Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 29 mins)
• By Kate DiCamillo
• Narrated By Tara Sands
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Holy unanticipated occurrences! A cynic meets an unlikely superhero in a genre-breaking new novel by master storyteller Kate DiCamillo. It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry.

The One and Only Ivan

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 46 mins)
• By Katherine Applegate, Patricia Castelao
• Narrated By Adam Grupper
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Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all. Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he's seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

Dead End in Norvelt

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Jack Gantos
• Narrated By Jack Gantos
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Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore - typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his town.

Moon Over Manifest

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 31 mins)
• By Clare Vanderpool
• Narrated By Jenna Lamia, Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heyborne
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Abilene Tucker feels abandoned. Her father has put her on a train, sending her off to live with an old friend for the summer while he works a railroad job. Armed only with a few possessions and her list of universals, Abilene jumps off the train in Manifest, Kansas, aiming to learn about the boy her father once was. Having heard stories about Manifest, Abilene is disappointed to find that it's just a dried-up, worn-out old town. But her disappointment quickly turns to excitement when she discovers a hidden cigar box full of mementos.

When You Reach Me

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 19 mins)
• By Rebecca Stead
• Narrated By Cynthia Holloway
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By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it's safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda's mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note.

The Graveyard Book

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 47 mins)
• By Neil Gaiman
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Why we think it’s a great listen: Gaiman’s not just an award-winning author, but a narrator who earns rave reviews – and fields requests from other authors to perform their books, too! Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead....

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 33 mins)
• By Laura Amy Schiltz
• Narrated By Christina Moore

Laura Amy Schlitz wrote the Newbery Medal winner Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! for the students at the school where she is a librarian. The 22 monologues introduce readers to everyone in a medieval village, from the town half-wit, to Nelly the Sniggler, to the Lord's daughter.

The Higher Power of Lucky

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 37 mins)
• By Susan Patron
• Narrated By Cassandra Campbell
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Lucky, age 10, can't wait another day. The meanness gland in her heart and the crevices full of questions in her brain make running away from Hard Pan, California (population 43), the rock-bottom only choice she has.

Criss Cross

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 8 mins)
• By Lynne Rae Perkins
• Narrated By Danielle Ferland
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She wished something would happen. Something good. To her.

Kira-Kira

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 29 mins)
• By Cynthia Kadohata
• Narrated By Elaina Erika Davis
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kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining

Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare.

The Tale of Despereaux

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 25 mins)
• By Kate DiCamillo
• Narrated By Graeme Malcolm
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This is the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in darkness but covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl with a simple, impossible wish. These characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and ultimately, into each other's lives.

A Single Shard

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 14 mins)
• By Linda Sue Park
• Narrated By Graeme Malcolm
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Foraging in fields and on rubbish heaps, and sharing food with his friend Crane-man, used to be enough to fill Tree-ear's days. But now all Tree-ear wants to do is watch master potter Min at work.

A Year Down Yonder

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Richard Peck
• Narrated By Lois Smith
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Mary Alice and Grandma Dowdel return for more astonishing, laugh-out-loud adventures when 15-year-old Mary Alice moves in with her spicy grandmother for the year. Her extended visit is filled with moonlit schemes, romances both foiled and founded, and a whole parade of fools made to suffer in unusual (and always hilarious) ways.

Bud, Not Buddy

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 14 mins)
• By Christopher Paul Curtis
• Narrated By James Avery

Bud, Not Buddy, a Newbery Medal winner, is full of laugh-out-loud humor and wonderful characters, hitting the high notes of jazz and sounding the deeper tones of the Great Depression.

Holes

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 23 mins)
• By Louis Sachar
• Narrated By Kerry Beyer
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Stanley Yelnats isn't so surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to a juvenile detention center. After all, his family has been ridden with bad luck ever since a one-legged gypsy put a curse on his great-great grandfather. He is told that the hard labor he must perform, digging five-foot holes in the dried up soil where Green Lake once sat, is meant to build character. But it soon becomes clear to Stanley that the warden is really using the boys to search for something very valuable.

The Midwife's Apprentice

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 49 mins)
• By Karen Cushman
• Narrated By Jenny Sterlin
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Lyrical yet unsentimental, The Midwife's Apprentice won the coveted 1996 Newbery Medal. Filled with striking characters, it paints unforgettable pictures of village life in the Middle Ages, the midwife's craft, and a very remarkable girl's growing independence and pride.

Walk Two Moons

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Sharon Creech
• Narrated By Hope Davis
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In her own award-winning style, Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.

The Giver

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 51 mins)
• By Lois Lowry
• Narrated By Ron Rifkin
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December is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve-year-old receives a life assignment determined by the Elders. Jonas watches his friend Fiona named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant Director of Recreation. But Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man, the man called only the Giver, he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world.

Shiloh

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
• Narrated By Peter MacNicol
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From Phyllis Reynolds Naylor comes this unabridged recording of her Newbery Award-winning tale of adventure, courage and love, the timeless and moving story of a dog in trouble and the young boy who would save him.