The heartfelt story of a girl who-thanks to her friends, her famous single dad, and an unexpected encounter with a whale-learns the true meaning of family. Twelve-year-old Natalia Rose Baleine Gallagher loves possibilities: the possibility that she’ll see whales on the beach near her new home, the possibility that the trans-gender boy she just met will become her new best friend, the possibility that the paparazzi hounding her celebrity father won’t force them to move again. Most of all, Nat dreams of the possibility that her faraway mother misses her, loves her, and is just waiting for Nat to find her. But how can Nat find her mother if she doesn’t even know who she is? She abandoned Nat as a baby, and Nat’s dad refuses to talk about it. Nat knows she shouldn’t need a mom, but she still feels like something is missing, and her questions lead her on a journey of self-discovery that will change her life forever. In her unique, poignant narrative voice, Karen Rivers tells a heartwarming story about family, friendship, and growing up perfect for readers of Katherine Applegate and Rebecca Stead.

A rich and moving story about how one girl’s celestial-sized dreams for a future on Mars go heartbreakingly awry when an unexpected diagnosis threatens her future. Things Mischa “Ish” Love will miss when she goes to Mars: lying on the living room floor watching TV, ice cream, her parrot Buzz Aldrin. Things Ish Love will not miss when she goes to Mars: mosquitoes, heat waves, missing her former best friend Tig. Ish is convinced that she’ll be one of the first settlers on Mars. She’s applied to-and been rejected from-the Mars Now project forty-seven times, but the mission won’t leave for ten years and Ish hasn’t given up hope. She also hasn’t given up hope that Tig will be her best friend again (not that she’d ever admit that to anyone, least of all herself). When Ish collapses on the first day of seventh grade, she gets a diagnosis that threatens all her future plans. As Ish fights cancer, she dreams in vivid detail about the Martian adventures she’s always known she’d have-and makes unexpected discoveries about love, fate, and her place in the vast universe. In this story perfect for fans of Fish in a Tree and The Thing About Jellyfish, Karen Rivers has once again created an unforgettable narrator who will pull readers into her orbit and keep them riveted until the very last page.

Can Kit’s super-weird superpower save her world? Kit-with-a-small-k is navigating middle school with a really big, really strange secret: When she’s stressed, she turns into a naked mole rat. It first happened after kit watched her best friend, Clem, fall and get hurt during an acrobatic performance on TV. Since then, the transformations keep happening-whether kit wants them to or not. Kit can’t tell Clem about it, because after the fall, Clem just hasn’t been herself. She’s sad and mad and gloomy, and keeping a secret of her own: the real reason she fell. A year after the accident, kit and Clem still haven’t figured out how to deal with all the ways they have transformed-both inside and out. When their secrets come between them, the best friends get into a big fight. Somehow, kit has to save the day, but she doesn’t believe she can be that kind of hero. Turning into a naked mole rat isn’t really a superpower. Or is it?

A story about life lived and lost, and what two teens hold onto in the wake of a tragic plane crash, told in a unique voice and style that puts readers directly inside the heroine’s mind. Can you want something-or someone-so badly that it changes your destiny? Elyse Schmidt never would have thought so, until it happened to her. When Elyse and her not-so-secret crush, Josh Harris, are the sole survivors of a plane crash, tragedy binds them together. It’s as if their love story is meant to be. Everything is perfect, or as perfect as it can be when you’ve literally fallen out of the sky and landed hard on the side of a mountain-until suddenly it isn’t. When the pieces of Elyse’s life stop fitting together, what’s left? You Are the Everything is a story about the fates we yearn for, the fates we choose, and the fates that are chosen for us.