Bear Books Lower School

Mia Tang has a lot of secrets.
Number 1: She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, ten-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests.
Number 2: Her parents hide immigrants. And if the mean motel owner, Mr. Yao, finds out they've been letting them stay in the empty rooms for free, the Tangs will be doomed.
Number 3: She wants to be a writer. But how can she when her mom thinks she should stick to math because English is not her first language?
It will take all of Mia's courage, kindness, and hard work to get through this year. Will she be able to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and guests, escape Mr. Yao, and go for her dreams? - Goodreads

Zanzibar, a raven cook, meets Achille LeBlab, a lizard who is a journalist looking for a story so he decides to go to the desert and tries to carry a camel.

"Norm is worried about fitting in at camp. Literally. He's not just tall for a kid. He's tall even for a bigfoot. Oliver, the only human at camp, has the opposite problem: he's small enough that a strong wind might knock him over. With the help of their new friends, Hazel (a hyperactive jackalope) and Wisp (a boy fairy who has trouble flying), they'll have to work together to earn their canoeing certification without disturbing the resident lake monster-or Barnaby Snoop, who will stop at nothing to capture Norm for his personal rare creature collection"--Amazon.com.

Flamingo detective Fabio and his giraffe associate, Gilbert, investigate when a singing hippopotamus disappears during auditions for a talent show being staged to save the failing Hotel Royale.

Kevin the flying pony blows in on a magical storm and - DOOF! - crashes into the balcony outside Max's flat. As the storm waters rise and the town is besieged with creatures, Max and Kevin set about putting things right. With Max's quick thinking and a constant supply of biscuits for Kevin, there's nothing this heroic duo can't achieve.

"Tiger is a very lucky kid: she has a monster living under her bed. Every night, Tiger and Monster play games until it's time for lights out. Of course, Monster would never try to scare Tiger--that's not what best friends do. But Monster needs to scare someone--it's a monster, after all. So while Tiger sleeps, Monster scares all of her nightmares away. Thanks to her friend, Tiger has nothing but good dreams. But waiting in the darkness is a nightmare so big and mean that Monster can't fight it alone. Only teamwork and a lot of bravery can chase this nightmare away"--Amazon.

Chester hopes to follow in his mother's paw prints and become a service dog, but when a family with an autistic son adopts him, it's not exactly what Chester imagined, but he'll do whatever he can to prove he's the right dog for the job.

Buddy Burger escapes his home planet, lands in Hollywood, and is cast in a new television series, but must pretend his six eyes and suction-cup feet are the costume and his human skin, real.

"Told in two voices, Clover, twelve, and her autistic brother Fergus, eleven, discover they are descended from Wendy Darling and set off with Peter Pan for adventures in Neverland"--Provided by publisher.

When quiet, nine-year-old Ahmet arrives in their classroom, a boy and his friends fail to draw him out but try a new plan after learning he is a Syrian refugee.

"It's winter in the town of Eerie-on-Sea, where the mist is thick and the salt spray is rattling the windows of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Inside, young Herbert Lemon, Lost and Founder for the hotel, has an unexpected visitor. It seems that Violet Parma, a fearless girl around his age, lost her parents at the hotel when she was a baby, and she's sure that the nervous Herbert is the only person who can help her find them. The trouble is, Violet is being pursued at that moment by a strange hook-handed man. And the town legend of the Malamander - a part-fish, part-human monster whose egg is said to make dreams come true - is rearing its scaly head. As various townspeople, some good-hearted, some nefarious, reveal themselves to be monster hunters on the sly, can Herbert and Violet elude them and discover what happened to Violet's kin?" -- Amazon.

Told from separate viewpoints, Chess, Emma, and Finn Greystone, ages twelve, ten, and eight, investigate why their mother went missing and uncover their ties to an alternate world.

A lightning strike made Lucy, twelve, a math genius but, after years of homeschooling, her grandmother enrolls her in middle school and she learns that life is more than numbers.

Eleven-year-old Tally is starting sixth grade at Kingswood Academy and she really wants to fit in, which means somehow hiding her autism, hypersensitivity to touch, and true self, and trying to act "normal" like her former best friend, Layla, who is distancing herself from Tally and her fourteen-year-old sister, Nell, who is always angry with Tally for being different; but as she records her thoughts and anxieties in her coping diary, Tally begins to wonder--what is "normal" anyway?

Eleven-year-old Maggie, a middle-born child where only the eldest are valued, has her world turned upside-down by forbidden friendship with Una, a wanderer girl from outside the boundaries of Fennis Wick.