The Canning Season
10 best books like The Canning Season (Polly Horvath): Mistik Lake, Touching Snow, Goblin Secrets, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, The Court of the Stone Children, True Believer, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, Dancing on the Edge, From Charlie's Point of View, At the Sign of the Star
| Author | Martha Brooks |
| ISBN | 0374349851 |
Seventeen-year-old Odella is haunted by family secrets. Why doesn't her great-aunt Gloria visit anymore? Why does her mother, Sally, drink so much? Sally's tragic car accident on a frozen lake when she was sixteen seems to have cast a spell over her life that no one can break. Odella tries to hold her...
| Author | M. Sindy Felin |
| ISBN | 1416917950 |
"The best way to avoid being picked on by high school bullies is to kill someone."
Karina has plenty to worry about on the last day of seventh grade: finding three Ds and a C on her report card again, getting laughed at by everyone again, being sent to the principal -- again. She'd like this to change,...
| Author | William Alexander |
| ISBN | 1442427280 |
In the town of Zombay, there is a witch named Graba who has clockwork chicken legs and moves her house around—much like the fairy tale figure of Baba Yaga. Graba takes in stray children, and Rownie is the youngest boy in her household. Rownie’s only real relative is his older brother Rowan, who is an...
When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
| Author | Kimberly Willis Holt |
| ISBN | 0440238412 |
Nothing ever happens in Toby’s small Texas town. Nothing much until this summer that’s full of big changes.
It’s tough for Toby when his mother leaves home to be a country singer. Toby takes it hard when his best friend Cal’s older brother goes off to fight in Vietnam. Now their sleepy town...
| Author | Eleanor Cameron |
| ISBN | 0140342893 |
Who is Dominique? When Nina first sees her in the French Museum, she senses that there is something unreal about the strange, beautiful girl. In fact, Domi is from Napoleon's time, and she has come to get Nina's help. For Domi's father was executed as a traitor during the French Revolution, and Domi is...
| Author | Virginia Euwer Wolff |
| ISBN | 0689852886 |
LaVaughn is fifteen now, and she's still fiercely determined to go to college. But that's the only thing she's sure about. Loyalty to her father bubbles up as her mother grows closer to a new man. The two girls she used to do everything with have chosen a path LaVaughn wants no part of. And then there's Jody....
| Author | Victor Martinez |
| ISBN | 0064471861 |
Dad believed people were like money. You could be a thousand-dollar person or a hundred-dollar person – even a ten-, five-, or one-dollar person. Below that, everybody was just nickels and dimes. To my dad, we were pennies.
Fourteen-year old Manny Hernandez wants to be more than just a penny....
| Author | Han Nolan |
| ISBN | 0152058842 |
Miracle McCloy comes from an unusual family: Her father, Dane is a prodigy who published his first book at age thirteen; her grandmother, Gigi, is clairvoyant; and her mother was dead when her "miracle" daughter was pulled from her womb. Having been raised according to a set of mystical rules and beliefs,...
| Author | Richard Scrimger |
| ISBN | 0142408182 |
Charlie Fairmile's got problems. He's about to start a new year at Schuyler Colfax Middle school, and his dad has been accused of bank robbery. Charlie knows that his dad is innocent, but the police insist that Mr. Fairmile must be the stocking bandit. So Charlie has no choice but to try to find the real...
| Author | Katherine Sturtevant |
| ISBN | 0374404585 |
The tale of a bookseller's daughter
Meg Moore is the motherless and only child of a bookseller with a thriving business in Restoration London-and that makes her an heiress. She knows that someday she will have her pick of suitors, and that with the right husband she can continue in the book trade...
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 | Adam Selzer |
| ISBN | 0385733690 |
It all starts with an assignment. Leon's "gifted and talented" class has to make educational videos for the sixth and seventh graders. Leon originally chooses "sex ed" as his subject in the hopes of showing a flash of boob. But as time goes on, his project starts to mean something. He wants to tell the younger...
| Author | Betsy Byars |
| ISBN | 0440458579 |
Retta, Johnny and Roy are the night swimmers: three children whose father leaves them alone while he performs as a singer."Byars has the uncanny ability to know the secret lives...the outward postures, and the exact words her characters would surely use."-- "The New York Times Book Review."
