| REQUIRED:
|
Whelen -- Homeless Bird
A girl in modern India struggles with an arranged marriage.
Married and promptly widowed at 13, Koly finds herself
in the grim position of being cast out by a society
that has no place for girls like her. With a seemingly
hopeless future in India, this courageous and spirited
young woman sets out to forge her own destiny.
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| LITERATURE SELECTIONS: |
Armstrong -- Sounder
A sharecropper's son learns about responsibility and devotion
when his father goes to prison and his dog, Sounder, is
badly injured. His transition to adulthood is paved by
the rocks and taunts hurled at him by convicts and guards
as he searches for his father. But along this rough road
he ultimately finds salvation as well. |
| Barrett -- Lilies of the
Field
Homer Smith, a wandering black ex-GI, was a carefree
man living the life of the open road until he met a
group of German speaking nuns with a dream, so he pauses
in his travels to build a church in Arizona. |
| Bitton-Jackson
-- I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing up in The
Holocaust
The writer tells the true story of coming of age in
Hungary during the century's biggest genocide. PW's
starred review called this memoir, of a 13-year-old
Hungarian Jewish girl's incarceration in Auschwitz,
"an exceptional story, exceptionally well told." |
| Byars -- The
Summer of the Swans
Sarah Godfrey forgets about her gawkiness, her enormous
feet, and all the troubles of her fourteenth summer
when her younger brother disappears. The longest day
in the life of a 14-year-old girl--the summer day her
loved, mentally retarded brother is lost, the day she
discovers compassion is a friend. |
Card -- The Ender Series (Ender’s
Game, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, etc.)
Ender Wiggin is one of a group of children bred to be
military geniuses. His task is to save Earth from alien
attacks, but there are many surprises and twists. This
entertaining science-fiction novel presents realistic
characters in complex moral dilemmas. |
| Creech -- Walk Two Moons
Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle's mother has
disappeared. While tracing her steps on a car trip from
Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents, Salamanca tells
a story to pass the time about a friend whose mother
vanished and who received secret messages after her
disappearance. |
| Crichton -- Jurassic Park
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning
dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct
now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme
park. Until something goes wrong...and science proves
a dangerous toy. |
Cushman -- The Midwife's Apprentice
This novel is about a strong young woman in medieval England
who finds her own way home. From the first page, readers
are caught by the spirit of the homeless, nameless waif
who gets the ill-tempered village midwife to take her
in, names herself Alyce, and learns something about delivering
babies. |
| Dickinson -- A Bone from
a Dry Sea
In two parallel stories an intelligent female member
of a prehistoric tribe becomes instrumental in advancing
the lot of her people, and the daughter of a paleontologist
visits her father on a dig in Africa when important
fossil remains are discovered. |
| Farmer -- The Eye, the Ear
and the Arm
In a futuristic Africa, three mutant detectives seek
missing children. In Zimbabwe in the year 2194, the
military ruler's 13-year-old son and his younger brother
and sister leave their technologically overcontrolled
home and find themselves on a series of perilous adventures.
|
| Frank -- Diary of a Young
Girl
The true memoir of a young girl driven into hiding during
the Holocaust, this vivid, insightful journal is a fitting
memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen,
Germany, in 1945. Born in 1929, Anne Frank received
a blank diary on her 13th birthday, just weeks before
she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied
Amsterdam. |
| Hansen -- Captive Kofi
The son of an Ashanti Chief is sold as a slave and ends
up in Massachusetts. |
Hautzig -- The Endless Steppe
Autobiography of a Jewish girl whose family was exiled
during World War II. Ten-year-old Esther Rudomin movingly
describes "the end of my lovely world" when her family
is arrested in 1941 and taken from their home and exiled
to Siberia. |
Herriot -- All Creatures Great
and Small, All Things Bright and
Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, or The Good
Lord Made Them
James Herriot tells the true and funny adventures of his
life as a veterinarian in Yorkshire, England. It is just
after World War II, and James has returned from the R.A.F.
to do battle with the diseases and injuries that befall
the farm animals and pets of Skeldale and the surrounding
moors. |
London -- White Fang
Read about the taming of a wild wolf-dog through the patience
and devotion of one man. Written in 1906, London tells
the story of a wolf-dog who endures great cruelty before
he comes to know human kindness. |
Lowry -- The Giver
In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and
no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old
Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories.
Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known
as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about
his utopian world and struggles against the weight of
its hypocrisy. |
McKinley -- Outlaws of Sherwood
Stories of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws. McKinley
brings to the Robin Hood legend a romantic view. She renders
it anew by fully developing the background and motive
of each member of the merry band, from Robin's "crime"
that sends him into the woods, to Marian's subterfuge
as she straddles the worlds of the nobility and of the
outlaws. |
Mowat -- Never Cry Wolf
The source for the popular movie, this book details the
trials of a scientist observing wildlife in the unpredictable
Alaskan wilderness. As he comes closer to the wolf world,
he discovers a pack of courageous animals as he tries
to protect them from bounty hunters. |
O'Brien -- Z for Zachariah
Safe in her radiation-free valley after WWIII, Ann Burden
thinks she is the last person in the world until the arrival
of a stranger. She discovers there are worse things than
being alone. |
Paolini -- Eragon
In Aagaesia, a fifteen-year-old farm boy named Eragon
finds a mysterious stone that leads him into magic, power,
and the fulfillment of his destiny. Peopled with dragons,
elves, and monsters, Eragon is the first novel published
when the author was 17.
Paolini
-- Eldest
The second book of the Eragon trilogy. After successfully
evading an Urgals ambush, Eragon is adopted into the Ingeitum
clan and sent to finish his training so he can further
help the Varden in their struggle againstthe Empire. |
Patterson -- Come Sing, Jimmy
Jo
An eleven-year-old boy finds both pain and fame as popular
singer. James Johnson has been raised in West Virginia
by his Grandma, while his family has been out pickin'
and singin' country music at tent meetings and picnics.
James has a rough time handling his fame when he starts
to perform with his country-western singing family. |
Plotkin -- Tales of a Shaman's
Apprentice
The true story of a Harvard botanist who searches for
plants that might have some medical value in the Amazon
jungle. |
Rawicz -- The Long Walk
During World War II, the author and other prisoners escaped
from a Soviet labor camp. On foot they traveled across
Siberia, China, and over the Himalayas to India and freedom.
An amazing and true story of survival. |
Rinaldi -- The Coffin Quilt
Feuds among the mountain folks of West Virginia and Kentucky,
particularly the bloody skirmishes between the Hatfield
and McCoy families, are often celebrated in American legend
and folksongs. In The Coffin Quilt, Ann Rinaldi
mines this rich vein of Americana for a fascinating tale
that closely follows the real events of the Hatfield-McCoy
feud, but which also has implications for our own violent
times. |
Raskin -- The Westing Game
Which of the Sunset Tower's crazy tenants killed Samuel
Westing, and which will win his millions by uncovering
the murderer? Woodman's youthful voice and energetic delivery
fit it perfectly. Expertly, he distinguishes at least
a dozen principals of wildly varying age, class and ethnicity,
avoiding the annoying falsetto that many male readers
use to portray women and children. |
