May 23, 2008
May 23, 2008
Middle school readers will see a different side of the civil rights struggle in My Mother the Cheerleader: A Novel by Robert Sharenow. The main character is Louise Collins, who lives in the ninth ward of New Orleans during the 1950s. The story takes place just after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, and white residents have no intention of sending their children to integrated schools. They keep the children at home and every morning a group of white women known as the Cheerleaders goes to the school that Ruby Bridges attends and throws rocks, food and uses vicious language to induce Ruby to go away. Louise accepts her mother’s prejudices and behavior. But then a man named Morgan Miller, a white man from New York City, comes to town and gets a room at Louise’s mother’s boarding house; soon he provokes Louise into thinking about injustices she has never considered before.
April 08
April 25, 2008
For our older students, The Book Of Dead Days, by Marcus Sedgwick, offers a young adult book that is dark, mysterious and fascinating. The time is the past, specifically one year during the days between Christmas and New Years, known as the “dead days.” This is a time when magical things happen, when spirits roam and put their mark on everything and everyone. The main character, referred to only as Boy, works for a magician, Valerian. Boy, who does not know his own name and cannot remember a time that he was free, is accustomed to the bad treatment inflicted on him, but things seem worse now on Dec. 27. The fact is that Valerian who, like Faust, years and years earlier traded his life for knowledge, is now about to make payment. He cannot stand the thought of giving up his life and so he sets out with Boy and a girl named Willow to find a secret “book” that will give him a chance to get his life back.
The Alchemist
March 28, 2008
For our middle school students, Michael Scott has written. The Alchemist: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Twins Sophie and Josh (age 15) are spending the summer in San Francisco while their parents are off on an anthropological dig. The twins are living with their grandmother but have taken jobs, Josh in a bookstore and Sophie in a nearby candy shop. Suddenly they find themselves in quite a situation. The bookstore owner, Nicholas Flamel, is not what he appears to be. In fact he is a very old man (over 1500 years old) who is an alchemyst, a student of magic, and he possesses a book containing the secret of immortal life. A rival alchemyst has been pursuing Flamel and attacks the store, but it’s Josh in the store and not Nicholas. This is the beginning of an intense chase as the forces of evil, who wish to destroy the world, pursue Nicholas and the twins.
02.20.08
February 29, 2008
Ethan Suspended, a novel by Pamela Ehrenberg, is perfect for middle schoolers. Seventh-grader Ethan Oppenheimer is suspended from school and the reader has no idea why. In any case, his mother wants him out of her house so she sends him to stay with his grandparents in Washington, D.C. The problem for Ethan is that he barely knows his grandparents, and to make him even more uncomfortable, he will now be the only white student in the new school. As the book proceeds, things don’t much improve for Ethan. He has difficulty making friends and fitting in. He feels terrible about whatever caused his suspension back in Pennsylvania, and then he finds out that his parents might be splitting up! Believe it or not, parts of this book are very funny.
01-18-08
January 18, 2008
For Middle School students, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, by Ibtisam Barakat, is a very powerful autobiography by a girl who, when she was three or four years old, experienced the Six Day War with her family. They were forced to run from their home for fear that bombs would hurt them. She fled with her family to Jordan, where they lived as refugees for a time, and after the war they return home. But the situation in East Jerusalem is neither safe nor comfortable. We see through Barakat’s eyes what it is like to grow up in the midst of war.
Middle Reader
October 26, 2007
Middle school students will enjoy reading The King of Mulberry Street by Donna Jo Napoli. It takes place in the early 1900s. The main character in this story, a young Jewish boy in Naples, lives in dire poverty with his mother. She wants a better life for him so she stows him away on a boat heading for the USA. From the time he arrives at Ellis Island he wants only one thing—to go back home. He tries but fails to hide on another boat returning to Europe, but then he makes a friend, then another friend, and through careful planning they begin a business. Can the young man earn enough money to go back to Italy? And if he does, should he go back?
