Down Sand Mountain

Author	Michael S. Bandy
ISBN	0763636789

For a young boy growing up in the segregated south, a town drinking fountain becomes the source of an epiphany.

It's a scorching hot day, and going into town with Grandma is one of Michael's favorite things. When the bus pulls up, they climb in and pay their fare, get out, walk to the back door, and...

Author	Catherine Jinks
ISBN	0763636509

Exotic and exciting, this unflinching coming-of-age tale featuring a headstrong heroine weaves a vivid tapestry of life in the Middle Ages.

Early thirteenth-century Languedoc is a place of valor, violence, and persecution. At age sixteen, Babylonne has survived six bloody sieges. She's...

Author	Deborah Noyes
ISBN	0763630004

In an enthralling work of Gothic suspense, an Edith Wharton story inspires five connected tales set in the same haunted manor over the centuries.

In her classic ghost story "Kerfol," Edith Wharton tells the tale of Anne de Barrigan, a young Frenchwoman convicted of murdering her husband,...

Author

Beth Kanell

This gripping, ultimately hopeful tale of an Abenaki-French Canadian girl in 1920s Vermont explores a dark episode in New England history.

Just as the waters of a river roar through her town, Molly Ballou's life is riding on a swift current, where change comes faster than a spring flood. As...

Author	Ron Koertge
ISBN	0763635804

Ron Koertge's spot-on repartee highlights the wry, poignant tale of a teen who is numbed by loss but finds an unusual route to reclaiming his life.

Listening to music 24/7. Hanging out with his slacker-stoner friend, Andy. Basically, Ryan's been sleepwalking through life since his younger...

Author	Gary Soto
ISBN	0152060227

On his thirteenth birthday, Ronnie woke up feeling like a chimp--all long armed, big eared, and gangly. He's been muddling through each gawky day since. Now his best friend, Joey, has turned thirteen, too--and after Joey humiliates himself in front of a cute girl, he climbs a tree and refuses to come...

Author	Julie Gonzalez
ISBN	0385732287

The character Will is such a bully! But he got what he deserved by being put in jail. He pressured all his friends (Ryan,Daniel,and Connor) in to playing the game russian roulet. He finally got Connor and Ryan to take a turn, but he thought Daniel was to chicken (which he was). Then Will decided to make daniel...

Author	Marc Aronson
ISBN	0763645621

Pass! Shoot! Swish! An all-star team of YA authors scores spectacularly with an action-packed anthology about street basketball.

It’s one steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in NYC, otherwise known as The Cage. Hotshot ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird...

Author	Fran Cannon Slayton
ISBN	0399251898

Jimmy lives in Rowlesburg, West Virginia, during the 1940s. He does all the things boys do in the small mountain town: plays a mean game of football, pulls the unforgettable Halloween prank with his friends in ?the Platoon,? and promises to head off into the woods on the first day of hunting season? no...

Author

David Almond

Mysterious and utterly mesmerizing, this graphic-novel-within-a-novel pairs the extraordinary prose of David Almond with the visual genius of Dave McKean.

Blue Baker is writing a story -- not all that stuff about wizards and fairies and happily ever after -- a real story, about blood and...

Author	Betsy Franco
ISBN	0763648396

“The quality here is head and shoulders above most young writers’ collections, and in fact it’s well above many adult anthologies as well.”
— Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)

The poets are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender. They live...

Author	Beth Ain
ISBN	0763633968

In 1776 Paris, a feisty teenager defies her mother, her closest friend, and the aristocracy that rules her life in a compelling romantic novel of social intrigue.

Sixteen-year-old Sabine Durand, daughter of aristocrats, thinks of nothing but donning exquisite ball gowns and being seen...

Author	Donna Freitas
ISBN	0374360871

Antonia Lucia Labella has two secrets: at fifteen, she’s still waiting for her first kiss, and she wants to be a saint. An official one. Unfortunately, the two events Antonia’s prayed for seem equally unlikely to happen...

