New Releases by Nan Gregory

Manon ne rêve que d''une chose : une vie en rose. Plus rose que rose. Où tout serait rose. Le genre de vie que mènent les petites filles riches et que son papa chéri, chauffeur de camion, ne peut lui offrir.

Vivi, who lives in a big brown building and whose father is a truck driver, saves her money to buy a bride doll in a dress of perfect glistening pink, which she desperately wants, until she makes an unexpected discovery.

Twelve-year-old Gemma doesn’t know where to turn. She is being adopted by relatives she didn’t know she had. The foster family she has loved all her life is breaking up. The farm where they’ve lived is being sold. Gemma needs to fix things fast--if she can only figure out how. Now she has found the solution: she’ll get herself an angel. Her increasingly desperate efforts to earn one, by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, lead her to a confrontation with her painfully mysterious past, and ultimately to an understanding with her new family that holds out hope for them all. This engrossing novel offers a fresh and winning portrait of a quirky heroine with a unique voice, a passionate heart, a mission to accomplish, and the kind of offbeat logic that can cause even the most careful plans to go awry.

Amber makes a bid to catch her father''s attention. Amber lo-o-o-v-e-s Kindergarten -- painting, looking at books, tying her shoes, sliding when it snows. But the one thing she can''t control is being picked up on time. Her father is frequently late, so she must wait and wait and wait in the secretary''s office after everyone else has left. It''s so embarrassing. To deal with her frustration, Amber concocts a world in which she sends her dad to wait for her -- on the moon -- while she has all kinds of wonderful adventures. This, she knows, would teach Dad a lesson he''d never forget, and all the dads from around the world would, like him, turn up on time to collect their children and embrace them. Back in the real world, Dad at last shows up and Amber makes a bid to catch his attention, to let him know what it feels like to be left alone in school -- and finally, maybe, he gets the point. This delightful picture book combines the work of two extraordinary talents.

Picture book. A haunting tale of how imagination renews the human spirit. 6-10 yrs.

“You respond to the universal pet story before the illustrations show that Cindy is a young woman with Down’s syndrome. [This book] is remarkable in telling it as Cindy sees it. Lightburn’s realistic pictures in soft-tone colored pencil have the same beautiful sense of fragility, steadfastness, and connection.”—Booklist (starred review)