FRANCES O'ROARK DOWELL SERIES:

Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan

Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Sam the Man has a new school project. He's got to "babysit" a vegetable in this second hilarious chapter book in a new series from Frances O'Roark Dowell.Sam the Man is back, and he needs a NEW plan. Sam has already solved a chicken problem, but this time, he's having rutabaga issues. Rutabega? Yes, Rutabega. You see, Sam thought he was quite clever, missing school while his classmates were picking out their vegetable for a two-week science project. But, instead of being able to skip the project, he gets stuck with the vegetable that no one else wanted: the rutabaga! What even is this thing? It's dirty and kinda purple, and it does not look like something Sam would ever eat. Sam the Man is not a vegetable man to begin with, and he doesn't think he'll ever be a rutabaga man. But after drawing a little face on it, he starts to grow fond of the curious veg. Then it dawns on him that vegetables don't last forever...so he changes his plan: he has to keep this...
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The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away

The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Marylin and Kate find that boys can be just as complicated as friendship in this conclusion to the bestselling Secret Language of Girls trilogy, a “quietly perceptive tour de force” (Kirkus Reviews) from the bestselling author of Dovey Coe and The Secret Language of Girls.Marylin knows that, as a middle school cheerleader, she has certain obligations. She has to smile as she walks down the hall, be friends with the right people, and keep her manicure in tip-top shape. But Marylin is surprised to learn there are also rules about whom she’s allowed to like—and Benjamin, the student body president, is deemed unacceptable. But maybe there is a way to convince the cheerleaders that her interest in Benjamin is for their own good—maybe she’ll pretend that she’s using him to get new cheerleading uniforms! Kate, of course, finds this ludicrous. She is going to like who she likes, thank you very much. And she just so...
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Sam the Man & the Dragon Van Plan

Sam the Man & the Dragon Van Plan

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Sam the Man is back with not one, but TWO plans in this third hilarious chapter book in the Sam the Man series from Frances O'Roark Dowell.Sam Graham is a dragon fan and a big truck man. Monster trucks to be specific. And when the family minivan needs replacing, Sam has the perfect plan: get a family monster truck instead! But convincing Mom that a monster truck is the way to go may prove to be a little too difficult, even for Sam. So he comes up with another plan: Turn the minivan into a monster minivan with a super-cool dragon painted on it! First, though, Sam has to convince his family why a monster minivan is the best choice—oh, and learn how to paint a dragon...
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Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan

Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Sam the Man wants to earn some money and he's got a cluck-worthy plan in this endearing chapter book that's the first in a new series from Frances O'Roark Dowell.Sam the Man needs a job. Even his sister gets twenty bucks a pop for mowing people's lawns! But seven-year-olds aren't allowed to mow lawns, so Sam decides to ask his next door neighbor if she needs help doing other chores. It turns out she'll pay him a whole dollar each time he can convince her dad, Mr. Stockfish, to join him for a walk. But it turns out that getting Mr. Stockfish to leave the living room isn't easy. AND a dollar a pop isn't going to cut it. So when Mrs. Kerner, another neighbor, asks if Sam would like to watch her chickens, Sam jumps on the task. You can count on him, yes indeed. Watching chickens is more fun than he expects, and comes with an added bonus: it turns out that visiting the chickens is the one thing that can coax Mr. Stockfish out of the house! But what does a seven-year-old do...
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Phineas L. MacGuire...Gets Cooking!

Phineas L. MacGuire...Gets Cooking!

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Chemistry in the kitchen? Phineas L. MacGuire applies his science skills to culinary creations in this food-tastic tale from the bestselling author of Chicken Boy.Phineas L. MacGuire—scientist extraordinaire—has a new chore: cooking dinner every night. He may be a genius, but he knows nothing about following a recipe. A pinch? A dash? A smidge? This doesn't seem very scientific. A pound of spaghetti? Salt on brownies? Lemon in biscuits? Why, these recipes look a little funky. But he'd better learn quickly if he and his friends are going to win the $10,000 Bake-Off prize. And to complicate matters, school bully Evan Forbes has taken a liking to Phineas's brownies...too much of a liking. As in, if Phineas can't make Evan enough brownies, he'll get clobbered for sure. Fortunately for Phineas, he has the help of his friends, and even better, he soon discovers that cooking is kind of like chemistry. So the whole recipe thing might just work...
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Trouble the Water

