New Releases by MARTHE JOCELYN

Billie Stoner’s mother is stuck to her like glue. In the Stoner family, togetherness rules. Billie is desperate to be like other eleven-year-olds she reads about, who are allowed to walk to school alone and who have their own rooms. While on a family outing to Central Park, Billie discovers a magic makeup bag that allows her to fulfil her deepest desire – to become invisible. With the help of her best friend, Hubert, Billie skips school for the day and romps around New York City enjoying her freedom. After a brief stint in a movie and several other adventures, Billie realizes that having too much freedom is just as bad as having none at all. She enlists Hubert’s help to find the teenage witch who is the owner of the makeup bag and who, hopefully, knows how to cure her. This easy-to-read first novel is both comic and touching as the animated first-person text describes Billie’s treacherous, but ultimately triumphant, day. Billie’s adventures help her appreciate her mother and find the independence she needs within her own family.

What’s more fun – and more hard work – than a puppy? An invisible one! Author Marthe Jocelyn takes readers back to Manhattan to meet up once again with Billie Stoner in her follow-up to The Invisible Day. Billie has always wanted a puppy, but her mother and father both agree: No dog! No problem, thinks Billie, who turns to her mad scientist friend Jodie for a plan to make her new pet invisible! The plan works, but soon Billie finds that keeping her invisible dog, Harry Houdini, under wraps isn’t as easy as she planned, especially in a tiny apartment. To begin with, he still smells like a puppy, feels like a puppy, and worst of all, sounds like a puppy. What’s more, her arch enemy Alissa is beginning to catch on to the secret. Just how long can Billie keep Harry concealed?

A summer night. A Saturday. For Claire, this summer feels fantastic because she’ll be zooming off to college in the fall. For her younger sister, Natalie, it’s an okay time with her friends: summer jobs, then hanging out. Fun mostly, but nothing special. A summer night. An accident. Life changes in a heartbeat. In Would You, Marthe Jocelyn tells a haunting story of tragedy and loss, of how one day can shape the next and at the same time emphasize the magnitude of life.

In the late nineteenth century, in a dot of a town called Westley, lives the smallest girl in the world. Josephine stands only twenty-two inches high and her parents charge gawkers a penny a piece to see her – until they realize that the headmistress of MacLaren Academy for Girls will pay even more. At the Academy Josephine is treated like a slave and is tormented by the fine young ladies who attend, until she takes five gold dollars and runs away. She finds a new life with R. J. Walters’ Museum of Earthly Astonishments. Among the other human curiosities in the Coney Island freak show, Josephine finds the family she has never known…and dangers greater than any she’d ever dreamed. This riveting novel of adventure and injustice, new in paperback, has received many honors, including selection as a finalist for the Canadian Library book of the Year for Children Award, and as a shortlisted title for the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award and the Red Cedar Book Award.

In 1901, fourteen-year-old Mable Riley dreams of being a writer and having adventures while stuck in Perth County, Ontario, assisting her sister in teaching school and secretly becoming friends with a neighbor who holds scandalous opinions on women''s rights. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Jr Lib Guild. Reprint.

Hannah is a little girl with a big problem. She loves her dresses – so much so that she cannot decide what to wear. Her solution is inventive. She will assign one dress to each day. The problem seems to be solved until a special day – her birthday – rolls around. To save having to make a decision, Hannah piles on all her seven dresses! But how can you play games, or blow out candles, when you are swaddled in cloth?

Describes the life and times of Thomas Coram and his goal of establishing a safe refuge for abandoned babies in the early 1700s.

School is over! Hurry, pack up all your summer clothes (don’t forget your bathing suit!), load everything into the car, and find a spot in the backseat. Summer is about to begin. The siblings in Marthe Jocelyn’s new picture book can’t wait to get to the cottage. The smell of pine needles, the first swim off the dock, playing summer games, and greeting their old friend, the rowboat Mayfly, are among the summer fun that young readers will identify with. Delightfully illustrated with Jocelyn’s signature collages, Mayfly captures the incomparable excitement of the beginning of summer vacation and those seemingly endless days that follow, which children (and grown-ups) look forward to all year round.

Hannah loves to make collections. Whether it''s new barrettes for her hair or seashells from the shore, she likes to gather things and sort them by size, shape, and color. But now she is facing a dilemma. The children in her class have been invited to bring their favorite collection to school. How can she possibly pick a favorite? Once again, Hannah''s boundless imagination wins the day. She finds a way to show off all of her collections in a surprising new way. "From the Hardcover edition."