Kipling's Choice

Author	Allan Stratton
ISBN	0060872624

She promised her mama she'd keep them safe. It's been six months since Mama died, and Chanda is struggling to raise her little brother and sister. Determined to end a family feud, she takes them to her relatives' remote rural village. But across the nearby border, a brutal civil war is spreading. Rebels...

Author

Laura Manivong

When you're so skinny people call you Skeleton Boy, how do you find strength for the fight of your life?
Vonlai knows that soldiers who guard the Mekong River shoot at anything that moves, but in oppressive Communist Laos, there's nothing left for him, his spirited sister, Dalah, and his desperate...

Author	Kathe Koja
ISBN	0374399387

Senior year is flying by, the prom is approaching, and Dana, her best friend, Avra, and Avra's boyfriend, Emil, are about to encounter the pains and pleasures of that intricate beehive called adult life. While Dana plans on college, Avra plots escape once school is over—and plans to take Emil along...

Author	Elisa Carbone
ISBN	0440417074

Inspired by a true story, the riveting novel of a young slave girl's harrowing escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

The moment Ann Maria Weems was born, her freedom was stolen from her. Like her family and the other slaves on the farm, Ann works from sunup to sundown and obeys the orders...

Author	Rosemary Wells
ISBN	0670036382

Award-winning author Rosemary Wells lays bare the senseless devastation of war in this stunning novel. As the Civil War breaks out, India, a young Southern girl, summons her sharp intelligence and the courage she didn'tknow she had to survive the war that threatens to destroy her family, her Virginia...

Author	Graham Salisbury
ISBN	0440229561

Eddy Okana lies about his age and joins the Army in his hometown of Honolulu only weeks before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Suddenly Americans see him as the enemy—even the U.S. Army doubts the loyalty of Japanese American soldiers.

Then the Army sends Eddy and a small band of Japanese American...

Author

Tim Tharp

Ceejay has never been pretty or popular, but she knows who she is: she's younger sister to Bobby, the most charming bad boy in town. Bobby's a bit wild, but with his big heart and sense of fun, everybody loves him. And nobody understands Ceejay like Bobby.

Now, Ceejay can't wait for Bobby to return...

Author	Tedd Arnold
ISBN	0803730209

The dead body found in the Chemanga River has nothing to do with Todd. He's been busy making beds at the family motel and writing alien stories to entertain his friends. Sure, a murder is big news, but what would "really" interest him? A paying job and a story line free of UFOs and poop jokes. And then he meets...

Author	Christopher Paul Curtis
ISBN	0440413311

Luther T. Farrell has got to get out of Flint, Michigan.

As his best friend Sparky says, “Flint’s nothing but the Titanic.”

And his mother, a.k.a. the Sarge, says, “Take my advice and stay off the sucker path.”

The Sarge milked the system to build an empire of slum...

Author	Sherri Winston
ISBN	0316114308

Kayla Dean, junior feminist and future journalist, is about the break the story of a lifetime. She is auditioning for the Lady Lions dance team to prove they discriminate against the not-so-well endowed. But when she makes the team, her best friend and fellow feminist, Rosalie, is not happy.

Now...

Author	Marc Aronson
ISBN	0763636258

In a provocative anthology, two editors with opposing viewpoints present an unflinching collection of works reflecting on the nature of war.

Marc Aronson thinks war is inevitable. Patty Campbell thinks war is cruel, deceptive, and wrong. But both agree on one thing: that teens need to hear...

Author	Shelia P. Moses
ISBN	1416907165

The day Uncle Goodwin "Buddy" Bush came from Harlem all the way back home to Rehobeth Road in Rich Square, North Carolina, is the day twelve-year-old Pattie Mae Sheals' life changes forever. Pattie Mae adores and admires Uncle Buddy -- he's tall and handsome and he doesn't believe in the country stuff...

Author	Gretchen Moran Laskas
ISBN	1416912622

Perhaps there is always a mark, when another person touches you, an invisible thread connecting you to them.

