Edmonds. The Matchlock Gun. (P) In 1756, during the French and Indian War, ten-year-old Edward is determined to protect his home and family with the ancient Spanish gun his father had given him.
Brink. Caddie Woodlawn. (R) The adventures of an eleven-year-old tomboy growing up on the Wisconsin frontier in the mid-nineteenth century.
Fleischman. The Whipping Boy. (R) A bratty prince and his whipping boy have many adventures when they inadvertently trade places after becoming involved with dangerous outlaws.
MacLachlan. Sarah, Plain and Tall. (R)When their father invites a mail-order bride to come live with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated by their new mother and hope that she will stay.
Naylor. Shiloh. (R) When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog’s real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
Sorensen. Miracles on Maple Hill. (R) After her father returns from the war moody and tired, Marly’s family decides to move from the city to Maple Hill Farm in the Pennsylvania countryside where they share many adventures which help restore their spirits and their bond with each other.
Coatsworth. The Cat Who Went to Heaven. (S) In ancient Japan, a struggling artist is angered when his housekeeper brings home a tiny white cat he can barely afford to feed. But when the village’s head priest commissions a painting of the Buddha for a healthy sum, the artist softens toward the animal he believes has brought him luck.
Konisburg. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. (S) Having run away with her younger brother to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twelve-year-old Claudia strives to keep things in order in their new home and to become a changed person and a heroine to herself.
Armstrong. Sounder. (T) Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young African-American boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and enjoying the companionship of his devoted dog Sounder.
Kadohata. Kira-Kira. (T) Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.
Paterson. Bridge to Terabithia. (T) Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. And he almost is, until the new girl in school, Leslie Burke, outpaces him. The two become fast friends and spend most days in the woods behind Leslie’s house, where they invent an enchanted land called Terabithia. One morning, Leslie goes to Terabithia without Jess and a tragedy occurs. It will take the love of his family and the strength that Leslie has given him for Jess to be able to deal with his grief.
Blos. A Gathering of Days. (U) The journal of a 14-year-old girl in 1831, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father’s remarriage, and the death of her best friend.
Byars. The Summer of the Swan. (U) Sara’s life has always flowed smoothly, like the gliding swans on the lake, until her little brother Charlie disappears. Then Sara is forced to see her life in a whole new way.
Curtis. Bud, Not Buddy. (U) Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father–the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
De Angeli. The Door in the Wall. (U) The crippled son of a powerful nobleman in fourteenth-century England sets out to prove his courage and his right to be recognized by the King.
DiCamillo. The Tale of Despereaux. (U) The adventures of Desperaux Tilling, a small mouse of unusual talents, the princess that he loves, the servant girl who longs to be a princess, and a devious rat determined to bring them all to ruin.
Enright. Thimble Summer. (U) A few hours after nine-year-old Garnet Linden finds a silver thimble in the dried-up riverbed, the rains come and end the long drought on the farm. The rains bring safety for the crops and the livestock, and money for Garnet’s father. Garnet can’t help feeling that the thimble is a magic talisman, for the summer proves to be interesting and exciting in many different ways.
Estes. Ginger Pye. (U)The disappearance of a new puppy named Ginger and the appearance of a mysterious man in a mustard yellow hat bring excitement into the lives of the Pye children.
Field. Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. (U) Hitty is a doll of great charm and character, and her memoirs reveal her delightful personality. Hitty, or Mehitable as she was really named, was made in the early 1800s for Phoebe Preble, a little girl from Maine. This is the story of Hitty’s years with Phoebe, and the many that follow in the life of a well-loved doll.
George. Julie of the Wolves. (U) While running away from home and an unwanted marriage, a thirteen-year-old Eskimo girl becomes lost on the North Slope of Alaska and is befriended by a wolf pack.
Konigsburg. The View from Saturday. (U) Four students develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition.
Krumgold. Onion John. (U) The friendship between Andy and the elderly Onion John–an immigrant handyman–becomes strained when Andy’s father tries to change the old man’s ways.
Lowry. Number the Stars. (U) In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.
Park. A Single Shard. (U) Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters’ village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself. When Min takes Tree-ear on as his helper, Tree-ear is elated until he finds obstacles in his path.