Money Hungry, by Sharon Flake, might appeal to middle grade students (grades 4—8). The main character, Rasberry Hill, lives with her mother in the projects and can remember a time when they did not have a roof over their heads. She has become very greedy for money because of this past, and she will do just about anything legal to get money--wash cars, sell candy, skip lunch. And she is well on her way to making her mother very concerned about her.
September 14, 2007
Middle School students might be interested in Snatched, the first of a new series, “The Bloodwater Mysteries,” by Peter Hautman and Mary Logue. The book opens in the school principal’s outer office where two students who have little in common are awaiting their punishment. Roni Delicata is a reporter for the school paper and Brian Brain is always in the office because of some terrible mess he has created in the school chemistry lab. They discover that one of their classmates, beautiful Alicia, has disappeared. Has she been kidnapped? Roni, as a reporter, has to find out and she persuades Brian to help her uncover the mystery.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, number seven of J. K. Rowling’s wildly popular series, leads the readers on a dangerous quest. With the help of his dearest friends, Ron and Hermione, Harry sets out to find the Horcruxes before the evil Voldemort, finds them and in the process, encounters more excitement and danger than anyone can imagine. The struggle between good and evil is fought to the finish amid heroic battles and betrayals in the final volume.
May 18, 2007
The Planet Of Junior Brown, by Virginia Hamilton, is a challenging story for 7th and 8th graders. Hamilton introduces two boys: Junior Brown is a very overweight 8th grader with a vivid imagination, a deep love of music and a crazy mother; Buddy Clark is an 8th grader with no home of his own, but instead he cares for many of the homeless boys in his neighborhood. Buddy is very protective of Junior and together the two boys have been skipping school and spending their days in the school’s basement. There the janitor has built a fabulous model of the solar system, including a 10th planet for Junior Brown. But when the school officials discover the boys have been playing hooky, they plan to take steps that will cost the boys dearly.
Belle Prater’s Boy, by Ruth White, is a story about 12-year-old Woodrow, whose mother “left her bed” early one morning in 1953 and “vanished from the face of the earth.” Now when Woodrow comes to visit his cousins, the mystery about his mother deepens.
04.20.07
April 20, 2007
London Calling, by Edward Bloor, is a combination of historical fiction and time-travel novel. Martin Conway is the main character. He is a student at a private school where he does not fit in and is constantly fighting an obnoxious classmate named Hank Lowery. Martin undertakes an independent study project on the Blitz during World War II, and while he is listening to an old war-vintage radio, he makes contact with a boy, Jimmy, who lived during the war and who then begs for his help. It’s an intense and exciting book.
In Under the Quilt of Night, by Deborah Hopkinson, a young girl describes her escape with friends and loved ones from a plantation where they had been enslaved. Her flight is difficult, filled with darkness and terror, but she gains hope when she sees a quilt hanging near a farmhouse. The legend is that the Underground Railroad used quilts to help guide runaway slaves on their road to freedom.
03.15.07
March 15, 2007
For our adult readers and precocious seventh and eighth graders who are fascinated by history, Joseph Ellis has written His Excellency: George Washington, a fascinating perspective of our first president. This biography does much to penetrate the air of dignity and aloofness that we associate with Washington. Ellis examines Washington the British soldier who fought the French, Washington the Revolutionary general whose main achievement was keeping the army in the field, and Washington the president, without whose leadership the successful birth and early survival of the nation would have been impossible.
1.12.07c
January 12, 2007
The Sword That Cut The Burning Grass, by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, is a fascinating mystery about Seikei, the apprentice to Judge Ooka, a man who travels throughout medieval Japan to provide the people with justice. In this episode, Seikei is asked to perform a mission for the shogun of Japan. He is asked to visit the young emperor, who doesn’t believe he is fit to be emperor, and convince him that he must assume his responsibilities. It sounds simple enough, but soon Seikei discovers that he has walked into a plot to depose the shogun.
