School Library Journal Gr 6-9-When 15-year-old Payton Gritas gives her family the silent treatment for withholding her father's MS diagnosis for six months, her parents request the aid of their daughter's guidance counselor, who assigns a focus object exercise. Payton chooses Sean Griswold's head because she and Sean have been linked by last name proximity since the third grade. Soon, with the help of her boy-crazy friend Jac, Payton gets to know Sean Gris...More

Publishers Weekly Move over, "sunshine." Ogburn and Raschka give families a whole new vocabulary with which to express their love, exploring terms of endearment used around the globe. Impish, doe-eyed figures rendered in broad, calligraphic brushstrokes wear with pride terms like "ducky," used in England, and "kullanmuru," which means "nugget of gold" in Finland. Raschka forgoes painting his characters with bl...More

Library Journal The author of Seabiscuit now brings us a biography of World War II prisoner of war survivor Louis Zamperini (b. 1917). A track athlete at the 1936 Munich Olympics, Zamperini became a B-24 crewman in the U.S. Army Air Force. When his plane went down in the Pacific in 1943, he spent 47 days in a life raft, then was picked up by a Japanese ship and survived starvation and torture in labor camps. Eventually repatriated, he had a spiritua...More