Speare. The Bronze Bow. (U) A young Jewish rebel is filled with hatred for the Romans and a desire to avenge his parents’ deaths until Jesus teaches him love and understanding of others.
Vanderpool. Moon Over Manifest. (U) Jumping off a train in Kansas to learn more about her father’s exciting past, Abilene Tucker is initially disappointed by the run-down Depression town she encounters before finding a hidden box of mementos and letters that mention a spy who played an important role in the town’s secret history.
Wojciechowska. Shadow of a Bull. (U) Manolo Olivar has to make a decision: to follow in his famous father’s shadow and become a bullfighter, or to follow his heart and become a doctor.
305.896 Yates. Amos Fortune, Free Man. (V) The life of the eighteenth-century African prince who, after being captured by slave traders, was brought to Massachusetts where he was a slave until he was able to buy his freedom at the age of sixty.
973.7 (Lincoln) Freedman. Lincoln: a Photobiography. (V) A collection of period photographs and prints, and a sampler of Lincoln’s writings provide an incisive study of the boyhood, marriage, professional life, political career, and tragic death of Abraham Lincoln.
O’Brien. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. (V) An inquisitive mouse becomes involved in an intrigue when she discovers her late husband had been held captive at a strange laboratory.
O’Dell. Island of the Blue Dolphins. (V) Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.
Peck. A Year Down Yonder. (V) During the recession of 1937, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice is sent to live with her feisty, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois and comes to a better understanding of this fearsome woman.
Raskin. The Westing Game. (V) This highly inventive mystery involves sixteen people who are invited to the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. They could become millionaires-it all depends on how they play the tricky and dangerous Westing game, a game involving blizzards, burglaries, and bombings!
Sachar. Holes. (V) Stanley Yelnats is sent away to a boys’ detention center where the warden instructs the boys to “build character” by digging holes everyday, but it doesn’t take long for Stanley to figure out that the warden is up to something, and he decides to figure out what it is.
Avi. Crispin: The Cross of Lead. (W) After being accused of a crime, thirteen-year-old Crispin becomes a wanted man and so must use a new identity and keep on the run in order to stay alive, in a suspenseful middle reader set in fourteenth-century England.
Creech. Walk Two Moons. (W) After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother’s route and Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.
Hawes. The Dark Frigate. (W) In seventeenth-century England, orphaned Philip Marsham, forced to flee London after a terrible accident, finds himself in an even more difficult situation when his ship is taken over by pirates and he is forced to become a member of their crew.
L’Engle. A Wrinkle in Time. (W) Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg’s father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. When the children learn that Mr. Murry has been captured by the Dark Thing, they time travel to Camazotz, where they must face the leader IT in the ultimate battle between good and evil.
Lewis. Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. (W) In the 1920s, a Chinese youth from the country comes to Chungking with his mother, where the bustling city offers adventure and his apprenticeship to a coppersmith brings good fortune.
Patron. The Higher Power of Lucky. (W) Fearing that her legal guardian plans to abandon her to return to France, ten-year-old aspiring scientist Lucky Trimble determines to run away while also continuing to seek the Higher Power that will bring stability to her life.
Rylant. Missing May. (W) After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living.
Speare. The Witch of Blackbird Pond. (W) Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives’ stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is in the meadows, where she enjoys the company of the old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, and on occasion, her young sailor friend Nat. But when Kit’s friendship with the “witch” is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft!
Spinelli. Maniac Magee. (W) Jeffrey Lionel “Maniac” Magee might have lived a normal life if a trolley accident hadn’t made him an orphan. After living with his unhappy and uptight aunt and uncle for eight years, he decides to run-and not just run away, but run. And this is where the myth of Maniac Magee begins, as he changes the lives of a racially divided small town with his amazing and legendary feats.
Stead. When You Reach Me. (W) As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1970s television game show, “The $20,000 Pyramid,” a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.
Taylor. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. (W) Young Cassie Logan endures humiliation and witnesses the racism of the KKK as they embark on a cross-burning rampage, before she fully understands the importance her family attributes to having land of their own.
Alexander. The High King. (X) In this final part of the chronicle of Prydain, the forces of good and evil meet in an ultimate confrontation, which determines the fate of Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper who wanted to be a hero.
