Lists And Requirements For Upper Grades

Classics

Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
A heart-warming classic based on the author's family life growing up in a household of four girls each with a unique personality. (1868)

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Amusing story of a young woman's adventures and misadventures in the society of the 19th century English gentry. (1813)

Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden
Mary, a self-centered girl, and Colin, a pampered invalid boy come to understand compassion and generosity within a mysterious abandoned garden. (1911)

Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
An unassuming English orphan becomes a governess and falls in love with her employer. (1847)

Walter Van Tilburg Clark - The Ox Bow Incident
Set in 1895, this classic story is a searing portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West, focusing on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. (1940)

Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe is generally credited with being one of the first novel writers in the English language: this is his tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. (1719)

Richard Henry Dana - Two Years before the Mast
The remarkable story of life at sea, as told by a 19 year old, who has left the privileged world of Boston and Harvard to become a common sailor. (1840)

Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
This is the story of David, and orphan boy, who grows up amongst a diverse and delightful cast of characters - termed "the most perfect of all of the Dickens novels" by Virginia Woolf. (1850)

James Hilton - Lost Horizon
Four Westerners are hijacked and kidnapped in the Tibetan mountains, where they are held in a hidden valley, known as Shangli-La. (1933)

John Knowles - A Separate Peace
Against the backdrop of World War II, the rivalry of two roommates at a boys' school turns into a private war. (1959)

Stanley Lombardo [Homer] - The Iliad
This new translation of the classical Greek epic of love and war is here rendered into a contemporary American idiom in a colloquial, modern voice. (1997)

Gerladine McCaughrean - Cyrano
Staying true to Edmond Rostand's original tale, McCaughrean introduces a new generation to the swashbuckling hero. All his life, Cyrano has loved his beautiful young cousin, Roxanne, and she cannot see beyond his ugly face with its huge nose. (2006)

Lucy Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
This is the story of Anne Shirley, a scrawny, red-haired, eleven-year-old orphan. She is adopted by an elderly couple and changes their lives forever. (1908)

Chaim Potok - The Chosen
Two Jewish boys in New York, one traditional and one liberal, learn the differences between their fathers' teachings. (1967)

Howard Pyle - Otto of the Silver Hand
This story, set in medieval Germany, tells the tale of young Otto who was raised in a monastery following his mother's death and returned at age twelve to the bitter, feudal world of his loving father. (1888)

Conrad Richter - The Light in the Forest
A white boy, captured by Indians as a four-year-old, comes to understand and love the Indian culture over his own. (1953)

Kenneth Roberts - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Betty Smith - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
This story tells of the difficulties and delights of life for Francie and her Irish family in New York, in the early 1900's. (1945)

Historical Fiction

Avi - Crispin: the Cross of Lead
Falsely accused of theft and murder, and orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England who must unravel the mystery of his own past. (2002)

James Berry - Ajeemah and His Son
Prallel stories evolve from the capture of an African father and son early in the nineteenth century. Slave traders shipped them to Jamaica and sold them to separate plantations. (1991)

James Fennimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans
Natty Bumpo is a rebel against the corruption in society. In this story, Cooper portrays a romantic brotherhood between Native Americans and European settlers. (1826)

Christopher Paul Curtis - Elijah of Buxton
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was used to buy a family's freedom. (2007)

Paula Fox - The Slave Dancer
Thirteen-year-old Jessie is kidnapped and shanghaied onto an illegal slave trading ship until he escapes with a new friend. This is a haunting tale of one of the most brutal chapters in American history. (1975)

Bette Green - Summer of My German Soldier
In this sensitive novel set in a small southern town during World War II, a Jewish girl helps a German prisoner of war escape. (1973)

Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage
In this, the first of Zane Grey's many Western-saga best sellers, a gunslinger named Lassiter helps a wealthy Mormon rancher protect her ranch from cattle rustlers and the church. (1912)

Karen Hesse - Out of the Dust
A poem cycle that reads as a novel, Out of the Dust tells the story of Billie Jo, a girl who struggles to help her family survive the dustbowl years of the Depression. Fighting against the elements on her Oklahoma farm, Billie Jo takes on even more responsibilities when her mother dies in a tragic accident. (1997)

