Verbena Colter knows she’s bad news. Trouble from the get-go. How could she not be, with parents like hers? Her mother practically pickled her before she was even born, leaving Verbie to struggle with the effects of fetal alchol syndrome. And her father was just plain mean. Verbie wishes she could be somebody, anybody other than who she is. Enter Pooch, a flatlander boy visiting for the summer. When Pooch and his mom rent the house next door, Verbie takes the opportunity to be someone else entirely. And what starts out as a game leads Verbie into a surprising and heartwarming journey of self-discovery.

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Drip! Drop!

Plip! Plop!

“Oh, no!” cried Pip Squeak.

“I’ve got a leak!”

A nighttime rainstorm sends Pip Squeak scrambling to catch the drips pouring through his leaky roof. But the drops just won’t stop, and soon it’s wetter inside the house than out!

Sarah Weeks’s spirited story and Jane Manning’s dazzling pictures will delight beginning readers as they follow Pip Squeak’s comic adventure to the very last drop!

Jamie Reardon has always heard that bad things come in threes. So after his cat, Mister, dies, his father leaves, and his aunt Sapphy has an accident that causes her memory to develop a skip, Jamie hopes his life will go back to being as normal as cornflakes. But unfortunately there’s one more bad thing in store for Jamie — something he’d give anything to be able to forget — and this one leaves him feeling like a stranger to himself. Jamie tries in vain to find the magic trigger that will help Sapphy’s memory jump the scratch, like the needle on her favorite Frank Sinatra record, but in the end it’s Aunt Sapphy who, along with a curious girl named Audrey Krouch, helps Jamie unravel the mysteries of memory and jump the scratch in his own life.

Sarah Weeks’s poignant characters and powerful prose come together in a story that is both heart wrenching and inspiring — another gem from the award-winning author of So B. It.

Award-winning author Sarah Weeks is critically acclaimed for her numerous best-selling books for children of all ages. In Jumping the Scratch, she tells the tale of Jamie Reardon, who has always been told that bad things happen in threes. So when his father leaves, his cat dies, and his Aunt Sapphy is in an accident that makes it impossible for her to create new memories, he figures life has to get better soon. Enter Audrey Krouch, who smells like onions, wears huge glasses without lenses, and claims to have ESP. As peculiar as she is, it is Audrey who helps Jamie turn his life around.

Now a major motion picture starring Alfre Woodard, Jessica Collins, John Heard, Jacinda Barrett, Cloris Leachman, and Talitha Bateman–in theaters October 2017!

From acclaimed author Sarah Weeks comes a touching coming-of-age story about a young girl who goes on a cross-country journey to discover the truth about her parents, which the New York Times called “a remarkable novel.” Perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me and Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish.

She doesn’t know when her birthday is or who her father is. In fact, everything about Heidi and her mentally disabled mother’s past is a mystery. When a strange word in her mother’s vocabulary begins to haunt her, Heidi sets out on a cross-country journey in search of the secrets of her past.

Far away from home, pieces of her puzzling history come together. But it isn’t until she learns to accept not knowing that Heidi truly arrives.