Burlington Public Library

Forced to learn things about the mother she's hated for years, Ruby Bridge learns some tough lessons about love, forgiveness, and understanding. But it's a lesson that comes at a painfully high cost.Nora Bridge has built a highly successful career as an advice columnist valued for her frank honesty and high moral standards. She is nationally syndicated in the newspapers and has a radio talk show on a Seattle station. But when a devastating scandal...

Resolving to become the world's greatest stand-up comedian despite less-than-funny challenges in his life, wheelchair-bound middle school student Jamie Grimm endures bullying from his mean-spirited cousin and hopes he will be fairly judged when he enters a local comedy contest.

At the annual Edinburgh International Festival, six unique individuals are brought together by their dreams of fame, success, love, and happiness, and as they each follow their destinies, their lives are forever changed.

When seventeen-year-old Zelda is chosen for an elite team at a prestigious improvisation camp, it is a big step toward achieving her dreams, but first she must survive her teammates' sexism and coach's cruelty.

Written with breathtaking urgency and precision, this stunnng novel plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, the violent and the tender dissolve into one another.

Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege--but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even . . . getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus, and cuddling with his military-grade Israeli guard dogs, but nothing seems to lift the cloud of emptiness and ennui. Even the sage advice of his best friend, actor and dinosaur skull collector Nicolas Cage, isn't enough to pull Carrey out of his...

Having discovered his natural talent for comedy at his school's end-of-semester talent show, Jake decides to pursue "his art," but can his comedian-mentor teach Jake humility as well as humor?

Billy Plimpton wants to be a famous comedian when he grows up but his stutter is getting in the way, and right now he is so worried about being made fun of by the kids in his new school that he plans on not talking at all, but the plan backfires because his persistent silence only draws attention of the school bully--and Billy realizes that he needs another plan, one that does not depend on him speaking without a stutter.

"Dylan O'Conner is a gifted young artist just trying to do the right thing in life. He's on his way to an arts festival in Santa Fe when he stops to get a room for himself and his twenty-year-old autistic brother, Shep. But in a nightmarish instant, Dylan is attacked by a mysterious "doctor," injected with a strange substance, and told that he is now a carrier of something that will either kill him...or transform his life in the most remarkable way....

Wheelchair-bound middle school student Jamie Grimm's recent victory in the Planet's Funniest Kid Comic Contest leads to a television sitcom based on his life, but being the star of the show forces him to balance his newfound success with the responsibilities of being a good friend.