Alice Hoffman - Incantation
Hoffman tears a horrific page from history and melds it with mysticism to create a spellbinding tale told by Estrella, the youngest in a tight-knit family of Spanish Jews hiding as devout Catholics during the Inquisition. (2006)

Eva Ibbotson - Journey to the River Sea
Orphaned and living in London in the early 1900s, Maia finds herself on the adventure of a lifetime when she is sent with her new governess to live on a rubber plantation along the Amazon river in Brazil with relatives she's never met. (2001)

Caroline Meyer - Mary, Bloody Mary
Mary Tudor, who would reign very briefly as Queen of England during the mid-sixteenth century, tells the story of her troubled childhood as the eldest daughter of King Henry VIII. (1999)

Katherine Paterson - Lyddie
In this novel set in the 1840s, Lyddie Worthen leaves her home and family in Vermont to find work in a Massachusetts mill. She becomes a successful mill worker, but the hardship of being a "wage slave" takes its toll on her. (1991)

Gary Paulsen - Soldier's Heart
Battle by battle, Gary Paulsen shows readers one boy's war through one boy's eyes and one boy's heart, and gives a voice to all the anonymous young men who fought in the Civil War. (1998)

Ann Rinaldi - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Michael Shaara - Killer Angels
A great battle looms over Gettysburg as the Rebels face the Yanks. (1974)

Robert Louis Stevenson - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Velma Wallis - Two Old Women
The retelling of a classic Alaskan legend about two elderly women abandoned by their tribe during a severe winter famine depicts their friendship, fierce determination, desparate struggle to survive, and ultimate need to forgive. (1993)

Markus Zusak - The Book Thief
Death, the narrator, relates the story of a 9-year-old girl named Liesel Meminger, a book thief. Set in Germany, across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, they mayor's reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. (2006)

Biography

Melba Beals - Warriors Don't Cry: Searing Memoir of Battle to Integrate Little Rock
In 1957 Melba Pattillo turned sixteen, and it is also the year she entered the front lines of a civil rights firestorm. Her remarkable story, taken from the diary she kept at the time, chronicles her experience as one of the nine teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. (1995)

Roald Dahl - Going Solo
Roald Dahl outdoes himself as he brilliantly portrays the horrors of war, along with the wonderful details that made up his life as a young soldier during WWII. (1999)

Nicholas Edwards - Stand and Deliver
Based on a true story, Jaime Escalante inspires a group of potential school drop-outs to learn calculus to pass the Advanced Placement exam. (1989)

Anne Frank - Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
This is the actual diary of a teenage girl who spent the last two years of her life with her family hiding from Nazis. (1952)

John Gunther - Death Be Not Proud
For 15 months, Johnny Gunther fought courageously against a progressive brain tumor. His father poignantly tells his memorable story. (1949)

Alex Haley - Roots
When Haley traced his family back to the days of slavery, his book raised national consciousness about the hatefulness of prejudice and the importance of family love. (1976)

Hellen Keller - The Story of My Life
This story sketches the remarkable woman who overcame blindness and deafness to become a dyanmic citizen. (1903)

Sharon Linnea - Princess Ka'iulani
Using journal entries, letters, and black-and-white photographs, this book tells the story of the life and times of Princess Ka'iulani, heir to the Hawaiian throne, the most beloved figure in Hawaiian history, and one of America's most overlooked heroines. (1999)

Anita Lobel - No Pretty Pictures
The author, an award-winning author of children's books, tells the story of her own early childhood years, first as a "hidden child", and subsequently as a prisoner in a succession of concentration camps during the Second World War. (1998)

Chi Fa Lu with Becky White - Double Luck: Memoirs of a Chinese Orphan
Orphaned in 1944 at age three, Chi Fa had no real home. Passed among relatives and even sold to strangers, he grew up amid abuse, poverty, and family betrayal. But through it all, he found hope and sustenance in small things. His story is a heartfelt, intimate glimpse at tragedy, triumph, and the Asian experience during a time of political change. (2001)

