Aleutian Sparrow

Author	Patricia Polacco
ISBN	0399250778

Patricia Polacco's most powerful book since Pink and Say. In the middle of the night, The Crosswhites--including young Sadie--must flee the Kentucky plantation they work on. Dear January has been beaten and killed by the plantation master, and they fear who may be next. But Sadie must leave behind...

Author

Lensey Namioka

Sue Hua just moved from racially diverse Seattle to a suburban white-bread town where she feels like the only Asian American for miles. Then she meets Andy, a handsome and passionate violin player who happens to be Asian American. Sue feels an instant attraction to Andy, and her white friends think they’re...

Author	Paul B. Janeczko
ISBN	0763622354

In his first full-length poetic work, celebrated poetry anthologist Paul B. Janeczko creates a stirring fictional account of the 1944 Hartford circus fire.

One summer afternoon in 1944, hundreds of circus lovers crowded under the big top in Hartford, Connecticut, breathlessly waiting...

Author	Nikki Grimes
ISBN	1423102517

Sam can't believe it when his father leaves the family to marry another woman--and a white woman, at that. The betrayal cuts deep--Sam had been so close to his dad, he idolized him. Now who can he turn to, who can he trust? Even God seems to have ditched him.

Ishmael is his father's first son, the...

Author	Helen Frost
ISBN	0374309620

Two sisters, Jeannie and Sarah, tell their separate yet tightly interwoven stories in alternating narrative poems. Each sister - Jeannie, who leaves Scotland during the Highland Clearances with her father, mother, and the younger children, and Sarah, who hides so she can stay behind with her grandmother...

Author	Melanie Little
ISBN	1554511178

Fifteenth-century Spain is a richly multicultural society in which Jews, Muslims and Christians coexist. But under the zealous Christian Queen Isabella, the country abruptly becomes one of the most murderously intolerant places on Earth.

It is in this atmosphere that the Benvenistes,...

Author	Hope Anita Smith
ISBN	0805072020

So many unanswered questions weigh down thirteen-year-old C.J. as he struggles to understand why his father walked out. His father is back now, though C.J. is not as quick to forgive as the other members of his family. He still feels the weight of responsibility that fell on his shoulders when Daddy was...

Author	Mel Glenn
ISBN	0060004819

Everyone has an image of Laura Li, the most popular girl in school: “stone hearted,” “warmhearted,” “conceited deceiver,” “humble achiever,” “a virgin,” “the hottest girl in the world.”

Award-winning poet Mel Glenn weaves a brilliant web of authentic voices...

Author	Ron Koertge
ISBN	0763617423

In a startling, often poignant student journal, acclaimed poet and novelist Ron Koertge creates a suburban high school both familiar and terrifying.

The Branston High School Class of 2001 seems familiar enough on the surface: there’s the Smart One, the Fat Kid, Social Conscience, Bad...

Author	Michelle Y. Green
ISBN	0803726619

Mamie Johnson looks the batter in the eye. Sizes him up for a curve- or a fastball. Stretches her 5'2" frame. And pops a surefire, windup, coming-right-at-ya pitch smack dab over the plate. One that lets the batter know that this "peanut of a girl" means business. Fueled by her passion for the game and buoyed...

Author	Jen Bryant
ISBN	0375827528

Imagine you are Bruno Richard Hauptmann, accused of murdering the son of the most famous man in America.

In a compelling, immediate voice, 12-year-old Katie Leigh Flynn takes us inside the courtroom of the most widely publicized criminal case of the 20th century: the kidnapping and murder...

Author	Margarita Engle
ISBN	0805089365

Daniel has escaped Nazi Germany with nothing but a desperate dream that he might one day find his parents again. But that golden land called New York has turned away his ship full of refugees, and Daniel finds himself in Cuba.

As the tropical island begins to work its magic on him, the young refugee...

Author	Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
ISBN	0618618678

JoEllen’s parents divorced when she was very young, so she was used to splitting her time between them, shuttling four blocks from one Cincinnati apartment to another. But when her dad moved to the old family farm last year, her life was suddenly divided. Now on weekdays she’s a city girl, called...

Author	Eileen Spinelli
ISBN	0803731221

Diana loves where she lives. She loves the astronomy charts on her walls and the fact that she can wave to her best friend, Rose, from her very own window. And best of all, a wren has recently made its home right by her front door! When her family is forced to move, Diana wonders if she'll ever find that same...

Author	Jame Richards
ISBN	0375858857

Sixteen-Year-Old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel’s hired boy. It’s a friendship she...

Author	Ann Turner
ISBN	0439528313

A powerful true poetry memoir for anyone who has navigated the troubled waters of childhood and adolescence searching for a way to stay afloat, now in the new POINT.

Unfolding in a series of exquisite narrative poems, this is the haunting true story of a tragic summer in a young girl's life. Annie...

Author	Bettye Stroud
ISBN	0763635197

"An exciting story about a girl and her father who escape slavery. . . . Works well as a story and also as a lesson in African-American history." — SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

Now that Hannah’s papa has decided to make the run for freedom, her patchwork quilt is not just a precious memento of Mama...

Author	Robert Cormier
ISBN	0440228549

Eugene is remembering the summer of 1938 in Frenchtown, a time when he began to wonder “what I was doing here on the planet Earth.” Here in vibrant, exquisite detail are his lovely mother, his aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, and especially his beloved, enigmatic father. Here, too, is the world...

Author	Ann Grifalconi
ISBN	0142401900

Young Abikanile and all of the villagers of Yao feel safe hidden deep within the African jungle. But word has come that the slavers are on their way! Abikanile looks to her mother and her grandmother for strength and guidance. These two brave women come up with a plan to fool the slavers and protect their...

Author	Ann Clare LeZotte
ISBN	0547046847

To see this review and to learn more about T4 please visit www.readrantrockandroll.com

T4 by Ann Claremont Lezotte is a book about Hitler's Tiergartenstrasse 4 or better known as T4, a Nazi program that ordered the death of all disabled and mentally ill people.

The story follows a...