Backbreaking work, threadbare clothes, and black coal dust choking the air -- this is what a miner's daughter knows. Willa Lowell fears that this dust marks her to be nothing else,...

Author	Peter Gould
ISBN	0374384835

Sixteen-year-old Victor, a thoughtful loner who tries to live his life “under the radar,” wants to test out the saying “You have to be naked to write.” When he sneaks off with an old Royal typewriter to his uncle’s cabin deep in the Vermont woods and strips off his clothes, he expects Thoreau-like...

Author	Alfred C. Martino
ISBN	0547564244

I AM SO FREAKING MAD RIGHT NOW!

Okay, enough all caps. But seriously, I am mad. I was gifted this audiobook by SYNC during the summer. It isn't a story subject I would normally find interesting nor would I choose to spend my time reading/listening to, but it was free and I did find it interesting....

Author	Jane Yolen
ISBN	0399238980

When everyone in his Scottish village is violently evicted from their land by the laird, Roddy Macallan knows he must find a way to fight back. As his family escapes, making their way through the Scottish Highlands bound for Glasgow, Roddy sneaks home in search of a treasure his mother once told him was...

Author	Mary Francis Shura
ISBN	0590435000

Personal Response: I enjoyed Gentle Annie because it combined history and entertainment so that more people would read it. The book is written well and has many good plot points. I like the way that the book is based on real events yet had enough fiction to keep the reader wanting to read more. I especially...

Author	Cynthia Kadohata
ISBN	1416918833

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

I have been going through the reviews to see if anybody read between the lines as I did, and from the few I've read it doesn't seem like it. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but this is what I've noticed:

Tomas = Foreign Interference
Y'Tin - South...

Author	Mollie Hunter
ISBN	0060271868

Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, led Scotland's rebel army in a thirty-year war against England. Now award-winning author Mollie Hunter tells the story of this legendary king, and of the young man who would become his swift rider and master of espionage. As Scotland's guerrilla campaign gathers bloody...

Author	Jacques Tardi
ISBN	1606995820

Created 15 years after the completion of his Eisner Award-winning World War I masterwork It Was the War of the Trenches, Tardi's Goddamn This War! is no mere sequel or extension, but a brand new, wholly individual graphic novel that serves as a companion piece to Trenches but can be read entirely on its...

Author	Pamela Todd
ISBN	1416954945

When her family falls apart, fourteen-year-old Zoe feels like her whole world is going to pieces. Zoe's mother takes her kids away from their father, a fisherman who ships out to Alaska, and moves them to a run-down farmhouse she's inherited in the Midwest. Zoe's stuck -- in more ways than one. Surrounded...

Author	Pete Hautman
ISBN	0545113180

From National Book Award winner Pete Hautman, the story of a girl who acts out by stealing cars.

Some girls act out by drinking or doing drugs. Some girls act out by sleeping with guys. Some girls act out by starving themselves or cutting themselves. Some girls act out by being a bitch to other girls.

Not...

Author

Iain Lawrence

After seeing his father hauled off to debtor's prison, Tom Tin sets out to take revenge on Mr. Goodfellow, the man responsible for his family's misfortunes. But the fog-filled London streets are teeming with sinister characters. Tom encounters a blind man who scavenges the riverbed for treasure and...

Author	Will Hobbs
ISBN	0380733099

The great race across Alaska!As Dawson City goes up in flames, Jason Hawthorn itches to join the new rush for gold in Nome, 1,700 miles away. He and his brothers have been cheated out of their sawmill, so when a $20,000 prize is announced for the winner of a race to Nome, Jason enters. His partner in the canoe...

Author	Kate Kingsbury
ISBN	0425188868

This is the fourth book in the Manor House series, following “For Whom Death Tolls.” The novel is borderline standalone; it can be appreciated as is but has much more impact if the previous entries in the series have already been read.

The setting of this series is Sitting Marsh, a fictional,...