Gentlehands

Author	Cynthia Voigt
ISBN	1416903399

One moment can change a life forever.
Fifteen-year-old Izzy has it all -- a loving family, terrific friends, a place on the cheerleading squad. But her comfortable world crumbles when a date with a senior ends in a car crash and she loses her right leg.
Suddenly nothing is the same. The simplest...

Author	Paul Zindel
ISBN	0553118293

I'm re-reading all my tattered Paul Zindel YA paperbacks, starting with this one. Man, they are dark. Paul Zindel was my favorite writer as a young tween. He wrote about weird, ugly, awkward, fucked-up, lonely working class kids in bad situations, with lots of gritty detail. This is the saddest of them...

Author	Francesca Lia Block
ISBN	0064470652

In Witch Baby Francesca Lia Block really spreads her wings and finds her pace. Witch Baby is the second book in her Dangerous Angels series and is her sophomore novel. You really need to have read Weetzie Bat for Witch Baby to make any sense.

Witch Baby is my favorite character in the whole crazy...

Author	Jacqueline Woodson
ISBN	0142405558

3 soft snickerdoodles.

Cover Love: No, but I saw there were several editions of this book and many other great covers.

Why I Wanted to Read This:
My library has a bunch of Jacqueline Woodson books and I keep meaning to read some of them. I saw mention of this one in an article so I went...

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	Norma Fox Mazer
ISBN	0380750252

At fifteen, Rachel is a worrier. She worries about whether her family understands her, whether her friends like her, and whether she'll get her first kiss before she turns sixteen. And she worries about whether she can handle having a real boyfriend if he does come along.

But it takes a dying...

Author	Angela Johnson
ISBN	0590481428

Angela Johnson's Coretta Scott King Award winning novel that traces three generations of African American women as they learn one another's truths.

Three generations of African American women, each holding on to a separate truth. Their story -- encompassing racism and murder as well as...

Author	Fran Leeper Buss
ISBN	0142302090

Nailed into a crate in the back of a truck, fifteen-year-old Maria, her older sister, Julia, their little brother, Oscar, and a boy named Tomas endure a terrifying and torturous journey across the U.S. border and then north to Chicago. There they struggle to find work-cleaning, sewing, washing dishes-always...

Author	Robert Lipsyte
ISBN	0439080886

No summer vacation could be less promising than Bobby Marks's.

Bobby Marks hates hot weather. It's the time when most people are happy to take off their heavy jackets and long pants. But for Bobby, who can't even button the waist of his jeans or reach over his belly to touch his toes, spending the...

Author

Ouida Sebestyen

Lena can recite the Scriptures by heart. Hoping to make her adored Papa proud of her and to make her white classmates notice her "Magic Mind," not her black skin, Lena vows to win the Bible-quoting contest. But winning does not bring Lena what she expected. Instead of honor, violence and death erupt and...

Author	Gary Paulsen
ISBN	1416939385

In the winter, life in McKinley, Minnesota, revolves around the rinks, where kids play hockey and grown-ups skate to scratchy phonograph records. Then, the year Marsh and his best friend, Willy, are twelve, Carl appears at the rink, wearing a battered, old leather flight jacket and doing a strange...

Author	Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN	0440408091

Journey is eleven the summer his mother leaves him and his sister, Cat, with their grandparents. He is sad and angry, and spends the summer looking for the clues that will explain why she left.



Journey searches photographs for answers. He hunts family resemblances in Grandma's albums....

Author	Peter Lane Taylor
ISBN	1580132618

This was one of the most fascinating Holocaust survival stories I’ve ever read. Can you imagine living in a series of caves deep underground for 344 days, without once seeing the sun? That is what a group of Jewish villagers, all related by blood or marriage, did to escape from the Nazis during World...

Author	Lois Lowry
ISBN	0440205417

Natalie Armstrong has all a girl could want: beauty and intelligence, a loving family and a great boyfriend. But something is missing; the answer to a most important question: "Who is my mother?"

To find that answer seventeen-year-old Natalie begins a journey that she hopes will lead to the...

Author	Marcia K. Vaughan
ISBN	1600604390

Irena Sendler, born to a Polish Catholic family, was raised to respect people of all backgrounds and to help those in need. She became a social worker; and after the German army occupied Poland during World War II, Irena knew she had to help the sick and starving Jews who were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto....

Author	Sonia Levitin
ISBN	0525468714

Told from several points of view, this novel reveals how life in Copenhagen was soiled by the Nazi occupation and how the Danes fought back with courage and kindness. Julie lives with the constant, nagging fear that her family will be sent to a concentration camp. Niels can't stand the brutish, arrogant...

Author	Wendelin Van Draanen
ISBN	0060540737

How I Survived Being a Girl was my favorite book when I was younger, and I only read it once. So when I found it in my stacks and stacks of books, I had to pick it up again. I scarcely even remembered what it was about, and since I didn't really want to pick up anything too hefty before school started, I just figured...