Susan Richards Shreve Books In Order

The Flunking of Joshua T. Bates

In this Knopf Paperback reissue, Joshua is devastated to learn that he must repeat third grade. But he manages to survive the taunts of former classmates, learn something important about himself, and make it through the year with the help of a sympathetic teacher in this ‘funny, touching, and realistic story.’ School Library Journal

Joshua T. Bates Takes Charge

Tommy Wilhelm and his gang of bullies have never let fifth grader Joshuaforget that he was held back in the third grade. Now Tommy has started pickingon a dorky new kid and Joshua must choose between sticking up for the nerd andsaving his own neck. ‘With a well drawn school backdrop and a believable maincharacter, this is a perceptive story that makes it plain what it’s like to bean outcast and also what it takes to be a hero. Welcome back,Joshua.’ Booklist

Goodbye, Amanda the Good

Amanda Bates, older sister of Joshua T. Bates, has always been a ‘good girl,’ gotten good grades, and played by the rules. But now that she’s in junior high, Amanda is discovering that those rules have changed. Her friends have all gone to other schools, her body’s changing, her moods are up and down…
she doesn’t even recognize herself! Amanda decides that her only chance to fit in is to join ‘the Club,’ so she dyes her hair purple, changes her name to Cheetah, cuts school, and starts dating an older boy with a shady past. It’s as if she’s two different people: the one doing all these things she knows are wrong and the one watching them happen and before long, she’s going to have to choose between them.

Lucy Forever, Miss Rosetree, and the Stolen Baby

Lucy Childs and Rosie Treeman, two sixth graders who love to invent psychiatric case histories, suddenly find themselves over their heads in a dangerous case involving an abandoned baby.

Daughters of the New World

Four generations of women deny the pull toward convention and define their independence through their art, careers, and inner strength. By the author of Queen of Hearts.Tour. BOMC Alt.

Plum & Jaggers

Orphaned by a terrorist explosion that killed their parents on an Italian train, Sam McWilliams and his three younger siblings create the dark, quirky Plum & Jaggers series of comedy sketches about a family of children whose parents are never at home. The family troupe’s fame gathers momentum as they rise from open mike nights, to small comedy clubs to late night television spots, until it threatens them with unforeseen and new dangers. With compassion, warmth and wit, Susan Richards Shreve has crafted a powerful story about family tragedy and one person’s refusal to accept fate.

A Student of Living Things

As haunting and enigmatic as a thriller, Shreve’s tale of a near future evolves into a glorious meditation on love, fear, and forgiveness In the Washington, D.C., of a near future, a city of floods and frequent terrorist bombings, the tightly knit Frayn family has carved out its own comfortable, if eccentric, existence. Then, in the moment it takes Claire Frayn to dig into her book bag for her umbrella, her brother Steven is shot down next to her on the library steps. His murder hits the family like a hurricane. Set adrift, Claire easily falls under the influence of Victor Duarte, an enigmatic stranger who claims to know her brother s killer. But as she corresponds with the supposed criminal mastermind, a composer at a conservatory in Michigan, she finds herself increasingly apprehensive about Victor and his plans for revenge, while she is ever more drawn to the musician. Plotted like a thriller with a startling love story at its center, this is a pitch perfect and painful rendering of the way a family grieves and of the way public violence seeps into every part of our lives. Much like Ian McEwan s Saturday, A Student of Living Things takes on the moral, political, and philosophical questions of our time with a very intimate story about the futility of revenge and the sheer miracle of forgiveness.

Loveletters

Headstrong Kate finds her experience in a home for unwed mothers a stifling one. When she returns home she must face the undesired attentions of a former playmate, now a mentally ill young man.

The Gift of the Girl Who Couldn’t Hear

‘The frenzied anticipation and anxiety of a junior high audition for Annie provide the background for this lively and intelligent story. Eliza, a talented singer, is terrified to sign up for auditions although she has dreamed about starring in the musical since the third grade. But she’s been friends with Lucy who has been deaf since birth even longer, and is amazed when her friend decides to try out. Eliza swallows her fear, however, and promises to attend the audition…
. The girls’ characters are skillfully contrasted, and their tale is chronicled with a fresh, exuberant and up beat style that moves the book along to its gratifying conclusion.’ Publishers Weekly. ‘A rare book.’ Booklist.

