Sit, stay, die. Dogs aren't always man's best friend. When Amy sees a dog stranded on the side of the highway, she knows what she has to do. She tells her dad to stop the car. She can't understand why anyone would abandon a dog in such a way, tied up and blindfolded. Amy's parents say they'll only keep the dog until they can find it a permanent home. Amy's younger sister names the dog Rover.They take Rover into their house, their family. And once he's there . . . he doesn't want to leave.Amy loves dogs. But she starts to worry when strange things start happening in the house.Objects move. Lights go off. Accidents happen.Soon man's best friend has turned into Amy's worst nightmare.The problem isn't Rover's bark or his bite - it's even creepier than that. This dog's purpose is evil . . . and if's waiting to be unleashed.

Red Rover is a gorgeously illustrated tale that explores the vast, inhospitable landscape of Mars and the adventures of the little rover that calls the planet its home. Mars has a visitor. It likes to roam... observe... measure... and collect. It explores the red landscape— crossing plains, climbing hills, and tracing the bottoms of craters—in search of water and life. It is not the first to visit Mars. It will not be the last. But it might be... the most curious. Join Curiosity on its journey across the red planet in this innovative and dynamic nonfiction picture book by Richard Ho, illustrated by Sibert Honor winner Katherine Roy. This title has Common Core connections.

For centuries humankind has fantasized about life on Mars, whether it’s intelligent Martian life invading our planet (immortalized in H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds) or humanity colonizing Mars (the late Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles). The Red Planet’s proximity and likeness to Earth make it a magnet for our collective imagination. Yet the question of whether life exists on Mars—or has ever existed there—remains an open one. Science has not caught up to science fiction—at least not yet. This summer we will be one step closer to finding the answer. On August 5th, Curiosity—a one-ton, Mini Cooper-sized nuclear-powered rover—is scheduled to land on Mars, with the primary mission of determining whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In Getting to Mars, Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the ChemCam instrument on the rover—the main tool for measuring Mars’s past habitability—will tell the unlikely story of the development of this payload and rover now blasting towards a planet 354 million miles from Earth. ChemCam (short for Chemistry and Camera) is an instrument onboard the Curiosity designed to vaporize and measure the chemical makeup of Martian rocks. Different elements give off uniquely colored light when zapped with a laser; the light is then read by the instrument’s spectrometer and identified. The idea is to use ChemCam to detect life-supporting elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to evaluate whether conditions on Mars have ever been favorable for microbial life. This is not only an inside story about sending fantastic lasers to Mars, however. It’s the story of a new era in space exploration. Starting with NASA’s introduction of the Discovery Program in 1992, smaller, scrappier, more nimble missions won out as behemoth manned projects went extinct. This strategic shift presented huge opportunities—but also presented huge risks for shutdown and failure. And as Wiens recounts, his project came close to being closed down on numerous occasions. Getting to Mars is the inspiring account of how Wiens and his team overcame incredible challenges—logistical, financial, and political—to successfully launch a rover in an effort to answer the eternal question: is there life on Mars?

Bob Hicok’s Red Rover Red Rover is joyous and macabre, hopeful and morbid, caring and critical. These poems are apocalyptic in tone but tender in their depiction of dying animals, disappearing water, raging fires, and the humans to blame. He calls attention to the dire costs of modern conveniences and begs for our willingness to change. No subject is too high or low for his wide-sweeping gaze, a comfort with extremes that gives his work the quality of an embrace. Threads of humor, romance, and kindness suggest America’s capacity to transcend the disastrous present: “heaven’s everywhere / someone needs a place to rest // and someone else says, / Come in.” Hicok presents a high-stakes game of survival and connection.

An unlikely band of canines sets out to survive in a world gone horribly mad. When a worldwide plague wipes out humanity, what happens to man's best friend? Charlie was a helper dog and he was good at it. Now he and his friends Rover and Red must escape the bloody city and find their way in this strange, master-less new world.