Most Popular Books by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Jason, a twelve-year-old autistic boy who wants to become a writer, relates what his life is like as he tries to make sense of his world.

Ask anyone: September 11, 2001, was serene and lovely, a perfect day until a plane struck the World Trade Center.

Twelve-year-old best friends and relatives, Julia and Eliza are happy to spend the summer together while Julia''s mother is serving in the National Guard in Iraq but when they meet a neighborhood boy, their close relationship begins to change.

Ruby’s mom is in prison, and to tell anyone the truth is to risk true friendship in this novel that accurately and sensitively addresses a subject too often overlooked—from the author of The Summer Before Boys. Eleven-year-old Ruby Danes is about to start middle school, and only her aunt knows her deepest, darkest, secret: her mother is in prison. Then Margalit Tipps moves into Ruby’s condo complex, and the two immediately hit it off. Ruby thinks she’s found her first true-blue friend—but can she tell Margalit the truth about her mom? Maybe not. Because it turns out that Margalit’s family history seems closely connected to the very event that put her mother in prison, and if Ruby comes clean, she could lose everything she cares about most.

I put my fingers up to my throat and touched the pointy Star of David, my grandmother''s necklace, a delicate chain made up of countless tiny links. If I wear this, will people think I am Jewish? Is that what I want to be? Seventh-grader Caroline Weeks has a Jewish mom and a non-Jewish dad. When Caroline''s nana dies around the same time that Caroline''s best friend, Rachel, is having her bat mitzvah, Caroline starts to become more interested in her Jewish identity.

A boldly original tale about a girl who journeys through love and loss to find her mother — and discovers that everyone has a story to tell, including herself. "I used to think that a person would not know who I was, not really know me, until they heard about my mother." Four years, four months, and fifteen days ago, Natalie Gordon''s mother walked out mid-sentence, before she finished what she was going to say. Now Natalie is traveling twenty-four hours on a bus to Florida to find her mother, to find herself, to find out something about love. Along the way, Natalie struggles to understand her relationship with Adam, a boy she pines for with near-obsession, and to her surprise, she meets people with stories like her own, stories about giving love and getting lost in the desire to be wanted. Acclaimed middle-grade novelist Nora Raleigh Baskin makes her young adult debut with a deeply resonant novel about secrets held and secrets shared, about having the courage to uncover all we know — and don’t know — of love.

With accurate portrayals of the action, drama, and fun that take place on and off the basketball court, Baskin focuses on the teamwork, fears, loyalty, and, most of all, the friendship between a team''s members.

A lyrical and deeply moving portrait of grief, blame, and forgiveness, and of finding the courage to confront your ghosts — one truth at a time. As soon as she was under, Maggie heard the quiet, though every sound was amplified in her ears and in her brain...Sound, like shame, travels four times faster under the water. Though only a sophomore, Maggie Paris is a star on the varsity swim team, but she also has an uncanny, almost magical ability to draw out people’s deepest truths, even when they don’t intend to share them. It’s reached a point where most of her classmates, all but her steadfast best friend, now avoid her, and she’s taken to giving herself away every chance she gets to an unavailable — and ungrateful — popular boy from the wrestling team, just to prove she still exists. Even Maggie’s parents, who are busy avoiding each other and the secret deep at the heart of their devastated family, seem wary of her. Is there such a thing as too much truth?

What if destiny leads you to your soul mate, but the laws of time conspire to keep you apart? If her parents had never divorced, Laura wouldn’t have to live in the shadow of Bruce, her mom’s unpredictable boyfriend. Her mom wouldn’t say things like "Be groovy," and Laura wouldn’t panic every weekend on the way to Dad’s Manhattan apartment. But when Laura spots a boy on a facing platform, lifting a camera to his face, looking right at her, Laura feels anything but afraid, and she can’t forget him. Jonas, meanwhile, thinks nonstop about the pretty hippie girl he glimpsed on the platform — trying to comprehend how she vanished, but mostly wondering whether he will see her again in a city of millions — and whether if he searches, he would have any chance of finding her. In a lyrical meditation on love, Nora Raleigh Baskin explores the soul’s ability to connect, and heal, outside the bounds of time and reason.

An endearing story of love and grief as one girl follows the clues in a scavenger hunt left behind by her best friend, perfect for fans of Bridge to Terabithia and Nine, Ten. WHEN YOU''VE LOST WHAT MATTERS MOST, HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR WAY BACK HOME? Joy Fonseca is dreading her 13th birthday, dreading being reminded again about her best friend Lukas''s senseless death on this day, one year ago -- and dreading the fact he may have heard what she accidentally blurted to him the night before. Or maybe she''s more worried he didn''t hear. Either way, she''s decided: she''s going to finally open the first clue to their annual birthday scavenger hunt Lukas left for her the morning he died, hoping the rest of the clues are still out there. If they are, they might lead Joy to whatever last words Lukas wrote, and toward understanding how to grab onto the future that is meant to be hers. "I truly loved it! Baskin and Polisner seamlessly unfold one touching relationship after another in this gorgeous story about everlasting friendship. This tender tale is indelibly etched on my heart." --Leslie Connor, author of the National Book Award finalist The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle "Polisner and Baskin''s brief tale of two quite distant friends magically manages to bridge an uncrossable gap. Seven Clues to Home is both a charming mystery and a real meditation on the complexities of the young heart in love." --Tony Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Firegirl and The Great Jeff "I read this whole book with a lump in my throat. A perfect gem." --Wendy Mass, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bob