Wait for Me

Molly is the youngest of four children, and she likes being the family baby. She’s always been in the same class as her two best friends. Then she enters fifth grade and things change. Her siblings and parents are too busy for her, and she’s not in the same class as her friends. Suddenly, Molly is on her own. She’s got to figure out how to blossom as an individual.

Jonah the Whale

Jonah is lonely, overweight, and the new boy in school. To escape the taunts of his classmates, he reinvents himself as a talk show host and turns his fantasy into reality by getting real celebrities to talk to him.

Ghost Cats

The break out novel from the perennially popular author of the Joshua T. Bates books, and Jonah, the Whale. When Peter’s family moved around because of his father’s job one year in Japan, one year in Switzerland he and his siblings were a tight knit group. But suddenly, when the family settles permanently in Boston, the closely woven ties begin to unravel. And Peter is left on his own to cope with a radically reorganized world. He begins to see the ghosts of the family’s departed cats. Are they real? Another strange twist of fate that Boston seems ready to deliver? Or the first signs of healing for a boy who discovers that finding new things to love doesn’t mean he has to let go of the past.

Blister

An ALA Notable Book and PW Best Children’s Book of 2001 winner with a resilient 10 year old hero*ine whom readers will love…
now in an After Words edition!Alyssa Reed’s life is a mess. Her parents can’t stop fighting. Her mother won’t stop crying. Alyssa’s father has decided to move the family to a new town, and to move himself to a separate apartment. Nobody gave Alyssa a choice. So Alyssa decides to take control. She renames herself Blister and starts fighting back in her own way. Blister will take on her new school with a new identity, a new wardrobe stolen from her father’s girlfriend, and a raw, new attitude that nobody can ignore. Not even the cheerleaders. Look out world here comes Blister!

Trout and Me

When a new troublemaker, Trout, arrives at school, Ben is soon diagnosed with ADD-just like Trout.

Ever since first grade, Ben’s been in trouble, even though he’s really not a bad kid. He just can’t seem to stop doing things that get him sent to the principal’s office. His parents and wise older sister, Meg, swear he’ll be fine in his own time, but when a new kid shows up in Ben’s fifth-grade class, he’s not so sure. Trout sticks to him like glue, and it’s clear from the start that Trout is a much bigger troublemaker than Ben ever was. So when Ben gets diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder ADD, just like Trout, and then has to take Ritalin, just like Trout, he’s not sure what to make of his friendship-especially when he starts to get a bad reputation. Is Trout’s badness rubbing off on him? Can Ben make people understand it’s the ADD, not Trout, causing the problems before it’s too late?

From the Hardcover edition.

Under the Watsons’ Porch

Twelve year old Ellie Tremont is b o r e d, bored, and she wishes something, anything, would happen. So when 14 year old Tommy Bowers moves in next door, with his lanky swagger and his troubled past, Ellie knows her summer is about to get interesting. When Tommy suggests they start a camp for the kids on their street under their elderly neighbors the Watsons porch, Ellie quickly agrees to that, and everything else Tommy suggests. And when Tommy gives her a diamond necklace that he says he bought, she’s suspicious, though smitten. But by the time her parents forbid her from seeing him, she s given him her heart. Soon, though, Tommy goes too far and even Ellie isn t sure what to make of him.

Kiss Me Tomorrow

Blister is Susan Shreve’s most popular character, and she’s back to find out what happens when Cupid comes calling…
. Blister was there for Jonah when he was the new student everyone loved to hate. Blister was there for Jonah when he lied and said he was a big TV personality. And Blister was right alongside Jonah when he turned his lie into a real job at a television station, complete with his very own show. But now everything has changed. Because Jonah is in trouble once again, and he’s looking to Blister to be more than just a friend…
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The Lovely Shoes

Can the right pair of shoes make anyone feel beautiful?Franny is constantly embarrassed by two things in her life. One is her right foot, which curls in from a birth defect, so she has to wear ugly, heavy orthopedic shoes. And the other is her mother Margaret: beautiful, extravagant, flamboyant mortifying , in their small Ohio town. Franny’s first school dance is a disaster, so Margaret announces her latest crazy plan: They will travel to Italy to meet Salvatore Ferragamo, who will sculpt a pair of slippers especially for Franny. The idea is outrageous. The trip is expensive. And the experience changes Franny’s life forever.