Walter Dean Myers - The Greatest, Muhammad Ali
A riveting portrayal of Ali, his spirit and courage, from childhood to the present, as well as the hazards of boxing - the sport which he loved, but which ultimately damaged him. (2001)

Marilyn Nelson - Carver, a life in Poems
An account of revered African-American botanist and inventor George Washington Carver, who was raised by white slave owners, went on to head the agricultural department at the Tuskegee Institute, and conducted research on innovative uses for such crops as cowpeas, sweet potatoes, and peanuts. (2001)

Paul Watkins - Stand Before Your God
Watkins tells of his upsetting and hilarious days at Dragon and Eton, two prestigious boys' schools in England. (1994)

Mystery

Peter Abrahams - Down the Rabbit Hole
An avid reader of Sherlock Holmes, Ingrid Levin-Hill, 13, is also a fleet-footed soccer player with a knack for stage acting - skills that come in handy when she finds herself caught in a police investigation following the murder of an eccentric woman. (2005)

Susan Wittig Albert - The Tale of Hill Top Farm
It's England in 1905, Beatrix Potter has purchased Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in the Lake District. Local farmers are upset that the farm is now owned by an outsider and a woman at that. However, on arrival, Beatrix Potter finds the woman she was to board with, Abigail Tolliver, has died unexpectedly and foul play is suspected. (2004)

Agatha Christie - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Jennifer Donnelly - A Northern Light
Set in 1906, against the backdrop of a murder that actually took place in the Adirondacks, 16-year-old Mattie Gokey finds her voice as an author and the strength and determination to live her own life. (2003)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles
Sherlock Holmes and Watson set about to solve the most bewildering case of their careers, as they investigate the latest death to befall the Baskerville family. (1902)

Neal Gaiman - Coraline
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others. (2002)

William Goldman - Marathon Man
A marathon runner becomes trapped in a series of events involving a Nazi fugitive. (1974)

Margaret Peterson Haddix - Double Identity
One October evening, Bethany's parents drive her to another state to stay with an aunt she never knew existed. Left confused and without a way to contact her parents, the 12-year-old tries to figure out the reason behind their strange behavior and learns some family secrets in the process. (2005)

Tony Hillerman - Dance Hall of the Dead
Tribal Policeman Joe Leaphorn tracks a brutal killer. The search is complicated by an archaeological dig, a steel hypodermic needle, and the strange laws of the Zuni. (1990)

Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler - The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn
Although Seikei has been born into the merchant class, he dreams impossibly of becoming a samurai. In 1735, on the Tokaido Road, the life of this fourteen-year-old Japanese boy changes dramatically. (1999)

Laurie R. King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice
The year is 1914. Long retired, Sherlock Holmes quietly pursues his study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. While he never imagined he would encounter anyone whose intellect matched his own, Miss Mary Russell becomes Holmes' pupil and quickly hones her talent for deduction, disguises, and danger. When an elusive villian enters the picture, their partnership is put to a real test. (1994)

E. L. Konigsburg - Father's Arcane Daughter
When Caroline appears on her father's doorstep seventeen years after being kidnapped, the effect on the family is dramatic. (1976)

Madeleine L'Engle - Dragons in the Waters
A thirteen-year-old's trip to Venezuela with his cousin culminates in murder and the discovery of an unexplained bond with an Indian tribe, dating from the days of Simon Bolivar. (1976)

Penman, Sharon Kay - The Queen's Man: A Medieval Mystery
Epiphany, 1193: Eleanor of Aquitaine sits upon England's throne. Her beloved son Richard Lionheart is missing, presumed dead, and her younger son John is plotting to seize the crown. Meanwhile, a destitute young man receives a bloodstained letter from a dying man; this missive becomes his passport into the queen's confidence - and into the heart of danger, as he pursues a cunning murderer and jousts with secret traitors in Eleanor's court of intrigue and mystery. (1996)

