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Thirteen-year-old Travis, living in cramped quarters with his alcoholic grandfather, longs for his old life in the country, and struggles in school to hide the fact that he cannot read, but a persistent teacher and a special girl open his eyes to a new world.

In the country of Carthya, a devious nobleman engages four orphans in a brutal competition to be selected to impersonate the king's long-missing son in an effort to avoid a civil war. The first book of The Ascendance Trilogy. 

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunts and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.