Jip: His Story

Author	Richard Peck
ISBN	0142403105

The year is 1861. Civil war is imminent and Tilly Pruitt's brother, Noah, is eager to go and fight on the side of the North. With her father long gone, Tilly, her sister, and their mother struggle to make ends meet and hold the dwindling Pruitt family together. Then one night a mysterious girl arrives on...

Author	Karen Cushman
ISBN	0330398326

Dear Gram and Grampop,
Please do not address yours truly as California anymore, California Morning Whipple being a foolish name for a duck much less a girl. I call myself Lucy now. I cannot hate California and be California. I know you will understand.

California doesn't suit Lucy Whipple...

Author	Graham Salisbury
ISBN	0553494872

Tomi was born in Hawaii. His grandfather and parents were born in Japan, and came to America to escape poverty.

World War II seems far away from Tomi and his friends, who are too busy playing ball on their eighth-grade team, the Rats.

But then Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese,...

Author	Shelley Pearsall
ISBN	0440418119

Eleven-year-old Samuel was born as Master Hackler’s slave, and working the Kentucky farm is the only life he’s ever known—until one dark night in 1859, that is. With no warning, cranky old Harrison, a fellow slave, pulls Samuel from his bed and, together, they run.

The journey north...

Author	Patricia Beatty
ISBN	0688110282

When Truth Hopkins's father dies, she goes to live with her uncle and his family on their North Carolina farm. Like Truth, the Bardwells are Quakers. They oppose slavery but refuse to take up arms in the civil war that is now being waged to end this inhuman institution. Then one day, a runaway slave takes...

Author	Carolyn Reeder
ISBN	0689838662

COURAGE WEARS MANY FACES The Civil War may be over, but for twelve-year-old Will Page, the pain and bitterness haven't ended. How could they have, when the Yankees were responsible for the deaths of everyone in his entire immediate family?And now Will has to leave his comfortable home in the Shenandoah...

Author	Paul Fleischman
ISBN	0064405885

Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction * ALA Best Book for Young Adults * ALA Notable Children's Book

In this brilliant fictional tour de force, which the New York Times called "a deft, poignant novel," Newbery Medal-winning author Paul Fleischman re-creates the first...

Author	A. LaFaye
ISBN	0689857306

After Nathaniel's leg is crushed in an accident, his father brings home an orphan boy, John Worth, to help work the fields. Worth has come to Nebraska from New York City on the Orphan Train, which brings homeless children west to find new lives.
Nathaniel feels increasingly jealous of the boy who...

Author	Gary Paulsen
ISBN	0440415578

For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day’s an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust—always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly....

Author	Virginia Euwer Wolff
ISBN	0590898000

Please see my for stars as four and a half. Or perhaps you're seeing five stars. This is one of those I'm not sure of: did I like it enough to give it five stars?

It’s 1949 and two small communities in Oregon have been getting together for fifty years for sixth grade girls from each community to play...

Author

Michael Dorris

Set in an island in the Bahamas on the eve of Christopher Columbus's fateful landing in 1492, this story following the daily lives of two siblings, Morning Girl and Star Boy, providing a window into Taino culture.

This story is very gentle, and the writing is simple yet powerful. Told in alternating...

Author	Avi
ISBN	0064401855

April 3, 1778He may be just thirteen, but Jonathan knows he's ready to go to the war against the British. He can handle a gun. He yearns to battle for glory, just like his brother and cousin.

So when Jonathan hears the tavern bell toll, calling men to fight, he runs to join them. He doesn't realize...

Author	Will Hobbs
ISBN	0060741414

A meteorite is hurtling toward the Black Hills of South Dakota. . . .

Brady Steele watches in awe as a fireball comes crashing through the roof of his house. Brady immediately calls up his cousin, Quinn. They both love all things extreme, and this is the most extreme thing ever!

Fred,...

Author	Julie Schumacher
ISBN	0385737734

I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of "The Unbearable...

Author	Janet Taylor Lisle
ISBN	0689837887

The War At Home

Fear permeates the Rhode Island coastal town where Robert, his mother, and sister are living out the war with his paternal grandparents: Fear of Nazi submarines offshore. Fear of Abel Hoffman, a German artist living reclusively outside of town. And for Robert, a more personal...

Author	Cynthia C. DeFelice
ISBN	0374400148

A Matter of Life or Death

It's 1849, and twelve-year-old, Lucas Whitaker is all alone after his whole family dies of a disease called consumption which has swept through the community. Lucas is grief-stricken and filled with guilt. He might have saved his mother, who was the last to die, if only...

Author	Theodore Taylor
ISBN	0380727234

Shortly after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, World War II came to and, and the terrible reality of the atomic age began . . .Sixteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu has lived on the Bikini Atoll in the western Pacific all his life. Now the United States government wants to use his home as a site for atomic...

Author	Miriam Bat-Ami
ISBN	0142300365

Reviewed for THC Reviews
"4.5 stars" It is always such a joy to me when a random book buy turns out to be a fabulous read. I picked up Two Suns in the Sky at the library book sale for only fifty cents, but had I known how good it was going to be, I would have been happy to pay full-price. This young adult novel...

Author

Harriette Gillem Robinet

Like other ex-slaves, Pascal and his brother, Gideon, have been promised forty acres and maybe a mule. With the family of friends they have built along the way, they claim a place of their own. Green Gloryland is the most wonderful place on earth; their own family farm with a healthy cotton crop and plenty...

Author	Louise Erdrich
ISBN	0064410293

Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, The Game of Silence is the second novel in the critically acclaimed Birchbark House series by New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich.

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an...

Author	Brock Clarke
ISBN	1565126084

A nine-year-old boy named Miller, who lives in Watertown, NY, struggles to make sense of his father's disappearance, for which he blames himself. Later, when he is convinced that his father is lying in a coma in the local VA hospital, he searches for the one person he thinks can save his father, the famously...

Author	Kathleen Karr
ISBN	0374427984

Yeeeeeee-haw! Git along, little . . . turkeys?

Big, brawny Simon Green, who's just completed third grade (for the fourth time), may not be book smart, but he's nobody's fool. When it's time to be done with school and make his way in the world, Simon hatches a plan that could earn him a bundle. He...

Author	F.N. Monjo
ISBN	0064440427

The stars of the Big Dipper have led a runaway slave family to Deacon Fuller's house, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Will Tommy Fuller be able to hide the runaways from a search party—or will the secret passengers be discovered and their hope for freedom destroyed?

This Level 3 I Can Read...

Author	John M. Lannon
ISBN	0321270762

Pretty unimpressive. If you know the basics about a certain type of document, you probably won't learn anything new about that type of document. Also, if you know basic formatting rules for white space and fonts and the like, you won't learn anything new. Lots of info is redundant and the tone is quite...