Ellis Peters - Morbid Taste for Bones
In the 12th-century Benedictine monastery of Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has settled down to a quiet life in charge of the herbarium. It is fortunate his prowess as a herbalist is matched by his detective skills - when his prior acquires the bones of a saint, the obstacles include murder. (1977)

Sax Rohmer - The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu
Sax Rohmer, a contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, created one of the greatest villans of mystery literature: this the first in the popular Fu-Manchu mystery series, introduces English sleuth Denis Nayland Smith and his companion, Dr. Petrie, to the evil genius Dr. Fu-Manchu, a cunning Chinese criminal mastermind who means to rule the world. (1913)

Dorothy Sayers - Whose Body?
First published in 1923, Whose Body? established the disarmingly debonair Peter Wimsey as one of the most enduring characters in English literature: when a naked body is found lying in the tub, a gold pince-nez perched before the sightless eyes, Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, is put to the test of discovering who and why. (1923)

Brian Selznick - The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Orphan, clock-keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the station, Hugo's undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. (2007)

Robb White - Deathwatch
An exciting novel of suspense, based on a fight to the finish between an honest, courageous young man and a cynical business tycoon who believes that anything can be had for a price. Winner of an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. (1972)

Animal Stories

Richard Adams - Watership Down
A tale of survival, this story records the adventures of a band of wild rabbits who leave their ancestral home, hoping to build a more humane society. (1969)

Robert Bakker - Raptor Red
This is the realistic survival story of a young raptor as it develops over the course of a year. It is complete with a unique cast of characters set in a lush, exotic prehistoric world. (1995)

Enid Bagnold - National Velvet
This is a classic story about English family life, a girl, her horse, a village lottery, and the Steeplechase. (1935)

Rick Crecraft - The Monarch of the Tall Pines: An Adirondack Adventure
The author recalls his own youth in this fictional account of a boy and his grandfather who go camping together, embarking on a quest to capture a trophy brook trout. (2002)

David Clement-Davies - The Sight
In Transylvania, a pack of wolves sets out on a perilous journey to prevent their enemy from calling upon a legendary evil one that will give her the power to control all animals. (2002)

Kate DiCamillo - The Tale of Despereaux
The adventures of Despereaux Tilling, a small mouse of unusual talents, the princess that he loves, the servant girl who longs to be a princess, and a devious rat determined to bring them all to ruin. (2003)

Paul Gallico - The Abandoned
This is the story of a boy who is transformed into a cat and his attempts to struggle for existence in a strange and unsympathetic world. (1950)

Brian Jacques - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Jack London - Call of the Wild
This is the amazing story of Buck, a dog who was stolen and then forced into a life of hardship and bitter cold in Alaska. (1903)

Farley Mowat - Never Cry Wolf
Mowat recounts his experience of living alone among wild wolf packs in the Canadian Tundra. His admiration for these maligned animals contrasts the growing fear of bounty hunters and government exterminators. (1963)

Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
Black Beauty tells his own story: all about his early home, his "breaking in," and how he saved his master's life. (1945)

Tori Seidler - The Wainscott Weasel
Bagley Brown Jr., son of the most famous weasel in Wainscott Woods, takes the opportunity to prove his own courage because of a most improbable relationship. (1993)

Myths and Legends

William Goldman - Princess Bride
A spoof on historical romance, this adventure is a series of unbelievable feats and narrow escapes with a medieval setting. (1973)

Julius Lester - The Tales of Uncle Remus
Lively, humorous stories, this work represents a contemporary retelling of the adventures of Brer Rabbit and his friends. (1987)

Donna Jo Napoli - Zel
This retelling of the story of Rapunzel is no simple fairy tale retold for the entertainment of children. Instead, it is a searing commentary on the evil that can result from human longings gone awry. Napoli sets the novel in 16th-century Switzerland and alternates the various characters' points of view. (1998)

Howard Pyle - The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
This is the classic tale of Sherwood Forest's legendary hero, as told by a local author and illustrator. (1883)

Stephanie Spinner - Quiver
Greek gods and mortals spring to life in this riveting retelling of the myth of Atalanta, the fleet-footed girl warrior who could outrun any man in ancient Greece. (2002)

