Samantha Slayton's eleventh year includes losing her last baby teeth, towering over every boy in dance school, and being mortified by everything her mother does.

In an effort to get his mother to stop writing about him in her books, fifth-grader Harvey and his best friend decide to try to make a romantic connection between her and their school principal.

Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but the alien known as teenager comes from a place way beyond those two. What else would account for that incredible transformation from loving child to the hostile creature who wants zilch to do with dear old Mom and Dad? How to Ruin Your Children's Lives is a survival manual for enduring this transmutation and-with a little luck-maintaining enough sanity to one day hear those longed-for words, Hey, I guess you weren't so stupid after all.Purple hair? Belly rings? Bizarre musical tastes? Not a problem as long as readers have How to Ruin Your Children's Lives' nearly 300 tips and tactics close at hand. With resident teenagers slamming doors and screaming at the top of their lungs, Mom! You're ruining my life! parents should at least make certain they're handling the job with aplomb.Consider these tips: o Call them at their friend's house to ask if they want lasagna for dinner.o Ask them about girlfriends (or boyfriends) in front of relatives.o Tell them about the time you streaked when you were in college.o Sing old Beatles songs when their friends are in the car.o Dress like Christina Aguilera.Author Mary McHugh is right on target. She shows parents how to match attitude with attitude and how to carry on whether the teen-parent subject is sex, using the family car, grades, or curfews. This book's perfect for any parent in the trenches and for empty nesters trying to stem their tears.

As if seventh grade isn't hard enough, Truth Trendon learns she has to wear a back brace to help her worsening scoliosis. She decides gravity is to blame for curving her spine and ruining her life. Thanks for nothing, Isaac Newton! Truth's brace is hard plastic, tight, and uncomfortable. She has to wear a t-shirt under it and bulky clothes over it, making her feel both sweaty and unfashionable. She's terrified that her classmates are going to find out about it. But it's hard keeping it a secret (especially when gym class is involved), and secrets quickly turn into lies. When Truth's crush entrusts her with a big secret of his own, it leads to even more lying. Add to that a fight with her best friend, a looming school-wide presentation, and mean rumors, and it's a recipe for disaster. As Truth navigates the ups and downs of middle school, can she learn to accept her true self, curvy spine and all?

Here are more great topics and sample book club sessions to help you start a book club and keep it going! Chapters in this volume cover humor, families, social issues, folklore and mythology, sports, magazines, picture books as art, censorship, the Internet, middle school readers, gender bias, booktalks, and the arts. For each genre, the authors offer a general overview, discussion questions, a bibliography, resources for further reading, and appropriate Web sites. If you want to promote literacy and involve parents in the reading program, you'll love this book and its companion, The Reading Connection.

What do you do with students who cannot or will not read and write? This portrait of Kyle Gonzalez's classroom offers teachers theory-based strategies for helping students become motivated and successful readers and writers. You will see how one middle school teacher sets up her literacy classroom, offers intervention and support for struggling students, and assesses their progress. Rich in description of Kyle's successes, the book also looks honestly at why some practices were ineffective in her setting. With Janet's and Kyle's practical and detailed suggestions for creating a literate environment, you'll learn how to:establish a literacy workshop;choose and use effective resources;implement effective, informative record-keeping;help students establish goals and assess progress;use read-alouds as well as shared, guided, and independent reading and writing;instill reading and writing practices that help students read content-specific texts. There's Room for Me Here includes record-keeping forms, extensive bibliographies of literature and professional materials, resource information, and samples of strategy lessons all embedded in this engaging story of a teacher's first three years building a literacy workshop in her classroom. Kyle's students are middle school learners who struggle with literacy. The strategies, content-area connections, and management ideas, however, are applicable and appropriate for use by any 3-12 teacher.