December 08, 2006
Middle school students who enjoy historical fiction, particularly about World War II, will like Weedflower, a beautifully written book by Cynthia Kadohata (the author of Newbery-winning KIRA KIRA). This story is about a Japanese-American family that lived in the LA area in the 1930s and 40s and whose life was turned upside down when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. The main character, 12-year-old Sumiko, who had lost her parents early in her life, sees her grandfather and uncle taken off to a prison camp for no reason that she can understand. Then the government takes their home, their land and their possessions, and ships what remains of the family— Sumiko, her brother Tak-Tak, her aunt, and an uncle—to Poston, a Japanese internment camp in Arizona. What’s next, she wonders.
November 09, 2006
Philip Pullman has written yet another entertaining novel that will appeal to middle grade students. The Scarecrow And His Servant is the story of a farmer (Mr. Pandolfo) who decides to create a scarecrow to protect his crops. He gives the scarecrow a turnip head and a broom-stick body, and dresses him in a respectable suit. Unfortunately the scarecrow is hit by lightning, he comes to life and now he wants to be free to pursue his destiny. Young Jack, a smart lad with no parents and no relatives, happens upon the scarecrow and sets out to help him on his humorous and extraordinary adventure.
Patricia McKissack, a prolific writer who has written books like The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales Of The Supernatural and Goin’ Someplace Special, has published another collection, this time of trickster tales. In Porch Lies: Tales Of Slicksters, Tricksters, And Other Wily Characters, a book for all grades, Ms. McKissack recalls summers she spent with her grandparents in Tennessee where night after night neighbors came visiting, sat on the porch and told the most amazing whoppers.
Tiger Of The Snow, written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Ed Young, is a book best suited for 2nd-5th graders. The book describes a young Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, who grew up at the foot of Mount Everest, and who dreamed of climbing this formidable mountain. In 1953 he accompanied Sir Edmund Hillery and saw his dream come true. The beautiful language combines with stunning art to make this book a memorable experience.
For Middle
October 13, 2006
Students grades 4-7 will enjoy Running With The Reservoir Pups, by Colin Batman. Young Eddy, who lives in Ireland with his parents, gets some good news and some bad news. The good news, his mother tells him, is that she has a new job in another town. If that is the good news, Eddy can hardly imagine what the bad news is: his mother and father are getting a divorce, so that Eddy and mother will be starting a new life on their own. Eddy and mom move to a city that seems to be run by gangs. Eddy doesn’t want to become a gang member, but is there another way to survive in this hostile new place?
A Summer Of Kings, by Han Nolan, is an excellent title for middle school students. This novel takes place in the 1960’s in New York. Fourteen-year-old Esther Young is the main character. Her family is quite well-off and the children are talented and happy. In the summer of 1963, they invite a 17-year-old African-American to come live with them. He has made some white enemies in his still-segregated southern town, and he needs to be away for a while.
September 08, 2006
For grades 4-7
The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordon, is an excellent book. The main character, Percy Jackson, age 12, is having a difficult time. He is being kicked out of his school. He thought he was trying to defend
his best friend, but somehow this led to his pre-algebra teacher's attacking him. Percy cannot figure out why bad things keep happening to him until somehow he gets himself invited to summer camp. It turns out to be a camp closely tied to the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. Percy has managed to antagonize Zeus without even knowing him, and that is only the beginning.
For Grades 6-8:
Middle grade students will enjoy Tanya Bolden’s new book, Maritcha: A Nineteenth Century American Girl. Ms. Bolden came across Maritcha Ramond Lyon’s memoirs while working on another project. Here was an opportunity to write about a free middle-class African American woman who grew up in pre-Civil War New York, and thus help to fill readers in on an area of social history
that has been sadly neglected.