Nancy Springer - I am Mordred
Merlin, the great magician and prophet, has foretold the death of Arthur at the hands of his only son. When the boy Mordred discovers his own true identity, and the nature of his destiny, he struggles with feelings of hatred for his father, and also fights the fate, which determines that he should slay the good and gracious King of Camelot. (1998)

T. H. White - The Sword in the Stone
This tale of medieval pageantry and adventure is a classic retelling of the Legend of King Arthur, focusing on his boyhood training in the rules of chivalry. (1939)

Modern Fiction

James Agee - A Death in the Family
A sensitive account of a family's reaction to the death of one of its members, this novel examines the most delicate, private realms of emotion. (1956)

James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk
A young black couple, separated by an unjust imprisonment, is bolstered by their love for each other and the young man's loyal family. (1974)

Joan Bauer - Rules of the Road
Hired by Madeline Gladstone, the president of a shoe company, to help her prevent a corporate take-over, 16-year-old Jenna Boller embarks on an eye-opening adventure that teaches both of them the rules of the road - and the rules of life. (1998)

Richard Bradford - Red Sky at Morning
Joshua Arnold, a wise, wry man-child, must cope with an absent father and a sherry-tippling mother while learning to live in a new town, make friends, and finish growing up. (1968)

Bruce Brooks - The Moves Make the Man
As Jerome, a black athlete, shares his skills and interest in basketball with Bix, a white baseball player, their friendship grows and the game becomes a reflection of both their lives. (1985)

Richard Cormier - Tunes For Bears To Dance To
Numb and lonenly after his brother's death, Henry is befriended by a bigoted new employer, who attempts to involve the boy in an act of cruelty against a Holocaust survivor. (1992)

Chris Crutcher - Ironman
While training for a triathlon, Bo, a seventeen year old boy, attends an anger management group at school which leads him to examine his relationship with his father. (1995)

Garrett Freymann-weyr - My Heartbeat
Narrator Ellen learns about love, family, and "society's unwritten rules" - and the limits of what you can ever know about whom you love - in this sophisticated but gentle novel set in Manhattan. (2002)

Graham Gardner - Inventing Elliot
Elliot, a victim of bullying, invents a calmer, cooler self when he changes schools in the middle of freshman year, but soon attracts the wrong kind of attention from the Guardians who "maintain order" at the new school. (2004)

Mel Glenn - Split Image: a Story in Poems
This series of sharply focused vignettes in verse centers on Chinese American high school student Laura Li, stunning, smart, and rebellious, who is chafing under her mother's tight rein and her obligations to her disabled older brother. Each poem takes the point of view and the voice of various characters that work like acid on copperplate to etch the outlines of Laura's life. (2000)

Juan Felipe Herrera - CrashBoomLove: a Novel in Verse
Sixteen-year-old Cesar Garcia is careening. His father, Papi Cesar, has left the migrant circuit in California for his other wife and children in Denver. Sweet Mama Lucy tries to provide for her son with dichos and tales of her own misspent youth. But at Rambling West High School in Fowlerville, the sides are being drawn: Hmongs vs. Chicanos vs. everybody vs. Cesar, the new kid on the block. (1999)

Homer Hickam, Jr. - October Sky
The only flaw of Rocket Boys is that its plot seems just a shade too well made even for a work of fiction, let alone a memoir... Yet if Hickam's plotting seems here and there manipulated, what always ring true are his adventures in rocketry. (1998)

S.E. Hinton - The Outsiders
Ponyboy, a fourteen-year-old boy, describes the feud between the "greasers" and the "socs" - a gang conflict that ends in tragedy. (1967)

Kimberly Willis Holt - When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
During the summer of 1971, thirteen year old Toby and his best friend Carl meet the star of a sideshow act, 600 pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world. (1999)

Ann Jaramillo - La Linea
Fifteen-year-old Miguel leaves his rancho deep in Mexico to migrate to California across la linea, the border, in a debut novel of life-changing, cliff-hanging moments. (2006)

