A Begonia for Miss Applebaum

Author	Marilyn Sachs
ISBN	0595175929

This review of all three Amy and Laura books also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.

When Marilyn Sachs passed away at the beginning of January, I was reminded immediately of how much I enjoyed her 1968 children's novel, Veronica Ganz. Back in 2015, when I reviewed the book, I wrote that it...

Author

Robert Cormier

It is sometimes a challenge for me to rate YA books because it has been 40 years since I have been the target audience for them. There are many YA and J books that still enchant me no matter what age I happen to be, but not all.

I often wonder if it is fair for me to judge a book that is meant for a 13-15 year...

Author	Betsy Haynes
ISBN	0553154133

Betsy Haynes treads on the heels of Judy Blume and Paula Danziger for this one. Jana Morgan a neurotic , over dramatic preteen leads a club against a snooty, beautiful classmate Taffy ( which we’re never quite sure is ever justified. ) When Taffy develops you-know-whats that’s the last straw. The...

Author	Gary Paulsen
ISBN	0439786614

A critically acclaimed tearjerker from a master storyteller: On one side of the border is brutality and heartache; on the other side--a new life.

14yo Manny is an orphan in Juarez, Mexico. He competes with his bigger, meaner rivals for the coins American tourists throw off the bridge between...

Author	C.S. Adler
ISBN	0380701758

Ten-year-old Amanda is small, quiet and colorless. She knows that she's a disappointment to her elegant, ambitious mother who focuses all her attention on Amanda's charming older brother, Dale. Her mother is obsessed with getting Dale into an Ivy League college, although Dale protests that neither...

Author	Joan Abelove
ISBN	0141312270

For fans of Lurlene McDaniel, this is a heartwrenching chronicle of a teen girl's experiences with her mother's brain cancer, based on the author's own life

Mindy has always relied upon her mother-to listen to her, to ease the tension between Mindy and her withdrawn father, to love her. Then...

Author

Betty Ren Wright

Only the ghost knows the truth.

Meg's dreams sometimes predict the future. This summer, her dreams are scary ones--nightmares she hopes will never come true. Sometimes she even sees a ghost in her dreams. He seems to be calling out for help. What does he want from Meg?

Meg's not sure--until...

Author	Richard Peck
ISBN	0440973392

How well do we know our best friends?

They were the best of friends. Sixteen-year-old Buck Mendenhall first met Kate Lucas the summer before seventh grade. In eighth grade they made friends with the brilliant and wealthy newcomer, Trav Kirby. They didn't seem to need anyone else. Mostly they...

Author	Cynthia C. DeFelice
ISBN	0380713586

The name has haunted my sleep and made my awake hours uneasy for as long as I can remember. Other children whisper that he is part man and part animal -- wild and blood-thirsty. But I know Weasel is real: a man, an Indian fighter the government sent to drive off the Indians -- to "remove them." Weasel has his...

Author	Mary Downing Hahn
ISBN	0380707640

Sensitive and idealistic fifteen-year-old Kelly McAllister feels at odds with everyone around her. Her best friend has suddenly turned boy crazy. Her talented mother creates greeting card designs instead of real art, andher father never talks to her about anything except working hard and getting...

Author	Crescent Dragonwagon
ISBN	0553238647

I'm going to be honest with you: at least 60% of the reason I read this is because of its author's cracktastic pen name. In combination with the paperback's cover, the book summary, and a co-writing credit with established YA author Paul Zindel, it absolutely sounds like a 19-year-old human disaster...

Author	Lynne Reid Banks
ISBN	0380791358

What is the sinister mystery of Chateau Bois Serpe? Roger, his parents, and twin sisters arrive at this crumbling ruin in the wilds of France, anticipating a holiday that's "different." And so it proves, but not as they'd hoped. The owner, the strange daughter Mesuline, whom Roger first meets tending...

Author	Betsy Byars
ISBN	0140324798

"Bingo Brown fell in love three times during English Class." When I read this first sentence, I knew I was in for a treat. Of course, I was the same age as Bingo at the time, sixth grade, and over the course of the next several weeks, I fell in love with Bingo, myself. I devoured everything Byars wrote about...

Author	Ellen Conford
ISBN	0590438212

Well. I loved this book when I was about 10. Loved it a little too much, I think. For a stretch, I took it out from the library every other week or so.

It's pure fluff: a teenage girl who lives in Nowhere, America is informed that a dying nurse in some far off (fictional) European country - where she...

Author	Paula D'Arcy
ISBN	0824519566

Amazing, and deeply convicting.

In 1975 Paula D'Arcy, her husband husband and her daughter were involved in car accident with a drunk driver. Paula's husband and daughter were killed. Paula survived. 6 months later, Paula gave birth to her 2nd daughter.

Her process of grieving,...

Author	Brigid Lowry
ISBN	1742374999

Combining fairytale with a modern girl's story, this story skillfully weaves together three tales and reveals the magic of the writer's creative journey

The Writer begins with a sparkly good idea for a fabulous fairytale. A girl called Glory is sent to work in the Royal Palace,...

Author	E.L. Konigsburg
ISBN	0689823320

Long before there was Dolly the sheep, Jeanmarie Troxell dubbed the look-alike, think-alike girls in her school "clones" and decided she wanted nothing to do with them. That's how Jeanmarie forms an unlikely friendship with another outsider, Malcolm Soo, over an equally unlikely activity -- burying...

Author	Ruthanne Lum McCunn
ISBN	0807071390

When German U-boats sank the British Ben Lomond in 1942, its sole survivor was a second steward, Poon Lim, who managed to stay alive for 133 days on a wooden raft. Sole Survivor, based on three years of interviews with Poon and his family, reconstructs his remarkable ordeal and the survival techniques...

Author	Carolyn Haywood
ISBN	0844665975

I found this in a Goodwill with a very vintage cover and yellowed pages and had to pick it up for our trip to Antarctica. While on the adventure, I read this and it was absolutely adorable and awesome timing to be reading such a story. I will say that it's very different from books that kids request nowadays...

Author	Cleveland Amory
ISBN	0965027384

Cleveland Amory's three classic cat stories have been compiled for the first time into one edition, The Compleat Cat, an enchanting, moving, and humorous collection. A self-confessed curmudgeon and dog lover firmly established in his ways, Cleveland Amory never anticipated how one dirty and scrawny...

Author	Katherine Paterson
ISBN	0525674802

This book for kids is about siblings who recently lost their father. Little Mason refuses to talk and older Vinnie is supposed to "help" her mother as they move into Grandmom's house, start at a new school and meet new friends. I can't really say what the point of this books is. That the kids were disturbed?...

Author	Karen E. Peterson
ISBN	1593375034

I bought this book back in 2009 and read it a little, but then got bored. So, this month, I decided to try again and started from the beginning. I'll admit, some things the author wrote were interesting, but the dominant hand/non-dominant hand exercises were overdone and pointless to me. I mean, I had the...

Author	Francine Pascal
ISBN	0553158015

Strange things have been happening to Sam Sloane ever since he moved from San Francisco to Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield's neighborhood in Sweet Valley. He can't figure out why everything in town looks so familiar—or why he's mysteriously drawn to a crumbling old mansion in town. When he visits...

Author	Gail Gibbons
ISBN	0823420140

On silent wings a bird sweeps down in the moonlight...

With their striking appearance and distinctive hoot, hoot, owls are one of the most recognizable birds in the world. But did you know there are more than 140 types of owls living in the world?

Gail Gibbons' Owls celebrates the similarities...