May 19, 2006
For 8th graders, The Diary of Pelly D., by L. J. Adlington, is an intriguing book, reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. This is a science fiction story about some time in the future when everyone lives under a tyrannical government. The narrator, Toni V, is a teenager working for the City Five demolition crew. While doing some excavation he finds a battered water can containing a diary of a girl named Pelly D. Pelly, the diary reveals, was a smug, self-centered teen, interested in clothes and boys, who suddenly found herself in the midst of a crisis. The society seems to be experiencing a drought and the population is forced to undergo various blood tests. Pelly is identified and many others are labeled as part of a lowest class who are put under increasing restrictions, deprived of normal housing and privileges and finally deported. It’s a fascinating book.April 21, 2006
Several years ago Louis Sachar wrote a terrific book for middle schoolers called Holes. The book and author won the National Book Award, and now Mr. Sachar has written a sequel, Small Steps. He follows the life of one of the former inmates of Camp Greenlake, “Armpit,” who after leaving the camp went back home to finish high school and make something of himself. Unfortunately one of his old friends from the camp, “X-Ray,” appears on the scene and wants Armpit to invest some money in a budding business idea. X-Ray plans to purchase tickets for a hot teen concert and then make money scalping the tickets just before the event. All they need is Armpit’s money to make things happen. Armpit knows he should not listen to his friend, but he can’t resist X-Ray’s pleas. And maybe there will be some money in it…
Tiger, by Jeff Stone (the first of the Five Ancestors series), is another action-packed book for middle school students. The grand master of Cangzhen Temple is about to die, but first he orders his five youngest and brightest pupils to leave the monastery where they have been studying (the monastery is about to be destroyed) and set out individually to investigate their pasts. They cannot deal with the trials of the present until they know more about their pasts. This first book describes Fu, who knows the art of the tiger. He runs from his monastery as it is destroyed by a cunning and dangerous enemy, and he tries to figure out how to retaliate.
March 06, 2006
Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins won this year’s Newbery Medal. This book is beautifully written, but is not for everyone. It is a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old girl, Debbie, and her friends as they leave childhood and meander into teenage years. There are many tender and poignant moments as these young people search for “who they are, and who they’ll become.”
Red Rose Box, by Brenda Woods, is a provocative read for grades 4 through 7. Leah Jean Hopper and her sister Ruth are two African-American girls who live with their parents and grandmother in a Southern town called Sulphur. Segregation is part of the environment, and the girls are accustomed to the “whites only” signs that seem to be everywhere. This does not mean they like it. They are given an opportunity to see a city without such signs when their Aunt Olivia invites them to Los Angeles for a week, and when they return home they are less satisfied with the lives they live.
February 17, 2006
Stumptown Kid, by Carol Gorman and Ron J. Findley, is an interesting selection for middle schoolers. The book is about life in the 1950s in a small Iowa town. The main character, 12-year-old Charlie Nebraska, lives with his mother—his father died 2 years earlier in the Korean War—and life has been a struggle for both the boy and his mom. The main plot focuses on the racial prejudice that permeates the opinions of many in small town America. Charlie loves baseball and although he does not make the local team—the Wildcats—he continues to play with his pals. And then an African-American man comes to town looking for work. His name is Luther Peale—he watches the boys practice and he offers some ideas on their playing. After the practice, Charlie stays to talk to him and learns that the man used to play in the Negro baseball league. During a game when Luther’s team was playing a white team, he accidentally hit one of their players with a pitch and the guy died. The dead man’s brother is out to kill Luther so he moves away. Luther is the only black man in the new town and as he looks for a place to stay and starts job hunting, he encounters the prejudice of many of the town’s citizens. This is the beginning of a dramatic and swift maturing of young Charlie.
Under The Persimmon Tree, by Suzanne Fisher Staples, is another excellent book for sixth, seventh and eighth graders. Staples once more writes about how individuals in the Middle East are affected by conflict. This time her characters are Najmah of Afghanistan and Nusrat of Pakistan. Najmah is a young girl whose father and brother are conscripted unwillingly into the Taliban, and within days the girl also loses her mother and a baby brother in an air raid. Meanwhile Nusrat, who is American-born (she married a Pakistani doctor in the States who went back to Pakistan so that he could work as a doctor for his people), is living with her husband’s family. He has gone into the mountains to run a clinic for the poor. The book traces these two women and how they survive.