Gish Jen - Typical American
This story is an account of the rise and sway of fortune in the life of a Chinese immigrant family, and the collision between personal history and world history. (1991)

Maureen Johnson - 13 Little Blue Envelopes
When seventeen-year-old Ginny receives a packet of mysterious envelopes from her favorite aunt, she leave New Jersey to criss-cross Europe on a sort of scavenger hunt that transforms her life. (2005)

Daniel Keys - Flowers for Algernon
Winner of both the Hugo Award (1959), as well as the Nebula Award in the expanded version, Flowers for Algernon is the journal of Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded adult who becomes a genius after undergoing a brain operation. (1966)

William Kinsella - Shoeless Joe
This is a wonderful book about baseball, love, and the power of dreams. (1982)

Catherine Gilbert Murdock - Dairy Queen
After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her. (2006)

An Na - A Step from Heaven
In this 2002 Printz winning novel, a young girl recounts her bittersweet experience in the United States after her family immigrates from Korea. (2001)

Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky
Lucky lives in tiny Hard Pan, California (population 43), with her dog and the young French woman who is her guardian. The heroine in this Newberry Medal winning novel is totally contemporary, teetering between bravado in daily life and fear that her guardian will leave her to return to France. She determines to find her "higher power", to get herself through the tough times. (2006)

Gary Paulsen - Dogsong
An excellent blend of old and new cultures as an Eskimo boy goes off on his own to find his own "song" and recpature the culture of the past that seems to be missing in today's life. (1985)

Robert Peck - A Long Way from Chicago
What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice - two city slickers from Chicago - make their annual summer visit to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town? In the tradition of American humorists Mark Twain and Flannery O'Connor, Richard Peck has created this memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining. (1998)

Lynne Rae Perkins - Criss Cross
Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the meaning of life and love. (2005)

John Smelcer - The Trap
Written in alternating chapters that relate the parallel stories of Johnny and his grandfather, this novel poignantly addresses the hardships of life in the far north, suggesting that the most dangerous traps need not be made of steel. (2006)

Sonya Sones - Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy
An intense and brutally honest story, told in a succession of powerful poems, in which a younger sister reacts and adjusts to life after her older sister has a mental breakdown. (1999)

Jordan Sonnenblick - Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie
The life of eighth-grader Steven Alper, already complicated by his friendship with two girls and a prodigious talent for drumming, is turned upside down when his five-year-old brother Jeffrey is hospitalized, having fallen while Steven is watching him. (2004)

Wendolyn Van Draanen - Flipped
In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years. (2001)

Science Fiction / Fantasy

Lloyd Alexander - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage
A miniaturized submarine carrying a team of doctors travels through the bloodstream of a brilliant scientist in order to save his life. (1966)

Ray Bradbury - Somthing Wicked This Way Comes
An American treasure in which Jim and Will make a deal with Dr. Park at "Cooger and Park's Pandemonium Shadow Show." In the deal, they are granted their secret desires, but there is a price. (1962)

Arthur C. Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey
After the signal is discovered on the moon, astronauts set out in their ship Discovery to find out who left it there, only to have their plans changed by a computer gone berzerk. (1969)

Susan Cooper - King of Shadows
While in London as part of an all-boy acting company preparing to perform in a replica of the famous Globe Theatre, Nat Field suddenly finds himself transported back to 1599 and performing in the original theater under the tutelage of Shakespeare himself. (1999)

Peter Dickinson - The Tears of the Salamander
Burning questions about the twin influences of nature and nurture, the true meaning of family, and the possibility of guiding one's fate, to name a few, blaze below the surface of this engrossing, almost operatic novel, set in long-ago Italy. (2003)

Jeanne DuPrau - The Prophet of Yonwood
Set about 50 years before the previous books in the Embers series, this novel focuses on 11-year-old Nickie, who believes her great-grandfather's old mansion in Yonwood, North Carolina, may be a haven from the city wracked with fear of impending war. (2006)

