Poverty

Serafina's Promise

Icon:

Copies: 7

Serafina has a secret dream.

She wants to go to school
and become a doctor
with her best friend, Julie Marie.

But in their rural village
outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
many obstacles
stand in Serafina's way—
little money,
never-ending chores,
and Manman's worries.

More powerful even
than all of these
are the heavy rains
and the shaking earth
that test Serafina's resolve
in ways she never dreamed.

Author:

Ann E. Burg

Lexile:

HL590L

FLOW: For Love of Water (2008)

Icon:

Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st century - The World Water Crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization fo the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.

Grade Level:

Middle

High

Length:

01:24

Milkweed

Icon:

Copies: 5

He's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham. He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels. He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi some day, with tall shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.

Author:

Jerry Spinelli

Lexile:

510L

The Money We'll Save

Icon:

Copies: 7

When Pa brings a turkey poult home to fatten for Christmas dinner, he assures Ma that it will be no trouble since it can live in a box by the stove and eat table scraps--and just think of the money we'll save! But it's not quite so simple to raise a turkey in a tiny flat in a nineteenth-century New York City tenement. Can Pa and the children manage the willful and growing Alfred and keep the neighbors happy until Christmas? Pa finds a solution for every difficulty--until he encounters one that threatens to ruin Christmas completely.

Author:

Brock Cole

Lexile:

AD780L

Of Mice and Men (Unabridged)

Icon:

This classic novel tells the tale of an unusual friendship between two very different men: the mentally challenged and sometimes violent Lennie, and his loyal yet reluctant caretaker George. Finding comfort in one another's company, George and Lennie travel from farm to farm looking for work in pre-Depression Salinas Valley, California.

Author:

John Steinbeck

Grade Level:

High

Lexile:

630L

Length:

06:23

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Icon:

In Neil Simon's darkly funny memoir of his family in 1930s Brooklyn, 14-year-old Eugene is preoccupied by his passion for the Yankees and his lust for his beautiful cousin, Nora. Eugene's comic growing pains contrast with the darker issues troubling his family: poverty, illness, long-held sibling resentment, and the growing Nazi threat to relatives in Europe.

Author:

Neil Simon

Grade Level:

High

Length:

01:55

Out of the Dust (Unabridged)

Icon:

Billie Jo has a great deal to forgive: her father for causing the accident that killed her mother; her mother for leaving when Billie Jo needed her most; and herself for being the cause of her own sorrow. Daddy's too wrung out to help her, and there's no one else to care.

Author:

Karen Hesse

Grade Level:

Middle

Lexile:

Length:

02:09

Mockingjay: The Final Book of The Hunger Games (Unabridged)

Icon:

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena live, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge....

Author:

Suzanne Collins

Grade Level:

Middle

Lexile:

800L

Length:

11:41

Mockingjay: The Final Book of The Hunger Games (Unabridged)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Unabridged)

Icon:

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last!

Author:

Roald Dahl

Grade Level:

Elementary

Middle

Lexile:

810L

Length:

03:19

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Unabridged)

Global Science & Technology Issues (2004)

Icon:

"Global Issues for Students" provides an in-depth analysis of current world problems. We have entered a new era of globalization - a level of interconnection unprecedented in world history.

Grade Level:

High

Length:

00:23