When the enigmatic Ringmaster asks 15-year-old Evanja (Evan) Leane to run away and join the circus, she says yes. Anywhere's got to be better than foster home Number Eight. Evan learns that this ragtag circus, a haven for throwaway teens, relies on more than spectacle and illusion. This circus is built on magic. Each of the teens possesses a donvrai, a true gift, that manifests only in the presence of the Ringmaster's mysterious Ju-Ju. Unlike many of the other teens who must wait for their donvrai to emerge, Evan's gift surfaces on her first night: she can read horses' minds. This would be totally awesome except she has been deathly afraid of horses since foster home Number Three. But circus is a dying art. If Evan wants to save her beloved new-found home, she must concoct a brilliant horse act that will bring in the crowds. And she'd better get over herself and get on with it fast; there's a traitor close to the Ringmaster who will stop at nothing to make sure she doesn't succeed. With B&W illustrations. Contains: some swearing. Recommended for age 14 and up.

Sixteen year-old Dante Delgado is staring down the barrel of a gangbanger's gun when he's surprised by the arrival of a clown on a unicycle. Dante hates clowns. He hates everything to do with the circus. He once dreamed of being one of the few trapecistas able to do a quadruple somersault in the air. Then a tragic accident took his parents, their circus, and his ability to fly. When faced with the choice between the circus or a bullet, he jumps on the clown's shoulders and rides off to the tiny but magical Mumbo Jumbo Circus. In a bid to crush its rival, the evil Cirque Patron offers Dante a wild chance to fly again. Dante is tempted, even though living his dream will cost him great physical pain. But if he follows his dream, he'll betray his friends and the one man who tried to help him, the Ringmaster of The Mumbo Jumbo Circus. In order to reach a decision, Dante must literally chase down the ghosts of his past before Dia De Los Muertos.

A tour de force of astonishing power and poetry, Circus uses the mystic panorama of a traveling mud show as a metaphor for the neverending cycle of life. Dwarves and roustabouts, clowns and elephants, freaks and puppet shows, snakes and ringmasters, talking beasts and a single elusory beauty all parade before a silently observant child over the course of a single day, engaging him as well as the reader with humor, ribaldry and prophetic wisdom. A testament to the mystery of creation, Circus challenges and inspires. To read it is to celebrate everything majestic and terrible about the world, the firmament and mankind's precarious place in it.

Jumbo was a superstar of the Victorian era. Every day tens of thousands of people would visit this adored animal known as “the Children’s Pet” or, more simply, “the Giant Elephant,” at the London Zoo. When P.T. Barnum purchased him for his Greatest Show on Earth, Jumbo’s transport to the U.S. made headlines for weeks, and he was an instant sensation in America. His name entered our lexicon as an adjective for oversized things, and half a century after his death his still-famous and unrivalled popularity was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Dumbo. But fame comes at a price and, like so many modern celebrities, Jumbo led a troubled private life that was far from idyllic. His best friend – a zookeeper named Matthew Scott, who remained by Jumbo’s side in Britain and the United States for twenty years – was moody and manipulative, and Jumbo himself attracted rumors of violent tantrums, a fondness for drink, and of a “wife” he left behind in order to make it big in America. From an eyewitness account of Jumbo’s capture in Africa after ivory hunters had killed his parents, to his early years at the Paris zoo where he was mistreated and regarded as a disappointing runt, to his stunning growth spurt in London where he became the largest elephant in captivity, to the “Jumbo craze” that swept across Britain and the United States, Paul Chambers utilizes new archival material in fully telling Jumbo’s story for the first time.

Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text. Covering a time of great hope and incredible change, Reconstruction and Reform is a dramatic look at life after the Civil War in the newly re United States. Railroad tycoons were roaring across the country. New cities sprang up across the plains, and a new and different American West came into being: a land of farmers, ranchers, miners, and city dwellers. Back East, large scale immigration was also going on, but not all Americans wanted newcomers in the country. Technology moved forward: Thomas Edison lit up the world with his electric light. And social justice was on everyone's mind with Carry Nation wielding a hatchet in her battle against drunkenness and Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois counseling newly freed African Americans to behave in very different ways. Through it all, the reunited nation struggles to keep the promises of freedom in this exciting chapter in the A History of US. About the Series: Master storyteller Joy Hakim has excited millions of young minds with the great drama of American history in her award-winning series A History of US. Recommended by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy as an exemplary informational text, A History of US weaves together exciting stories that bring American history to life. Hailed by reviewers, historians, educators, and parents for its exciting, thought-provoking narrative, the books have been recognized as a break-through tool in teaching history and critical reading skills to young people. In ten books that span from Prehistory to the 21st century, young people will never think of American history as boring again.