make any sense,” Otter said. “Antonio Halfred, that’s the name–did you type it in right?”

“I did,” Beatrix answered testily. “I’m telling you, if this is SRS’s account, they’ve moved the money recently. They’re moving it a lot.

“Well, sure, moving it makes sense–it’d keep people like us from being able to find it. But that couldn’t have been all of SRS’s money. Even if that account had a hundred thousand dollars in it at one point, SRS has millions. Where is that money?” Walter asked.

We went quiet again.

And then I realized. I exhaled. “It’s . . . everywhere.”