What Momma Left Me

Author	Padma Venkatraman
ISBN	0399250999

From the acclaimed author of Climbing the Stairs comes a fascinating story set on a remote island untouched by time. Uido is ecstatic about becoming her tribe's spiritual leader, but her new position brings her older brother's jealousy and her best friend's mistrust. And looming above these troubles...

Author	Rachel Cohn
ISBN	0689874146

Twelve-year-old Annabel thought Christmas break was going to be amazing. She'd planned to stay home in New York City with her best friend and do traditional things like go ice-skating in Rockefeller Center, hit the after-Christmas sale at Bloomingdale's, and scream with the TRL crowd at MTV in...

Author	Na'ima B. Robert
ISBN	1847801501

Farhana and Faraz are twins, born 6 minutes apart. Both are in turmoil as they approach the holy time of Ramadan. Farhana has to decide whether her faith is strong enough for her to wear the hijab at school and whether she can give up her relationship with handsome Malik. Faraz has fallen in with a street...

Author	Diane Stanley
ISBN	0061239054

The country is at war, terrorists strike at random, widespread rationing is in effect, and the power grid is down. But thirteen-year-old Sky Brightman is remarkably untouched by it all. She lives off the grid on sixty acres of rural New Mexico ranch land with chores to do and horses to ride and no television...

Author	Karen English
ISBN	0374424594

A distinctive new voice in children's fiction

Francie lives with her mother and younger brother, Prez, in rural Alabama, where all three work and wait. Francie's father is trying to get settled in Chicago so he can move his family up North.

Unfortunately, he's made promises he hasn't...

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	Meg Wolitzer
ISBN	0525423044

At first glance, Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano don't seem to have much in common. Duncan is trying to look after his single mom and adjust to life in a new town while managing his newfound Scrabble superpower - he can feel words and pictures beneath his fingers and tell what they are without...

Author	James Lincoln Collier
ISBN	0440495040

Willy Freeman's life changes forever when she witnesses her father's death at the hands of the Redcoats and returns home to find that the British have taken her mother as a prisoner to New York City.



Willy, disguised as a boy, begins her long search for her mother and luckily finds a haven...

Author	Tess Hilmo
ISBN	0374384657

One of School Library Journal's Best Fiction Books of 2011

When Ollie's daddy, the Reverend Everlasting Love, pulls their travel trailer into Binder to lead a three-day revival, Ollie knows that this town will be like all the others they visit— it is exactly the kind of nothing Ollie has come...

Author	Heather Smith
ISBN	1459802748

Growing up in a picturesque Newfoundland fishing village "should" be idyllic for sixteen-year-old Kit Ryan, but living with an alcoholic father makes Kit's day-to-day life unpredictable and almost intolerable. When the 1992 cod moratorium forces her father out of a job, the tension between Kit...

Author	Sue Corbett
ISBN	0525422056

Wil David can't wait to take over his brother's paper route. For years it has been the tradition in his family to hand over the route to the next boy in line on his twelfth birthday, and Wil is just about to turn twelve and get his chance to put his sidearm throw into action. But when the newspaper company cancels...

Author	Jacqueline Houtman
ISBN	1590787080

Eddy Thomas can read a college physics book, but he can't read the emotions on the faces of his classmates at Drayton Middle School. He can spend hours tinkering with an invention, but he can't stand more than a few minutes in a noisy crowd, like the crowd at the science fair, which Eddy fails to win. When...

Author	Zetta Elliott
ISBN	1441474242

Visit my blog for the in-depth review: Read Diverse Books


A Wish After Midnight is one of the most thrilling reading experiences I’ve had this year. Author Zetta Elliott writes with an urgency that informs the reader early on that this will be an important story. It is book 1 of the series,...

Author	Fred Rogers
ISBN	0698116666

In this useful book from the First Experience series, the affable star of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood helps children share feelings of the loss of a pet while offering reassurance that grieving is a natural, healing thing to do.

"A sensitive and sensible first book about death." The Bulletin...

Author	Hans Wilhelm
ISBN	0517572656

As picture books that deal with deep sadness go, I'll Always Love You isn't the most crushing heartbreak out there. The Scar by Charlotte Moundlic and Harry & Hopper by Margaret Wild are far more heartrending, stories of such beautiful, pure power that it's hard to think of many better books ever...

Author

Margaret Wild

When it comes to a sudden loss of a family member or a beloved pet nothing is much harder to uderstand. The combined talents of Australian author, Margaret Wild and Australian illustrator, Freya Blackwood, accomplish it beautifully in this story.

Will you cry when you read it? Yes but the art...

Author	David Elliott
ISBN	0763623563

Who among us hasn't encountered that force of nature called "a fit"? A best-selling author and illustrator depict a toddler’s tantrum in all its horror and hilarity.

Finn likes peaches. Usually. But not today. Today Finn doesn’t like
anything. Uh-oh. Is Finn going to throw a fit?...

Author	Audrey Couloumbis
ISBN	0375856307

A heartwarming holiday story from Audrey Couloumbis, the Newbery Honor–winning author of Getting Near to Baby. With beautiful writing and an endearing young narrator so honest and full of hope that you can't help but fall in love with him, Audrey Couloumbis tells a story, of a young boy and the grandfather...

Author	Rita Williams-Garcia
ISBN	0064473031

The Barnes & Noble Review


In a beautifully written but hard-hitting tale about the harsh realities of life, African-American author Rita Williams-Garcia offers the elegantly poignant young adult novel Every Time a Rainbow Dies. Sixteen-year-old Thulani has been adrift in his...

Author	Margaret Buffie
ISBN	1553379551

In this novel by Margaret Buffie, 16-year-old Bernice Dodd feels lucky. Her mother's inheriting Black Spruce Lodge means no more roach-infested apartments or bullies in the hallways. No more avoiding the landlord or sneaking away in the middle of the night because the rent is overdue.
But some...

Author	Melanie Crowder
ISBN	0399169008

Modern history unearthed as a boy becomes an innocent victim of corruption in the underbelly of Bolivia's crime world, where the power of family is both a prison and the only means of survival.

It's 1999 in Bolivia and Francisco's life consists of school, soccer, and trying to find space for...

Author	Pat Thomas
ISBN	0764117645

When a close friend or family member dies, it can be difficult for children to express their feelings. This book helps boys and girls understand that death is a natural complement to life, and that grief and a sense of loss are normal feelings for them to have following a loved one's death. Titles in this...

Author

Lauren McLaughlin

In the beginning, Isaac West stole to give his younger sister Janelle little things: a new sweater, a scarf, just so she looked less like a charity case whose mother spent money on booze and more like the prep school girls he’d see on his way to school.

But when Isaac’s petty theft lands him...

Author

Margaret Wise Brown

It is true, many children do seem to enjoy the stab of pathos incumbent on finding dead a creature that has no personal weight for them. Kudos to Brown for recognizing that and treating it realistically, I guess? I'm not sure what the point of this story was. Unless you are a kid who has been accused...

Author	Nandini Bajpai
ISBN	8129129310

In the ancient city of Ujjayani, the planets align to decide the fate of two starcursed lovers. Born under the curse of Mars, brilliant and beautiful Leelavati, daughter of the famed astronomer Bhaskarya Acharya of Ujjayani, knows she can never wed. But when her childhood playmate, the handsome and...