A...
| Author | Walter Dean Myers |
| ISBN | 0060582936 |
Printz Award winner Walter Dean Myers has written a realistic urban novel that probes a fatal crisis in the life of two boys. Jesse, the book's narrator, and Rise are best friends, but as time passes, Rise grows increasingly alienated and unpredictable. Living in a neighborhood where gang fights and...
| 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 | Kevin Henkes |
| ISBN | 0688152325 |
It had been only two months since Spoon Gilmore's grandmother died, but already he was worried that he would forget her. That's why he needed something of Gram's - something special that had belonged to her, something to remember her by.
Spoon wasn't quite sure what the something was, though...
| Author | Will Weaver |
| ISBN | 0374324859 |
The times they are a-changin' . . .
The summer that Paul turns sixteen his mother pushes him to take a job in town instead of just working on the family farm. You need to meet the public, she says, which is saying a lot for a woman deeply committed to the tightly knit religious community to which...
| Author | William Bell |
| ISBN | 0385662467 |
Lee wants to be a Tarantula – a member of the biggest, most powerful gang in his neighbourhood. But when his initiation goes wrong and the police catch him robbing an auto supply store, Lee’s father sends him to live with his aunt in New Toronto.
Lee feels more lost than ever. His mother’s...
| Author | Gayle Friesen |
| ISBN | 1550744631 |
Fourteen-year-old Claire and her mother, Jane, are on their way across the country to visit Claire's grandmother. As they approach the family farm, Claire watches her mother become more and more anxious. Until now, she thought they had an open relationship with a healthy respect for each other's privacy....
| Author | Isaac Bashevis Singer |
| ISBN | 0374416966 |
An ALA Notable Book.
“Singer's memories of his youth in Poland make a powerful, brilliant children's book. The author lays out a panorama of Jewish life in the city-- the rabbis in black velvet and gabardine, the shopkeepers, the street urchins and schoolboys, the poverty, the confusion,...
Abby Carnelia's One & Only Magical Power
| Author | David Pogue |
| ISBN | 1596433841 |
SILLY MAGICAL POWERS, KIDS ON THE RUN.
One day, Abby Carnelia, ordinary sixth grader, realizes she has a magical power. Okay, it's not a fancy one (she can make a hard-boiled egg spin by tugging on her ears). But it's the only one she has, and it's enough to launch her into an adventure where she...
| Author | Susan Juby |
| ISBN | 0060515481 |
4.5 stars
Alice continues her coming of age story when she is entered into the Miss Smithers pageant as Miss Rod and Gun Club (ironic since her parents are vegetarians who oppose hunting, slaughterhouses, etc) in an even funnier book than the first in this trilogy: I can see why this one won an award...
What Do Fish Have to Do With Anything?
Avi charts the turning points in seven young lives in this extraordinary collection of short stories.
In the overlapping years when childhood and adolescence blend and shift like waves and sand, nothing is certain and everything is changing. In this extraordinary collection of stories,...
IT'S BACK TO SCHOOL FOR THE START OF A NEW TERM, AND THE ECCENTRIC CASSONS ARE UP TO THEIR OLD TRICKS!
Indigo, having just recovered from a bout of mononucleosis, must return to school after missing an entire semester. Only his younger sister and loyal sidekick, Rose, knows why he's dreading...
The Game of Sunken Places
| Author | M.T. Anderson |
| ISBN | 0439416612 |
When Brian and Gregory receive an invitation to stay at a distant relative's strange manse . . . well, they should know better than to go, since this is a middle-grade adventure novel. But they go anyway. Why not? Once there, they stumble upon The Game of Sunken Places, a board game that mirrors a greater...
