The Singing Tree

Author	Eleanor Estes
ISBN	0152025294

Who is Jane Moffat, anyway? She isn't the youngest in the family, and she isn't the oldest-she is always just Jane. How boring. So Jane decides to become a figure of mystery . . . the mysterious "Middle Moffat." But being in the middle is a lot harder than it looks.

In between not rescuing stray dogs,...

Author	Irene Hunt
ISBN	0425182789

Do they make kid's books like this sort anymore? Real and real painful. Across Five Aprils was required reading in 6th grade and it was as if the teacher's were saying "Life's a bitch, get used to it."

I remember this as eloquently rendered and high-minded, gut-wrenching drama when I read it way...

Author	Marie McSwigan
ISBN	0142402249

In the bleak winter of 1940, Nazi troops parachuted into Peter Lundstrom's tiny Norwegian village and held it captive. Nobody thought the Nazis could be defeated--until Uncle Victor told Peter how the children could fool the enemy. It was a dangerous plan. They had to slip past Nazi guards with nine...

Author	Gloria Whelan
ISBN	0064408795

In the fall of 1914, safe behind palace walls, Katya Ivanova sees St. Petersburg as a magical place.The daughter of a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, Katya spends all her time with the Grand Duchesses; the royal family feels like her own. But outside the palace, a terrible war is sweeping through Europe,...

Author	Meindert DeJong
ISBN	0064402002

Here's one I've picked up for my little guy's library. We can't resist a book with a shiny medal on the cover. I like to read kid books between my "grownup" books because they are easier to focus on during my "book hangovers". You know, when a particular book is so thought provoking that your mind is foggy...

Author	Sterling North
ISBN	0140344454

Nothing's surprising in the North household, not even Sterling's new pet raccoon. Rascal is only a baby when Sterling brings him home, but soon the two are best friends, doing everything together--until the spring day when everything suddenly changes.

Rascal is a heartwarming boyhood...

Author	Lois Lenski
ISBN	0064461629

Civil rights and equality have made a lot of headway against racism in the last century.

"Well, duh," some might say.

"But there's still so far to go!" others might protest.

I personally grew up without any particularly scarring incidents of racism. Sure, I got made fun of...

Author

Esther Hautzig

It is June 1941. The Rudomin family has been arrested by the Russians. They are "capitalists' enemies of the people." Forced from their home and friends in Vilna, Poland, they are herded into crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia.

For five years, Esther and...

Author	Hilda van Stockum
ISBN	1883937078

This acclaimed story of World War II is rich in suspense, characterization, plot and spiritual truth. Every element of occupied Holland is united in a story of courage and hope: a hidden Jewish child, an "underdiver," a downed RAF pilot, an imaginative, daring underground hero, and the small things...

Author	Lindsay Mattick
ISBN	1443456993

A wartime adventure unfolds through the eyes of the world’s most beloved Bear.

The story of the real bear that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh has been capturing readers’ imaginations since the publication of the Caldecott Medal award-winning picture book, Finding Winnie.

But...

Author	James Ramsey Ullman
ISBN	0064470482

The Citadel

It stands unconquered, the last great summit of the Alps. Only one man has ever dared to approach the top, and that man died in his pursuit. He was Josef Matt, Rudi Matt's father.

At sixteen, Rudi is determined to pay tribute to the man he never knew, and complete the quest that...

Author	Robert Lawson
ISBN	0802777058

"Your fortune lies to the west. Keep your face to the sunset . . . and one day you'll ride the greatest wheel in all the world." When Aunt Honora reads this fortune in his tea leaves, Conn Kilroy knows he is destined for greater things than his small Irish village can offer. A letter from his uncle Michael in...

Author	Jean Fritz
ISBN	0142407615

This is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jean Fritz's award-winning account of her life in China, and to honor this story, it is only fitting that it be added to our prestigious line of Puffin Modern Classics. This fictionalized autobiography tells the heartwarming story of a little girl growing up...

Author	Louise S. Rankin
ISBN	0140363351

Momo has always wanted a Lhasa terrier--a dog like the ones the Buddhist priests hold sacred in their temples. And her dream is realized when a trader brings Pempa to her parents' tea house. But after a band of robbers steals the valuable dog and quickly escapes with him into the mountains, Momo is determined...

Author	Gloria Whelan
ISBN	0064408191

Like many girls her age in the India of her time period, thirteen-year-old-Koly is getting married. Full of hope and courage, she leaves home forever. But Koly's story takes a terrible turn when in the wake of the ceremony, she discovers she's been horribly misled about exactly what she is marrying into....