Trouble the Water

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

From the award-winning author of Dovey Coe comes a sweeping tale of the friendship between a black girl and a white boy and the prejudices they must overcome in segregated Celeste, Kentucky, as the pair try to solve the mysteries surrounding a lonely old dog.Eleven-year-old Callie is fearless, stubborn, and a little nosy. So when she sees an old yellow dog wandering around town by itself, you can bet she's going to figure out who he belongs to. But when her sleuthing leads her to cross paths with a white boy named Wendell who wants to help, the segregated town doesn't take too kindly to their budding friendship. Meanwhile, a nearly invisible boy named Jim is stuck in a cabin in the woods. He's lost his dog, but can't remember exactly when his pup's disappeared. When his companion, a little boy named Thomas, who's been invisible much longer than he, explains that they are ghosts, the two must figure out why they can't seem to cross the river to the other side...
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The Second Life of Abigail Walker

The Second Life of Abigail Walker

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Is it possible to start afresh when you're thoroughly weighted down? A "timeless and entirely of-the-moment" (Publishers Weekly) novel from the author of The Secret Language of Girls. Seventeen pounds. That's the difference between Abigail Walker and Kristen Gorzca. Between chubby and slim, between teased and taunting. Abby is fine with her body and sick of seventeen pounds making her miserable, so she speaks out against Kristen and her groupies—and becomes officially unpopular. Embracing her new status, Abby heads to an abandoned lot across the street and crosses an unfamiliar stream that leads her to a boy who's as different as they come.Anders is homeschooled, and while he's worried that Abby's former friends are out to get her, he's even more worried about his dad, a war veteran home from Iraq who is dangerously disillusioned with life. But if his dad can finish his poem about the expedition of Lewis and Clark, if he can recapture the...
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Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed!

Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed!

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Phineas L. MacGuire--a.k.a. Mac--aims to be the best fourth-grade scientist ever. It's a tall order, but he's confident that he can achieve his goal, especially since Aretha has asked him to help her earn a Girl Scout badge by creating the mold that produces penicillin. How many fourth graders can say they've reproduced penicillin? None, as far as Mac knows. And who knows more about mold than Mac? But soon Mac is busy managing Ben's campaign for class president and dealing with his weird new babysitter. How can he focus on mold?
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Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Erupts!

Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Erupts!

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PHINEAS L. MACGUIRE, BOY-SCIENTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE, AKA MAC: 1. He's allergic to purple, telephone calls, and girls, and can prove it. 2. He's probably the world's expert on mold, including which has the highest stink potential. 3. He does not have a best friend. He does, however, have an un-best friend, who he does not -- repeat, not -- want to upgrade to best-friend status. But disaster strikes when his teacher pairs Mac and his un-best friend together for the upcoming science fair. Worse, this un-best friend wants the project to be on dinosaurs, which is so third grade. Worse still, it seems as though everyone else in his class finds the un-best friend as unlikable as Mac does. But, being a boy-scientist, once Mac notices this, he just might have to do some investigating. This very funny young middle-grade novel includes tantalizingly grue- some experiments for exploding your own volcanoes and imploding...
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Shooting the Moon

Shooting the Moon

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

JAMIE THINKS HER FATHER CAN DO ANYTHING.... UNTIL THE ONE TIME HE CAN DO NOTHING. When twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter's brother joins the Army and is sent to Vietnam, Jamie is plum thrilled. She can't wait to get letters from the front lines describing the excitement of real-life combat: the sound of helicopters, the smell of gunpowder, the exhilaration of being right in the thick of it. After all, they've both dreamed of following in the footsteps of their father, the Colonel. But TJ's first letter isn't a letter at all. It's a roll of undeveloped film, the first of many. What Jamie sees when she develops TJ's photographs reveals a whole new side of the war. Slowly the shine begins to fade off of Army life - and the Colonel. How can someone she's worshipped her entire life be just as helpless to save her brother as she is? From the author of the Edgar Award-winning Dovey Coe comes a novel, both timely and timeless, about the sacrifices we make...
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Sam the Man & the Secret Detective Club Plan

