Showing results by narrator "Elena Rey" in All Categories

Maren the whale shark loves her life as the biggest, brightest fish in the sea. She spends her days exploring the water around her and finding fresh new snacks as she travels. But one day, the ocean goes dark and Maren’s adventures come to a halt. With only the glow from the scales on her back and her best friend, Remy the remora, by her side, Maren sets out on her greatest quest yet—to cross the ocean and ask the Aztec goddess Huixtocihuatl about the darkness and to figure out how to bring back the light. Along the way she meets new friends and exemplifies the power of sharing!

Sixteen-year-old Lola Boyd suffers from a mysterious disease. Her doctors have no explanation for the chronic lethargy, migraines, and lightheadedness that plague her. But when Lola and her mom and stepdad move to Claret Creek, a small rural Colorado town, to live in her late father’s family home, she starts experiencing a new symptom. Sudden episodes give her visions from another time, piecing together snippets of a conspiracy that happened over 100 years before.

The occasionally magic, always superstitious town of Prior’s End is famous for three things: Whimsical charm at the annual Fall Festival. The legend of the wishing well hidden in a forest bristling with secrets. And Nova Marwood’s missing hiker father. Every year without him, it gets easier to pretend Nova doesn’t believe in myth and magic. Easier to pretend she’s doing okay. Easier to pretend she doesn’t have a secret crush on the girl she fake-hates. Kiara Mistry is the luckiest girl in town and the thief of every crush Nova had her heart set on first. In theory, Nova should resent Kiara.

People pleaser Evie Whitmore can’t believe her art and architecture class trip has brought her to Venice—home of gondolas and crumbling palazzos, and the inspiration for both her art and her hidden passion, Elven Realms, a series of novels set in the very city she’s about to explore. Rumors about an underground Elven Realms fan club swirl, and Evie, wearing a costume and mask, sneaks out at night to find it. There’s no way she can tell anyone what she’s doing—not her friends, and certainly not Gabriel Martinez, the bad boy loner she’s been partnered with on the trip.

We all have stories to tell, but not everyone gets the mentoring and training or encouragement to become a great storyteller. Founded a quarter century ago, Girls Write Now has empowered young women and gender-expansive youth to harness their creative talents, gaining confidence, skills, and a community supporting them in sharing stories the world needs to hear.

No one has ever called Frani Gonzalez squeamish. Seriously, whether it’s guts (no big deal), bugs (move aside, she’s got this), or anything else that you might find at the Central Texas Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, to her and her dad, the university’s body farm is just home. Having bodies buried in her backyard doesn’t exactly make Frani the most popular kid in school, and the imaginary spider that lives in a web in her brain isn’t helping either.

Dolores Huerta always knew that helping others in her community was important. So when she became a teacher and saw how hard it was for her students from farm families to find enough to eat, she knew there was more she could do. Dolores became a labor rights activist, fighting for better conditions for farm workers. She started unions so that workers would be treated more fairly. And she was also a leader of the women's rights movement.

When Four Stories by American Women was first published by Penguin Classics in 1990, it understandably reflected the second-wave feminist interpretations of that time—a period marked by an impressive recovery of what were then considered to be minor American writers. This updated and expanded volume, Twelve Stories by American Women edited by Arielle Zibrak, offers a more diverse selection of writers—including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, María Cristina Mena, Zitkala-Ša, Sui Sin Far, and Barbara E. Pope.

Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict.

Grief, pain, hope, and love collide in this short story collection. In New York City, teens, their families, and their communities feel the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst the fear and loss, these teens and the adults around them persevere with love and hope while living in difficult circumstances. From award-winning author Mahogany L. Browne comes a poignant collection of interconnected prose, poems, and lists about the humanity and resilience of New Yorkers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Aspiring journalist Noa has a secret she's been keeping. Ever since her sister's tragic death, she's felt almost...relieved. Noa and Leah had been locked in competition with one another since childhood, and things came to a head when her sister scored a glitzy internship at a New York society newspaper. Noa can't help but revel in her new found autonomy.

Sam Osborne may have helped her new friend Hector Griggs save St. Lawrence’s Catholic School for Boys from a terrifying monster, but she is still trying to prove herself as a member of Kairos, the secretive and shadowy government agency devoted to investigating the strange and unusual. And her unique ability to control how others see her makes her the perfect agent…if she can learn to play by Kairos’ rules.

Alex Eager lives in Faillin, OR with her grandmother, a retired librarian. Life should be great for Alex, since she finally worked up the courage to ask her best friend PJ if they could be more than friends and she said yes. But their new relationship will have to be long distance, because PJ is moving. On top of that, Alex is worried that something is wrong with her increasingly forgetful grandmother. And to make matters worse, Faillin is holding a referendum on library funding, and things aren’t looking good. Will anything good for Alex ever last?

Ivy Stewart thought West Archer Academy was the first step to everything she’d always wanted. The key to her entire future. But now…she might not even have a future. It’s the start of a new semester, and Ivy’s very old friends and her very new immortality are at odds. The Evers, kids who are hundreds of years old and never age, are determined to save Ivy from suffering that same miserable fate…even if it means she won’t remember them. But what’s worse? Forgetting her family, her friends, her life or never turning thirteen?

In Barcelona, the beach is beautiful, the tapas are delicious, and the boys are plentiful. Good thing, too, because Stefi’s nursing a broken heart after a disastrous breakup and is excited to reinvent herself, practice her Catalan language skills, and take baking classes at a legendary culinary institute, all in a magical city in Spain where no one knows her.

In Dancing with Butterflies, Reyna Grande renders the Mexican immigrant experience in “lyrical and sensual” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) prose through the poignant stories of four women brought together through folklorico dance.