Cornelia Funke - Dragon Rider
Firedrake, a silver dragon, leads a mission to locate the Rim of Heaven, in response to the threat posed by humans who are attempting to flood the valley where his clan of dragons currently lives. Accompanied by a brownie named Sorrel and an orphan boy named Ben, Firedrake begins the quest with only scant information to go on. (2004)

Frank Herbert - Dune
This is the epic Science-Fiction series about a desert world and the immense struggle for wealth and power. (1965)

Philip Kerr - The Akhenaten Adventure
When twelve-year-old twins Philippa and John discover that they are descended from a long line of djinn, their mother sends them away to their Uncle Nimrod, who takes them to Cairo where he starts to teach them about their extraordinary powers. (2004)

Conor Kostick - Epic
On New Earth, a world based on a video role-playing game, fourteen-year-old Erik pursuades his friends to aid him in some unusual gambits in order to save Erik's father from exile and safeguard the futures of each of their families. (2004)

Gail Carson Levine - Fairest
In the kingdom of Ayortha, the people sing songs, and no one has a more beautiful voice than Aza. Aza also has the extraordinary ability to "throw" her voice, called illusing, to make it seem to come from place other than from Aza. This talent finds her in a deceitful arrangement with the new queen, an outsider who does not have the ability to sing in a kingdom that prizes singing. (2006)

George MacDonald - The Princess and the Goblin
Said to be a favorite story of both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, The Princess and the Goblin is the story of the young Princess Irene, her good friend Curdie - a miner's son - and Irene's mysterious and beautiful great-great-grandmother, who lives in a secret room at the top of the castle stairs. (1872)

William Nicholson - The Wind Singer
In this first volume of a planned trilogy, the focus is on Amaranth, where life is very structured: people live in color-coded rings around the city - white for best, gray for the gritty outer circle - and tests rule all. A rebellious trio sets the orderly city on its ear by escaping its walls and embarking on an adventure that takes them from city sewers to desert sandstorms, as they seek to save their people from their dreamless existence. (2000)

Garth Nix - Mr. Monday: Keys to the Kingdom
During a running exercise at school, Arthur Penhaligon collapses from an asthma attack. Upon awakening, he meets a stranger, Mister Monday, who hands him an unusual key which begins an adventure. Using the powers of the key, Arthur travels to another realm and battles many evil creatures in a struggle to save his world from a mysterious disease. (2003)

Kenneth Oppell - Airborne
A swashbuckling adventure, in an imagined world, the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by humans who sail the skies. (2004)

Susan Beth Pfeffer - Life as we Knew it
A meteor is going to hit the moon, and 16-year-old Miranda, like the rest of her family and neighbors in rural Pennsylvania, intends to watch it from the comfort of a lawn chair in her yard. But the event is not the benign impact predicted. (2006)

Philip Pullman - The Golden Compass
Here Earth is one of only five planets in the solar system, and every human has a daemon (the soul embodied as an animal familiar) and, in a time similar to our late 19th century, Oxford scholars and agents of the Church are in a race to unleash the power that will enable them to cross the bridge to a parallel universe. (1996)

Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines
In the distant future, when cities move about and consume smaller towns, a fifteen-year-old apprentice is pushed out of London by the man he most admires, and must seek answers in the perilous Out-Country, aided by one girl and the memory of another. (2003)

Rick Riordan - The Lightning Thief
The escapdes of the Greek gods and heroes get a fresh spin in the first book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, about a contemporary 12-year-old New Yorker who learns he's a demigod. (2005)

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
As timely as ever, this is the classic take off of a scientist who tries to play God and create life. This is a profound and scary look at the realm of the human spirit. (1881)

Matthew Skelton - Endymion Spring
Blake, and American teen visiting modern-day Oxford, stumbles upon Endymion Spring - one portion of "the most legendary, sought-after book in the world." While he attempts to uncover the secrets of the book, and evade cutthroat members of an antiquarian book society, flashbacks reveal the book's fifteenth-century connections to the original printing press, recounted by an apprentice of Gutenberg himself. (2006)