Antonia Lucia Labella has two secrets: at fifteen, she’s still...

Author	Will Peterson
ISBN	1406307092

This has been sitting in the library waiting for someone to get it out, so with a lack of takers it was me this school holiday. So glad I did too It's one of those gorgeous children's story's that I love - lots of description and observation so it's very visual and inviting. It had an old-worldy feel to it, mostly...

Author	Michael S. Bandy
ISBN	0763665932

Based on the true story of one family’s struggle for voting rights in the Civil Rights–era South, this moving tale shines an emotional spotlight on a dark facet of U.S. history.

Life on the farm with Granddaddy is full of hard work, but despite all the chores, Granddaddy always makes time...

Author	David Fuller
ISBN	1401323316

The year is 1862, and the Civil War rages through the South. On a Virginia tobacco plantation, another kind of battle soon begins. There, Cassius Howard, a skilled carpenter and slave, risks everything--punishment, sale to a cotton plantation, even his life--to learn the truth concerning the murder...

Author	Calvin Alexander Ramsey
ISBN	0763640581

A true story inspires the moving tale of a mule that played a key role in the civil rights movement-- and a young boy who sees history anew.

Sitting on a bench waiting for his mother, Alex spies a mule chomping on greens in someone's garden, and he can't help but ask about it.""Ol Belle?" says Miz...

Author	Chris Rettstatt
ISBN	0763635243

From a village made of hot-air balloons to a subterranean battle arena, two young people struggle to discover who and what they are — and how to use the astonishing powers they share.

High over China, twelve-year-old Mei arrives at the Sky Village, an intricate web of hot-air balloons floating...

Author	Gertrude Chandler Warner
ISBN	0807554960

The Boxcar Children titles encouraged me to read and, as an adult, I still enjoy reading them. This particular title has a perfect ingredient list:

Memory Recall
Awareness of Surroundings
Respect for Elders
Doing Good Deeds
Logic and Reasoning
Map Reading
Use...

Author	Donna Gephart
ISBN	0385734816

As if being 12 3/4 isn’t bad enough, Vanessa Rothrock’s mother is running for president and it’s ruining her life. Isn’t it enough that her enormous feet trip her up all the time, even on stage during the school spelling bee? Isn’t it enough that Reginald Trumball, love of Vanessa’s pathetic...

Author

Ross Campbell

Hmm. The weird thing about Sophia Campbell is that she's totally white and her main characters always seem to be vaguely asian-looking, black punk rock girls. While I definitely like seeing some strong black female characters in comics, she does draw them in a ludicrously sexualized way. They all have...

Author	Beverley Naidoo
ISBN	3125737516

We are the young people, We will not be broken For almost fifty years, apartheid forced the young people of South Africa to live apart as Blacks, Whites, Indians, and "Coloreds." This unique and dramatic collection of stories--by native South African and Carnegie Medalist Beverley Naidoo--is about...

Author	Judith Clarke
ISBN	0805091645

Clementine thinks her cousin Fan is everything that she could never be: beautiful, imaginative, wild. The girls promise to be best friends and sisters after the summer is over, but Clementine's life in the city is different from Fan's life in dusty Lake Conapaira. And Fan is looking for something, though...

Author	Gigi Amateau
ISBN	0763647926

An 1800 insurrection planned by a literate slave known as "Prosser’s Gabriel" inspires a historical novel following one extraordinary man’s life.

In a time of post-Revolutionary fervor in Richmond, Virginia, an imposing twenty-four-year-old slave named Gabriel, known for his courage...

Author	Tanya Landman
ISBN	0763636649

A young woman seeks to avenge her brother's death by becoming an Apache warrior — and learns a startling truth about her own identity.

After watching helplessly as Mexican raiders brutally murder her little brother, fourteen-year-old Siki is filled with a desire for vengeance and chooses...