Cooper. The Grey King. (X) There is a Welsh legend about a harp of gold, hidden within a certain hill, that will be found by a boy and a white dog with silver eyes — a dog that can see the wind. Will Stanton knew nothing of this when he came to Wales to recover from a severe illness. But when he met Bran, the strange boy who owned a white dog, he began to remember. For Will is the last-born of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to saving the world from the forces of evil, the Dark.
Cushman. The Midwife’s Apprentice. (X) In a small village in medieval England, a young homeless girl acquires a home and a new career when she becomes the apprentice to a sharp-tempered midwife.
Hamilton. M.C. Higgins, The Great. (X) As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M. C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.
Hesse. Out of the Dust. (X) In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family’s wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
Lofting. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. (X) Doctor Dolittle, the man who can talk to the animals, and nine year old Tommy Stubbins head out on the high seas for the mysterious, floating, Spidermonkey Island, surviving a terrible shipwreck and many other dangers in search of Long Arrow, a missing naturalist and the Great Glass Sea Snail.
Paterson. Jacob I Have Loved. (X) Sara Louise Bradshaw is sick and tired of her beautiful twin Caroline. Ever since they were born, Caroline has been the pretty one, the talented one, the better sister. Even now, Caroline seems to take everything: Louise’s friends, their parents’ love, her dreams for the future. For once in her life, Louise wants to be the special one. But in order to do that, she must first figure out who she is . . . and find a way to make a place for herself outside her sister’s shadow.
Sperry. Call It Courage. (X) Relates how Mafatu, a young Polynesian boy whose name means Stout Heart, overcomes his terrible fear of the sea and proves his courage to himself and his people.
Voigt. Dicey’s Song. (X) Now that the four abandoned Tillerman children are settled in with their grandmother, Dicey finds that their new beginnings require love, trust, humor, and courage.
527 (Bowditch) Latham. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. (Y) After finding a way to teach the ship’s crew members to understand navigation, Nat, a self-taught mathematician and astronomer in eighteenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, writes down his explanations and compiles them into “The American Practical Navigator,” also known as the “Sailors’ Bible.”A fictionalized look at Nathaniel Bowditch and how his knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, ships, and the sea led him to become a brilliant navigator.
Fox. The Slave Dancer. (Y) Kidnapped by the crew of an Africa-bound ship, a thirteen-year-old boy discovers to his horror that he is on a slaver and his job is to play music for the exercise periods of the human cargo.
Gantos. Dead End in Norvelt. (Y) Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is “grounded for life” by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack’s way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore – typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town.
Lowry. The Giver. (Y) This haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.
Trevino. I, Juan de Pareja. (Y) Although Juan is a slave, a friendship develops between him and his benevolent master, the great Spanish artist Velazques, who secretly teaches him to paint.
812 Schlitz. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village. (Z) A collection of short one-person plays featuring characters, between ten and fifteen years old, who live in or near a thirteenth-century English manor.
813.4 (Alcott) Meigs. Invincible Louisa. (Z) Biography tracing the fascinating life of Louisa May Alcott from her happy childhood in Pennsylvania and Boston to her success as a writer of such classics as Little women.
Alexander. The Crossover. (Z) “With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” announces dread-locked 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he’s got mad beats, too, that tell his family’s story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood.
Forbes. Johnny Tremain. (Z) After injuring his hand, a silversmith’s apprentice in Boston becomes a messenger for the Sons of Liberty in the days before the American Revolution.
Kelly. The Trumpeter of Krakow. (Z) A Polish family in the Middle Ages guards a great secret treasure and a boy’s memory of an earlier trumpeter of Krakow makes it possible for him to save his father.
Krumgold. … and now Miguel. (Z) This is the story of a twelve-year-old Miguel Chavez, who yearns in his heart to go with the men of his family on a long and hard sheep drive to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains–until his prayer is finally answered, with a disturbing and dangerous exchange.
McKinley. The Hero and the Crown. (Z) Aerin, with the guidance of the wizard Luthe and the help of the Blue Sword, wins the birthright due her as the daughter of the Damarian king and a witchwoman of the mysterious, demon-haunted North.