January 12, 2006
For students in grades 5 through 7, Project Mulberry, by Linda Sue Parks, is an excellent title. Parks has already won literary accolades for her books, Kira Kira and A Single Shard. In this recent title she writes about two young people, Julia Song, a Korean girl, and Patrick, Julia’s friend since kindergarten. They have just joined a science club and will be participating in a local science fair, but they need to come up with a project. And they do-—raising worms to make silk thread. It sounds fun and not so difficult, but all manner of things complicate the project. First, Julia really doesn’t want to do the project because it sounds too Korean—not American enough. Patrick is a bit reticent because he has a phobia for worms. And then there’s Kenny, Julia’s little brother, who is a terror waiting to destroy anything Julia and Patrick create. This is only the beginning of a book that explores the fears and prejudices of its characters.
Middle grade students will enjoy the humor and zaniness of Christopher Paul Curtis’ new book, Mr. Checkee’s Funny Money. Instead of writing about a social slice of minority life (as he did in Bud Not Buddy and The Watsons Go To Birmingham), he writes a rip-roaring adventure-like detective story in which the main character, nine-year-old Stephen, accidentally stumbles onto a large fortune. However, the U.S. government and the Treasury Department have plans to take that money away, as quickly as possible. The struggle between sleazy government agents with virtually no intellectual capacity and Steve, who is smart, his friend Russell, and their zany monster dog, Zoopy, makes up the core of this novel. It is very funny.
December 09, 2005
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale Of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits And A Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall, is a wonderful new book that appeals to middle schoolers. (It won the National Book Award for young adults this year.) A single father takes his brood of four girls on a two-week vacation in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. The family is thrilled to find that they will be living in a cottage on a sumptuous estate -- until they meet the ultra- aristocratic mistress of the place. She’s an impossible woman, and what’s worse, she makes life utterly miserable for her 12-year-old son. Inevitably the girls feel compelled to rescue him from his miserable fate.
November 04, 2005
Behind You, by Jacqueline Woodson, is a powerful novel for seventh and eighth graders that portrays a young African-American boy and a White girl who attend a chic private school in New York City and are romantically involved. As the book begins, the boy is killed, and the novel describes how his friends, parents and girlfriend deal with the loss.
For this same age group, Son of the Mob, by Gordon Korman, is an entertaining title. Vince Luca, a nice, ordinary, American teenager, confronts some major problems in his life. His father is the head of corporate crime in his region, and he won’t stay out of Vince’s life. And worse yet, there is the fact that the girl Vince has a crush on is the daughter of the FBI agent whose main goal is to arrest the head of the mob.
I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight: A Story about John Paul Jones, by Elaine and Arthur Alphin, is a fine portrayal of this heroic figure, who served in the colonial Navy during the American Revolution. Youngsters who like to dig into history and military adventure will be intrigued with this title.
October 07, 2005
Middle School students will enjoy The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, by E. L. Konigsburg. The main character, twelve-year-old Margaret Rose, is having a very difficult time at the summer camp her parents chose for her. After she has some major conflicts with cabin mates and the camp’s director, her uncles come to the rescue. Then Margaret Rose falls into the middle of her uncles’ personal problems, from which she must rescue them.
Lydia, Queen of Palestine, by Uri Orlev, is about the spunk and spirit of a ten-year-old girl growing up in Romania at the start of World War II. Lydia has family problems—her parents are separating; and she has social problems—she is Jewish at a time when Jews are no longer allowed to attend public schools. Soon she is forced by her mother to escape alone to Israel. Lydia displays stubbornness and courage as she manages to survive in the face of adversity.
September 10, 2005
The Skin I’m In, by Sharon Flake, is a great book about acquiring self-esteem in those difficult teenage years. Our main character, Maleeka Madison, whose dad has died and who lives with a very loving but fragile mother, spends much unhappy time at school. A boy, John-John, who never lets her forget how black her skin is, teases her. Her friend, Charlene, is as likely to smile at her as she is to mock her horribly in front of the entire class. Where can she go and what can she do?
The Secret School, by Avi, is a good selection for the 3rd through 5th grade student. Avi describes a one-room school back in the 1920s, in which two students expect to graduate at the end of the year and hope to go to high school. And then the teacher has health problems in her own family and she leaves. Will the school close now, and will the two 8th grade students lose their opportunity to pursue an education?
