Johnny Delgado: Private Detective

Gr 7 Up—Two hi/lo titles. Johnny Delgado is an amateur detective who unwittingly gets involved in a major gang issue. He thinks that he is going to help solve a case for two of the most beautiful girls in the projects, but, instead, they help set him up for disaster. Johnny is drugged and beaten. He wakes up covered in blood, holding a knife, in a room with a body that was stabbed to death. Johnny needs to think fast, evading both the gang members and the police. Watcher centers around Sarah, an overweight teen who sneaks into her father's email account and discovers that he has been communicating with her long-absent mother. She learns that her mother is now a few towns away and decides to use her weekends to find her, even though the emails mention that her mother never wants to see her again. Tension escalates as Sarah breaks into her house and begins to cut school to stalk her. Eventually, both Sarah and her mother come clean with each other. Both of these short, easy page-turners feature protagonists that readers will cheer for.—Lindsay Klemas, JM Rapport School for Career Development, Bronx, NY