Shortlisted for the Edgar Award for Best Mystery “Mystery lovers will be satisfied by the plot and adults will love the curriculum and social awareness tie-ins.” —School Library Journal Eleven-year-old Luis is left looking for answers after a city-wide blackout leads him to an electrifying mystery in this edge-of-your-seat thriller from Martha Freeman. Luis Cardenal is toasting a Pop-Tart when a power outage strikes Hampton, New Jersey. Elevators and gas pumps fail right away; soon cell phones die and grocery shelves empty. Cold and in the dark, people begin to get desperate. Luis likes to know how things work, and the blackout gets him wondering: Where does the city’s electricity come from? What would cause it to shut down? No one seems to have answers, and rumors are flying. Then a slip of the tongue gives Luis and his ex-best friend Maura a clue. Brushed off by the busy police, the two sixth graders determine they are on their own. To get to the bottom of the mystery, they know they need to brave the abandoned houses of Luis’s poor neighborhood and find the homeless teen legend known as Computer Genius. What they don’t know is that someone suspects they know too much, someone who wants to keep Hampton in the dark. In this highly charged mystery, two can-do sleuths embark on a high-tech urban adventure to answer an age-old question: Who turned out the lights?

This book features: consonants g, x, k, v, y, and qu and consonant digraphs th and sh ; short vowels e and u and phonograms -et, -en, -in, -ub, -un, and -ut ; high frequency words.

“High-school theater departments willing to experiment with something new might try this as an alternative to the same old reruns of Grease and Romeo and Juliet.” —Kirkus Reviews Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman has considered the advice of performers and producers in this newly refreshed and thoroughly updated edition of a high-school tour de force. When high school drama departments are not dusting off the old classics—over and over—they are constantly in search of new material. But what play could possibly suit the sound bite attention span of kids who flit from text messages to social networks throughout their day? Cue the lights for Zap, a nonstop farce that juxtaposes seven different plays—performed simultaneously—with comic genius. An extensive author’s note provides information and insight on the plays and playwrights spoofed in Zap.

Written in collaboration with the world-famous San Francisco Exploratorium, this science book-o-rama takes readers on a 17-story roller coaster science ride. Divided into five sections, "Zap Science" invites readers to dive into the exciting world of science experiments. Full color.

We're all in favour of free speech — except when we're not! Often it's a case of 'free speech for me, but not for thee’. The regulation of speech is a matter that is typically dealt with arbitrarily without there being any obvious principled basis for the decisions that are made. Is hate speech, so-called, a form of free speech? What of blasphemy, in either its ancient or contemporary forms? Should certain forms of speech be mandatory? As with free speech, we’re all in favour of tolerance — except when we're not! Tolerance is increasingly coming to seem, well, intolerable and new and improved forms of intolerance are everywhere on the rise, not least as embodied in the currently fashionable doctrines of diversity, inclusion and equality. In ZAP, Gerard Casey presents a critical and unified approach to both free speech and tolerance based on the Zero Aggression Principle, keeping the critical discussion topical and grounded by reference to current events.

Eleven-year-olds Luis and Maura investigate the cause of a long-term, city-wide power outage in Hampton, New Jersey. Includes facts about electric power and instructions for assembling an emergency kit.

The Zap gives... and the Zap takes away. Because of the very nature of the Zap -- the big thermonuclear bomb that had scrambled and rearranged the neurons of everyone's brains -- there was no way of telling what it had taken from them all. The past was a jumbled mass of tantalizing glimpses and agonizing blanks. But the Zap's gifts were many and varied. The "Readers" got the rare and often dangerous ability to make sense of the writings of the past... The "Memors" got perfect recall -- of everything they'd heard since the Zap... The "Bush Punks" got a chance to live free and easy -- and die the same way... The "God Weirders" got religion -- if you could call it that... The "Blimpers" got a purpose -- a purpose that could save them, or destroy them all. Now Holmes, a "Reader, " was in the perfect position to tip the scales for or against survival -- if only he could figure out which side was which.