Walking Backward

Author	Mika Ashley-Hollinger
ISBN	0385742193

Meet ten-year-old Bones, whose playground is the Florida swamps, brimming with mystical witches, black bears, alligators and bobcats. Bones' father, Nolay, a Miccosukee Indian, is smart and mischievous. Her Mama, practical as corn bread, can see straight into Bones' soul.

It's summer,...

Author

Susin Nielsen

Twelve-year-old Ambrose is a glass-half-full kind of guy. A self-described “friendless nerd,” he moves from place to place every couple of years with his overprotective mother, Irene. When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich — even though they...

Author	Susan Cooper
ISBN	1416914773

Two Children, Two Struggles, One Battle... One child is Sam Robbins, a powder monkey aboard HMS Victory, the ship in which Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson will die a hero's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The other is Molly Jennings, an English girl transplanted from London to the United States...

Author	Kit Pearson
ISBN	0670066826

Kit Pearson’s long-awaited new novel tells the story of the six Bell children, each of them coping in various ways in the aftermath of their mother’s death. Set in the 1950s and seen through the perspective of the middle child, 11-year-old Corrie, Pearson’s story illustrates how a rich fantasy...

Author

Mick Cochrane

For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself.

Molly doesn't want to be seen as "Miss Difficulty Overcome"; she wants to make herself known to the kids at...

Author	Barbara Dee
ISBN	1416947396

Twelve-year-old Cassie has a lot to cope with when her father moves "out of the picture." Her mom's constantly working overtime, her teenage sister's going AWOL, and her little brother seriously needs attention. It's up to Cassie to prevent total chaos at home -- or so she thinks.

She can't...

Author	Edith M. Hemingway
ISBN	0385736770

Annie struggles with grief after the death of her newborn sister.

Annie can always count on spending summers at her grandparents’. This summer should be even better because Mama is going to have a baby soon. Before Daddy leaves for his Air Force assignment, he gives Annie a journal for summer...

Author	P.J. Petersen
ISBN	0385737246

It’s Ryan versus the river in a race against time to save his brother’s life.

When twelve-year-old Ryan reluctantly agrees to join his experienced older brother Tanner on a camping trip, he could never have dreamed this would turn into the most frightening day of his life.

Ryan’s...

Author	Rachel Vail
ISBN	0439087635

Rachel Vail has started her book in Morgan's class room during their homework presentations. Morgan has a troubled background. Her father has left her family and her mother is very hard on Morgan. Her family does not have a lot of money which causes her to not have the same things that her friends have....

Author	Deborah Ellis
ISBN	1554981344

Even though Valli spends her days picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror is the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks — the lepers. When Valli discovers that that her “aunt”...

Author

Zilpha Keatley Snyder

William S. Baggett is a good kid trapped in a really awful family. William has his running-away money ready to go, he's just been waiting until he's older than twelve to leave. When his big brothers flush his sister's pet guinea pig down the toilet, she insists they leave now. And take the two littlest...

Author	Iain Lawrence
ISBN	0385733763

A girl’s imagination transports polio-afflicted kids into a fantastic world.

The spring of 1955 tests Laurie Valentine’s gifts as a storyteller. After her friend Dickie contracts polio and finds himself confined to an iron lung, Laurie visits him in the hospital. There she meets Carolyn...

Author	Kimberly Newton Fusco
ISBN	0375861041

Charlie Anne is devastated when her father must go north to build roads after the Depression hits. She and her siblings are left with their rigid cousin, Mirabel, and a farm full of chores. The only solace Charlie Anne finds is by the river, where the memory of her mother is strongest.
 
Then her...

Author	A.J. Paquette
ISBN	0802722970

Luchi Ann only knows a few things about herself: she was born in a prison in Thailand. Her American mother was an inmate there. And now that her mother has died, Luchi must leave the only place she's ever known and set out into the world. Neither at home as a Thai, because of her fair skin and blond hair, nor...

Author	Eve Bunting
ISBN	0007104413

I read the book Blackwater because it looked really interesting. It turned out to be a very good book. It is all about Brodie who is thirteen. His cousin, Alex, comes to stay with Brodie's family for the summer. But when Brodie takes Alex down to the pond to teach him how to swim, he sees the girl he likes on...

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	Ann M. Martin
ISBN	0439098246

Newbery Honor author Ann M. Martin's gripping, widely acclaimed novel of a girl confronting the perils of friendship and the conflicts of community.

Belle Teal's life isn't easy, but she gets by. She lives with her mother and grandmother far out in the country. They don't have much money, but...

Author

Jamie Michalak

This lively junior novelization of the film The Tale of Despereaux tells the story of several unlikely heroes: Despereaux, a brave mouse banished to the dungeon for speaking with a human; Roscuro, a good-hearted rat who loves light and soup, but is exiled to darkness; Pea, a Princess in a gloomy castle...

Author	Carol Lynch Williams
ISBN	1561454443

For Beauty McElwrath, the first day of sixth grade in small-town Green River, Florida, proves to be exactly the catastrophe she expected.
Acutely shy and raised in a non-traditional family of strong-minded single women, Beauty is sure she's doomed to be a social outcast for yet another school...

Author	Nancy Hartry
ISBN	1770493603

Watching Jimmy is impossible-to-put-down; full of danger, warmth, and dark humor. With shocking candor, Carolyn relates what really happened to her best friend, Jimmy, when his uncle chose the perfect time to teach him a lesson he would never forget. The truth is Jimmy didn't fall from a swing like...

Author	Dan Gutman
ISBN	1416924388

Trip Dinkleman hates to read. Hates, hates, hates it.

All he wants to do is play lacrosse. So when the president of the PTA asks Trip to help her out on his way to tryouts, he is not happy. He is even more not happy when a stack of books tumbles onto his head and knocks him out cold. And he is even more not...

Author	Gill Lewis
ISBN	1442414456

The majestic Osprey is an endangered bird that hasn’t been seen in Scotland for years, so when Iona McNair locates an Osprey nest, she’s desperate to keep the bird safe from poachers. She shares her secret with her classmate Callum, and the two become friends as they work to save the Osprey they’ve...

Author	Simon French
ISBN	1921720832

Kieran wants to be part of the in-group at school. He wants to be on the football team. He wants to fit in. But then his cousin Bon turns up. Bon doesn’t know anything about fitting in – he looks different, he wears the wrong clothes, and he says weird things. Kieran just wants to ignore Bon, but soon he...

Author	Hervé Bouchard
ISBN	1554980755

Harvey and his little brother are playing in the slushy streets of early spring when they learn, out of the blue, that their father has died of a heart attack. Everything changes and Harvey's favorite movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man, suddenly begins to dominate his fantasy life. When relatives...