When chance, or fate, throws two twelve-year-olds together on board a scientific research ship at the edge of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it’s not all smooth sailing! Jeremy “JB” Barnes is looking forward to spending the summer before seventh grade hanging on the beach. But his mother, a scientist, has called for him to join her aboard a research ship where, instead, he’ll spend his summer seasick and bored as he stares out at the endless plastic, microbeads, and other floating debris, both visible and not, that make up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Miles and miles away, twelve-year-old Sidney Miller is trying to come up with an alternate activity worthy of convincing her overprotective parents that she can skip summer camp. When Jeremy is asked to find the contact information for a list of important international scientists and invite them to attend a last-minute Emergency Global Summit, he''s excited to have a chance to actually do something that matters to the mission. How could he know that the Sidney Miller he messages is not the famous marine biologist he has been tasked with contacting, but rather a girl making podcasts from her bedroom—let alone that she would want to sneak aboard the ship? Nora Raleigh Baskin and Gae Polisner''s Consider the Octopus is a comedy of errors, mistaken identity, and synchronicity. Above all, it is a heartfelt story about friendship and an empowering call to environmental protection, especially to our young people who are already stepping up to help save our oceans and our Earth.

After years of being shuffled from town to town and back and forth between her divorced parents, twelve-year-old Leah, now living permanently with her father and stepmother, finds it difficult to adjust to her new situation and the circumstances that made it possible.

Twelve-year-old Gabby feels that she needs a mother to help her grow into a woman, so when things between her father and his latest girlfriend do not work out, Gabby sets off for the last place she remembers seeing her own mother. Reprint.

Mystery and adventure collide in this humorous and heartfelt multiverse adventure from beloved, award-winning authors Wendy Mass and Nora Raleigh Baskin. Twelve-year-old Piper’s life has always been unusual: her parents are clockmakers whose inventions are anything but ordinary, and she’s the only kid she knows with a robotic talking dog. But her life takes a turn for the truly bizarre when she discovers her parents are in jeopardy and the key to saving them is a book full of strange equations. When Raisa and Lev travel through the portal to Piper’s world, Raisa can finally prove that her mother’s multiverse project worked. Now, she just needs the book containing her mother’s equations to get back to her world…if only she can find it! As Raisa and Piper adventure to the bounds of the multiverse, they’ll need to discover their place in the world if they ever want to find their way back home.

The award-winning author of Anything But Typical “delivers an honest message about surviving bad situations and remaining true to oneself and one’s friends” (Publishers Weekly) in this insightful exploration of middle school bullying from multiple perspectives. Elizabeth Moon grew up around dogs. Her mom runs a boarding kennel out of their home, so she’s seen how dogs behave to determine pack order. Her experience in middle school is uncomfortably similar. Maggie hates how Elizabeth acts so much better than everyone else. Besides, she’s always covered in dog hair. And she smells. So Maggie creates a fake profile on a popular social networking site to teach Elizabeth a lesson. What makes a bully, and what makes a victim? It’s all in the perspective, and the dynamics shift. From sibling rivalries to mean girl antics, the varying points of view show the many shades of gray in this illuminating novel from the award-winning author of Anything But Typical—because middle school is anything but black and white.

Jason Blake é um autista de doze anos vivendo em um mundo neurotípico, de "pessoas normais". Para ele, quase sempre é apenas uma questão de tempo até que alguma coisa dê errado.Mas Jason acaba encontrando um pouco de compreensão quando cruza com Phoenixbird, uma garota que publica histórias no mesmo website que ele.Jason pode ser ele mesmo quando escreve, e imagina que Phoenixbird, cujo nome descobre ser Rebecca, pode se tornar sua primeira amiga de verdade.Mas tanto quanto ansioso por conhecê-la, Jason está apavorado com a possibilidade de que, quando isso acontecer, Rebecca não seja capaz de enxergá-lo como realmente é, indo além das aparências.

Unlike most children faced with the prospect of having a stepmother, Gabby Weiss isn''t the slightest bit resistant to the idea. In fact, she wishes her father would hurry up and marry someone who knows about womanhood; someone who understands her worries about everything that is happening (or worse, not happening) to her body. For a while, it seems like Cleo, her father''s girfriend, might fulfil this role. But when things fall apart, Gabby has to find her own solution. She decides to travel to the last place she saw her mother to try and reconstruct a memory of her. But what she finds there is something even better.