Monkey Island
10 best books like Monkey Island (Paula Fox): Other Bells for Us to Ring, Shades of Gray, The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House, Yankee Girl, The Half-a-Moon Inn, Weasel, Bearstone, A Toad for Tuesday, Song of the Gargoyle, Beat the Turtle Drum
Eleven-year-old Darcy hasn't lived in any one place long enough to have a best friend--until her family settles in Frenchtown and she meets Kathleen Mary O'Hara. Darcy is spellbound by Kathleen Mary's vivid tales of Catholicism. She shows Darcy a world beyond Frenchtown: a world of daring games and...
| 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...
The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House
Maureen Swanson is the scourge of the neighborhood. At age nine, she already has a reputation as a hard slapper, a loud laugher, a liar, and a stay-after-schooler. The other kids call her Stinky. So sometimes when Maureen passes the crumbling (and haunted?) Messerman mansion, she imagines that she...
| Author | Mary Ann Rodman |
| ISBN | 0374386617 |
Mississippi and integration in the 1960s
The year is 1964, and Alice Ann Moxley's FBI-agent father has been reassigned from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi, to protect black people who are registering to vote. Alice finds herself thrust into the midst of the racial turmoil that dominates...
| Author | Paul Fleischman |
| ISBN | 0064403645 |
Aaron has never left alone before. He is mute, and depends on his mother for everything. But tomorrow Aaron will be twelve years old, old enough to stay home by himself while his mother goes to town. Everything will be fine, as long as he stays close to the house. And if there's trouble, Aaron can write what...
| Author | Cynthia C. DeFelice |
| ISBN | 0380713586 |
The name has haunted my sleep and made my awake hours uneasy for as long as I can remember. Other children whisper that he is part man and part animal -- wild and blood-thirsty. But I know Weasel is real: a man, an Indian fighter the government sent to drive off the Indians -- to "remove them." Weasel has his...
A Dramatic Tale of Grizzlies and Gold
Fourteen-year-old Cloyd Atcitty has been skipping school for years. He's run away from a group home for Native American boys, and is now being sent to work for Walter Landis, an old rancher on an isolated Colorado farm.
In a cave above the ranch, Cloyd finds...
| Author | Russell E. Erickson |
| ISBN | 0688163254 |
A Toad for Tuesday is one of four books we picked up on our trip to Oregon back in February. As Sean is enamored with owls we both agreed this looked like a good book for him. I was immediately drawn to it for Lawrence di Fiori's illustrations. They are reminisicent of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad series and...
| Author | Zilpha Keatley Snyder |
| ISBN | 0440408989 |
A strange sound awakens thirteen-year-old Tymmon in the dead of night. In a blink of an eye his father, the court jester of Austerneve, is mysteriously kidnapped and the terrified boy must slip away secretly to avoid capture himself.Hiding in the dreaded forest nearby, Tymmon is adopted by a huge, furry,...
| Author | Constance C. Greene |
| ISBN | 0140368507 |
Beautiful story. But quite upsetting.
Realistic YA Fiction.
Also a movie.
The plot concerns a family, with two sisters, Cate and Joss. They are more then sisters but also best friends.
One day, Joss, the younger sister is killed in a tragic accident., shattering...
| Author | Laurence Yep |
| ISBN | 0688093655 |
"This poignant, gently humorous novel is about prejudice and acceptance....15-year-old Joan Lee is a child of two worlds. As a Chinese American, she has never felt her separateness more than now, in 1927, in this new place in West Virginia. Only Miss Lucy, their landlord and neighbor, seems welcoming....There's...
| Author | Patricia MacLachlan |
| ISBN | 0440840341 |
Facts and fictions are different truths. Minna Pratt stares at this message above her mother's typewriter every day and tries to understand it. But how can she, when her mind is already so full? She wishes her mother would ask her normal questions like "How was your day?" instead of "What is the quality...
| Author | Ellen Potter |
| ISBN | 0399241620 |
What is it with Olivia Kidney and ghosts? No matter where she goes, they follow. Even when she moves into a brownstone in New York City, there is no escape from the weirdness that is Olivia Kidney's life. Her new living room is entirely submerged under water, and Olivia has to navigate in a boat past bobbing...
| Author | Jean Fritz |
| ISBN | 0698116097 |
Part of a series entitled Unforgettable Americans, originally published by Penguin, this the second book by Jean Fritz I've reviewed. If I'd read this one first, I wouldn't have bothered reading the first and neigher should you, or your children!
If you, dear reader, were educated in a time when...
| Author | Joseph Bruchac |
| ISBN | 0803730985 |
Joseph Bruchac, a gifted and prolific author who has explored his Abenaki (Native American) heritage through numerous genres of writing, including historical, contemporary and horror fiction; poetry, folktale anthologies; picture books; juvenile biographies; and non-fiction; here adds to...
| Author | Betsy Byars |
| ISBN | 0440407613 |
The Blossom family has an especially eventful weekend during which Junior Blossom loses the school hamster and Pap's dog Mud is put on trial for the hamster's murder!"Byars captures the conflict and tension of courtroom drama, the ups and downs of personal relationships, and the rewards of lasting...
A better name for this book would be “If you were a white Puritan colonist of moderate means in Colonial Times”— as that is all that is covered.
The telling is interesting and accessible to kids. The facts and quotes are very memorable. It’s just narrow.
There’s no acknowledgement...
| Author | Rita Balducci |
| ISBN | 0307004627 |
This has always been one of my favorite versions of "The Nutcracker" since not only the pictures are beautifully done mostly in light airy colors but also since of the realistic values of them as well. Although it is based on the ballet and the same grace cannot be conveyed through the written word, the...
| Author | Ann M. Martin |
| ISBN | 0439095476 |
Maggie, Diary Three feels much lighter than any of the other California Diaries books, but I don’t really mind that. After the emotional turmoil of all the other entries, and especially on the heels of the absolutely depressing Sunny, Diary Three, I think a lighthearted entry was exactly what this...
Our House in the Last World
| Author | Oscar Hijuelos |
| ISBN | 0892552832 |
Bearing all the hallmarks of Hijuelos's later work—exuberance, passion, honesty, and humor—this debut novel was heralded on its publication twenty years ago as "virtuoso writing...a novel of great warmth and tenderness" (New York Times Book Review). Filled with the sights and sounds of Cuba's...