Sam the Man & the Secret Detective Club Plan

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Sam Graham is a mystery man. But when there are no mysteries to solve, Sam comes up with a plan to find one in this hilarious fourth chapter book in the Sam the Man series from Frances O'Roark Dowell.Sam Graham loves solving mysteries. After successfully solving the mystery of Annabelle's lost sock, Sam decides to make mystery-solving his main hobby (after tending the chickens, of course). He recruits his best friend Gavin and a couple of their classmates for a detective club, and together they're ready for any mystery that comes their way. There's a problem though...there are no cases to solve! So, Sam comes up with a plan: They'll take the most interesting things in the lost and found and try to find out who lost what. But who could a locked box, a very long stuffed snake, and a red jacket belong to? And how will Sam and his friends find them? And...why does that jacket smell so bad?!?
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Where I'd Like to Be

Where I'd Like to Be

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

A ghost saved twelve-year-old Maddie's life when she was an infant, her Granny Lane claims, so Maddie must always remember that she is special. But it's hard to feel special when you've spent your life shuffled from one foster home to another. And now that she's at the East Tennessee Children's Home, Maddie feels even less special.She longs for a place to call home. She even has a "book of houses" in which she glues pictures of places she'd like to live. Then one day, a new girl, Murphy, shows up at the Home armed with tales about exotic travels, being able tot fly, and boys who recite poetry to wild horses. When Murphy offers Maddie something she has never had before, Maddie begins to wonder if she has finally found someone who feels like home.
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The Secret Language of Girls

The Secret Language of Girls

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

In the old days, when Kate had no interest in romance, she never cared what other people thought. Now, it appeared, love was turning her into a rotten human being. Eleven-year-old Kate Faber wishes she could talk to her best friend, Marylin, about this. But Marylin is no longer her best friend. Or is she? Kate and Marylin were always the kind of best friends who lived on the same block for their entire lives, and who agreed on what kinds of boys were worth kissing and who should be invited to their sleepover. The kind of best friends who didn’t need words to talk, but who always just knew. But lately Marylin has started to think that Kate can be a bit babyish. And Kate thinks Marylin is acting like a big snob. Somehow nothing is the same, but secretly Kate and Marylin both wish it could be...
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The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Kate and Marylin are best friends forever.... Well, except for last year when they weren't friends anymore.... And except for this year when they both want to be friends again, but just don't know how. But the thing is, even as they are trying to fix their broken friendship, they are becoming more and more unalike. And that's becoming harder and harder to deal with. Well, it would be a lot easier if Kate would just take some of Marylin's fashion advice. Ballet flats would look so much better than those big black combat boots. Feminine. But Kate doesn't want to be feminine. She wants to learn guitar and write her own songs; she wants to be the exact opposite of the middle-school cheerleaders. And maybe if Marylin would just stick up for herself and not get bullied by Mazie (the Meanest Cheerleader Ever) into judging anyone who's the least bit different, Marylin and Kate could be real friends again. Funny, realistic, and incredibly insightful, Edgar Award-winning novelist Frances O'Roark Dowell explores the shifting terrain of middle-school friendship in the companion book to the well-loved The Secret Language of Girls.
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Dovey Coe

Dovey Coe

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O'Roark Dowell

My name is Dovey Coe and I reckon it do’'t matter if you like me or not. I’m here to lay the record straight, to let you know them folks saying I done a terrible thing are liars. I aim to prove it, too. I hated Parnell Caraway as much as the next person, but I didn’t kill him. Dovey Coe says what’s on her mind, so it’s no secret that she can’t stand Parnell Caraway. Parnell may be the son of the richest man in town, but he’s mean and snobby, and Dovey can’t stand the fact that he’s courting her sister, Caroline, or the way he treats her brother, Amos, as if he were stupid just because he can’t hear. So when Parnell turns up dead, and Dovey’s in the room where his body is discovered, she soon finds herself on trial for murder. Can the outspoken Dovey sit still and trust a city slicker lawyer who’s still wet behind the ears to get her out of the biggest mess of her life?
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