Skin Deep (With: Marita Golden)

Candid, poignant, provocative, and informative, the essays and stories in Skin Deep explore a wide spectrum of racial issues between black and white women, from self identity and competition to childrearing and friendship. Eudora Welty contributes a bittersweet story of a one hundred year old black woman whose spirit is as determined and strong as anything in nature. Bestselling author Naomi Wolf recalls her first exposure to racism growing up, examining the subtle forms it can take even among well meaning people; bell hooks writes about the intersection between black women and feminist politics; and Joyce Carol Oates includes a one act play in which racial stereotypes are reversed. Among the other writers featured in the collection are Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Susan Straight, Mary Morris, and Beverly Lowry. A groundbreaking anthology that reveals surprising insights and hidden truths to a subject too often clouded by misperceptions and easy assumptions, Skin Deep is a major contribution to understanding our culture.

Outside The Law

Seventeen original pieces of writing that use powerful storytelling to define justice, to give it a face, and to show how it affects the lives of every one of us. Includes contributions from Julia Alvarez, Richard Bausch, Madison Smartt Bell, Blanche McCrary Boyd, John Casey, Michael Dorris, Garrett Hongo, Charles Johnson, Alex Kotlowitz, Beverly Lowry, Martha Minow, Clarence Page, Sarah Pettit, Ntozake Shange, Susan Richards Shreve, Gerald M. Stern, Daniel J. Wideman, and John Edgar Wideman.

Tales Out of School

Sherman Alexie, David Sedaris, and fifteen other writers on their recent experiences in American classroomsTales Out of School is a luminous collection of diverse and passionate life stories on the ground testimonies of sitting in an American classroom today. Sherman Alexie writes of the ‘sweet, almost innocent choices that Indian boys are forced to make’ in school. Stuart Dybek tells his own story of highly instructive Catholic grade school field trips to the county jail and the stockyards, and David Sedaris narrates a horribly funny account of life underground as a gay eighth grader. These and other writers contribute original essays that tease out the powerful, flawed, wildly diverse experience of school in America. A book for teachers wanting to understand, parents needing to make decisions, and anyone who’s sat in a classroom and can’t ever forget it. ‘Give this book an A…
. Unlike many books about American education, Tales Out of School avoids the temptation to pigeonhole our system. There are no rights or wrongs here. Only truths.’ Vineyard Gazette

Dream Me Home Safely

In the title essay of this extraordinary keepsake of childhood in America, John Edgar Wideman pays fierce tribute to a complex mother who ‘used to Dream Me Home Safely by sitting up and waiting for me to stumble in.’ The young writer Bich Minh Nguyen remembers arriving in Michigan from Vietnam in 1975 and a classmate who said, ‘Your house smells funny,’ and Michael Parker recalls a sister’s vivid and hilarious act of defiance on a particular North Carolina evening in 1971. These and many more intensely intimate memories make Dream Me Home Safely a collection as diverse and powerful as all of American letters.

Warm Springs

A rich and moving memoir of childhood illness and its aftermath by a member of the last generation of Americans to have experienced childhood polio. Just after her eleventh birthday, at the height of the frightening childhood polio epidemic, Susan Richards Shreve was sent as a patient to the sanitarium at Warm Springs, Georgia. It was a place famously founded by FDR, ‘a perfect setting in time and place and strangeness for a hospital of crippled children.’ There the young Shreve met Joey Buckley, a thirteen year old in a wheelchair who desperately wants to play football for Alabama. The shock of first love and of separation from her fiercely protective mother propels Shreve on a careening course from Warm Springs bad girl to overachieving saint and back again. This indelible portrait of the psychic fallout of childhood illness ends like Tobias Wolff’s Old School with a shocking collision between adolescent drive and genteel institution. During Shreve’s stay at Warm Springs, the Salk vaccine was developed, an event that put an end to a harrowing time for American families. Shreve’s memoir is both a fascinating historical record of that time and an intensely felt story of childhood.