The Scorpions are a gun-toting Harlem gang, and Jamal Hicks is about to become tragically involved with them in this authentic tale of the sacrifice of innocence and the struggle to steer clear of violence. This Newbery Honor Book will challenge young men to consider their own decisions as they come of age in a complex and often frustrating society. Pushed by a bully to fight and nagged by his principal, Jamal is having a difficult time staying in school. His home life is not much better, with his mother working her fingers to the bone to try to earn the money for an appeal for Jamal's jailed older brother, Randy. Jamal wants to do the right thing and help earn the money to free his brother by working, but he's afraid to go against the Scorpions. Jamal eventually pulls free of the gang's bad influence, but only through the narrowest of escapes. Walter Dean Myers, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, sensitively explores the loyalty and love between friends faced with hard choices. Scorpions is 25 years old, but the issues of poverty and violence make it a timeless powerful read—sadly as relevant as ever.

Sometime after dark on March 27, 2010, Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was found dead next to his four-wheeler on the grounds of his ranch on the Arizona-Mexico border. Krentz and his dog, Blue, had been missing since that morning. They were last heard from when he radioed his brother to say that he’d found an illegal alien on the property and was going to offer him assistance. The man Krentz encountered that day shot and killed him and his dog, without warning, before escaping to Mexico. It’s difficult to overstate the impact of Krentz’s death, which turned the issue of Arizona’s unsecured border—a crisis that the federal government had repeatedly ignored—into a national concern. As Arizona sheriff Larry Dever said in his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, “We cannot sit by while our citizens are terrorized, robbed, and murdered by ruthless and desperate people who enter our country illegally.” This momentum helped pass SB 1070, a bill that authorizes local law enforcement under certain conditions to question persons reasonably suspected of being illegal aliens, which Governor Jan Brewer and the state legislature had been working on for months. With the passage of this controversial bill, the state of Arizona became ground zero in the impassioned debate over illegal immigration. The Democrats and the media went into overdrive, denouncing the state and its governor as racists and Nazis. Governor Brewer, a lifelong Arizona resident with deep ties to the community, was first elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 1982, and hasn’t lost an election since. As a state official, she watched with increasing dismay as illegal immigration exploded across Arizona’s border, and noticed the devastating effect it was having on the state. Causing an escalation in violence, an influx of drugs, and prisons and hospitals to fill to overflowing, this problem was not only wreaking havoc on the moral fabric of the community but placing an even greater strain on Arizona’s beleaguered health, educational, and social welfare networks. Growing frustrated with the failure of the federal government to respond to her pleas for assistance, Governor Brewer led the state to action. Scorpions for Breakfast is Brewer’s commonsense account of her fight to secure our nation’s border in the face of persistent federal inaction. Her book is vital reading for all Americans interested in the real change that can happen when local leaders take the initiative to preserve our country and our laws.

A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone before had dreamed. Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius. They began as close allies and friends of FDR, but the quest to shape a new Constitution led them to competition and sometimes outright warfare. Scorpians tells the story of these four great justices: their relationship with Roosevelt, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It also serves as a history of the modern Constitution itself.

Newberry Honour Award Winner & National Book Award Winner. Matt is six years old when he discovers that he is different from other children and other people. To most, Matt isn't considered a boy at all, but a beast, dirty and disgusting. But to El Patron, lord of a country called Opium, Matt is the guarantee of eternal life. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself - for Matt is himself. They share the exact same DNA. As Matt struggles to understand his existence and what that existence truly means, he is threatened by a host of sinister and manipulating characters, from El Patron's power-hungry family to the brain-deadened eejits and mindless slaves that toil Opium's poppy fields. Surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards, escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But even escape is no guarantee of freedom . . . because Matt is marked by his difference in ways that he doesn't even suspect. Praise for The House of Scorpions: 'It's a pleasure to read science fiction that's full of warm, strong characters... that doesn't rely on violence as the solution to complex problems of right and wrong. It's a pleasure to read.' Ursula K. LeGuin 'Fabulous' Diana Wynne Jones Also by Nancy Farmer: The Sea of Trolls Land of the Silver Apples The Islands of the Blessed The Lord of Opium

We have been taught to fear scorpions in any form. But scorpions usually sting either to subdue their prey or to protect themselves. In fact, Earth has two thousand scorpion species, but only a few dozen are deadly to humans. With vivid descriptions of scorpions' life cycle, body structure, habits, and habitat and beautiful, realistic illustrations, this new entry in the popular Strange and Wonderful series explores one of nature's feared and misunderstood creatures.

Explores the Civil War and the anti-slavery movement, specifically highlighting the plan to help abolish slavery by surrounding the slave states with territories of freedom and discusses the possibility of what could have been a more peaceful alternative to the war.