March 11, 2005
Kira-Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata, won the Newbery Award for literature in 2005. This is a beautifully written story about a 1950s Japanese American family of five who must move from their home in Kansas to a small town in Georgia, where there are only 31 Japanese-Americans. The middle child and narrator, Katie, describes her older sister Lynn, who is beautiful and smart; her little brother, Sammy; and her parents who must work all the time to make ends meet. Then we learn that Lynn has a very serious illness and that the prognosis is not good.
Freedom Summer, by Deborah Wiles, is one of the titles up for a California Reader Medal in the “picture books for older readers” category. This story, told by a ten-year-old white southern boy, describes how he and his African-American friend, John Henry, run together, explore together and swim together. But when they try to swim together in the local city pool they find that prejudice still holds sway.
February 12, 2005
For Middle School readers, Paul Curtis (author of Bud, Not Buddy) has published a book called Bucking the Sarge. Combining his well-developed sense of the comic in human relationships with the difficult truths that children often face, he has written about 15-year-old Luther T. Farrell, who is forced to help his mother (a woman with the personality and power of an Army sergeant) run a group of facilities for helpless senior citizens. And she runs it with her own self-interest the paramount goal. I think middle grade and Middle School students will also enjoy Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett. Two young people at the Laboratory School, a private school in the heart of the University of Chicago campus, get enmeshed in a series of apparently unrelated and peculiar events that have to do with the theft of a priceless Vermeer painting.
January 14, 2005
Iqbal: a Novel, by Francesco D’Adamo provides a fascinating slice of life in South Asia. This story is set in modern day Pakistan, where parents in extreme debt sometimes sell their children into bondage for a paltry sum. Children are required to work in a factory or on a farm and earn money to buy their way out of quasi-slavery. Unfortunately, the children work on and on with no one ever earning freedom. Fatima, a sweet young eleven-year-old, has not yet given up hope when into her factory comes young rebellious Iqbal. He acts out the secret thoughts and angry emotions that both terrify and echo the hopes of other captive workers.
Me, Mop and the Moondance Kid, by Walter Dean Myers, is a wonderful novel probably suitable for 4th—6th graders. Three youngsters, T.J., Mop and Moondance had grown up together in the local orphanage. Two of them managed to get adopted into the same family, but that left Mop still in the orphanage, just as it is about to close its doors and send its remaining children to whatever institutions would accept them. This is a book about friendship among some remarkable young people.
December 10, 2004
Godless, by Pete Hautman, just received the National Book Award for young adult fiction. In this book sixteen-year-old Jason Bock, who does not believe in his family’s Catholicism, decides to create his own religion. He creates a new God, the town’s water tower, and convinces three of his acquaintances to worship with him. Adventures ensue quickly and furiously from the moment that his cult holds its first spiritual service “high atop the dome of the water tower.”
The Unseen by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
November 04, 2004
Zilpha Keatley Snyder has written a new book, The Unseen. Twelve-year-old Xandra is part of a very active, wealthy family, but feels out-of-place and angry. She rescues a beautiful white bird from some hunters and is left with a glowing white feather when the bird leaves. Xandra is sure that the feather is magical, and she is right. The feather is a key to an unseen world that lives within our ordinary one, a world filled with phantom creatures, some sweet, others terrifying.
A Walk in the Woods by Andrew Clements
The Grand Escape by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
October 02, 2004
Author Andrew Clements, the author of Frindl, has come up with another winner, with A Walk in the Woods. He writes about Mark Chelmsley, an 11-year-old who comes from a wealthy family, and who has always been in private schools. For a few months, he must attend a 5th-6th grade class in the New Hampshire public school system. He doesn’t want to go. He makes enemies of both his fellow students and the science teacher, which he will soon regret as he goes off on the big Outdoor Ed. trip at the end of April.
In The Grand Escape by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, the issue is whether it is better to have good care, a good home, good food, and safety, or to have freedom? In this book two cats, Polo and Marco (brothers), decide to leave their comfortable caring family to go out and seek the ideal life in the big wide world.