J.R.R. Tolkien - ANY TITLE BY THIS AUTHOR

Vivian Van de Velde - Heir Apparent
A near-future teenager trapped in a full-immersion virtual-reality game finds herself racing the clock to beat non-virtual death in the plausible, suspenseful outing. (2002)

Jules Verne - ANY TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughter House Five
The story of Billy Pilgrim's life, "unstuck in time", between his youth, his horrific experiences as a POW during World War II, and his kidnapping by Tramalfadorians. (1969)

Humor and Satire

Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This is the satiric, comic adventure of Arthur Dent, who finds himself traveling through space and time. (1982)

Jules Feiffer - The Man in the Ceiling
Both written and illustrated by cartoonist Feiffer, this is a funny, poignant, and profoundly insightful look at the inner life of an artist; Jimmy, who happens to be a young boy, expresses himself by making comic books. (1995)

David Levithan - Boy meets Boy
This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other. Written in energetic prose and sharp humor, Levithan has created a kind of utopia, where tolerance reigns and shame is banished, in which everyone loves without persecution, making this a provocative and important read. (2003)

Louise Rennison - Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging
Presents the humorous journal of a year in the life of a fourteen-year-old British girl who tries to reduce the size of her nose, stop her mad cat from terrorizing the neighborhood animals, and win the love of handsome hunk Robbie. (2001)

Cynthia Rylant - God Went to Beauty School
Cynthia Rylant imagines a God whose curiosity about the world he created inspires him to go out and experience human things, poetically celebrating those simple things in life, while taking a long, hard look at what it means to be human. (2003)

Rene Saldana Jr. - The Jumping Tree
Rey, a Mexican-American living with his close-knit family in a Texas town near the Mexican border, tells the story of his growing up, with lots of self-deprecating humor and an air of reminiscense, all the while remaining culturally specific, filled with Chicano language and customs. (2001)

Paul Shipton - The Pig Scrolls
Transformed by Circe into a talking pig, Gryllus, who once traveled as a crewman with Odysseus, tells how he escaped rampaging monsters with the brave teen prophetess, Sybil, found himself, and saved the world. (2005)

Sue Townsend - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
Adrian, a worrier, loner, and self-proclaimed intellectual, confides his concerns and dreams within the pages of his diary. (1988)

Leonard Wibberly - The Mouse that Roared
This fantastic story describes the presumed take-over of America by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a sovereign territory five miles long and three wide, in the heart of the Alps. (1954)

Drama

William Blinn - Brian's Song
This drama is based on the true story of courage and friendship between Brian Piccolo and Gayle Sayers, two players on the Chicago Bears football team. (1972)

William Gibson - The Miracle Worker
This powerful play depicts the education of Helen Keller and her relationship with her extraordinary teacher, Annie Sullivan. (1956)

A.R. Guerney - The Dining Room
This drama is a wry, compassionate portrait of family life in the American upper class, organized, both literally and metaphorically, around the family dining room. (1982)

Arthur Laurents - West Side Story
One of the most popular musical dramas of our time, this play is based on Romeo and Juliet, but strikingly retold, set in the inner city in modern times. (1957)

Mark Medoff - Children of a Lesser God
The sensitive drama tells of the love and growth of James Leeds, a speech teacher at the State School for the Deaf, and Sarah Norman, one of his students. (1980)

William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
A romantic comedy, this tale describes the "taming" of Katherine, whose sharp tongue and fiery temper make her impossible to wed. (1593)

George Bernard Shaw - Androcles and the Lion
Based on a medieval European legend and set in classical times, this is the story of a runaway slave who is saved by a lion. (1912)

Neil Simon - Brighton Beach Memoirs
Meet Eugene Jerome and his family, fighting the hard times and sometimes each other - with laughter, tears, and love. It is 1937 in Brooklyn during the heart of the Depression. (1984)

Paul Zindel - The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
This Pulitzer Prize-winning play centers on the Hunsdorfers: Tillie, her sister Ruth, and their mother Beatrice. Tillie studies the growth of flowers for a science project, in an effort to escape the bitterness of her family and surroundings. (1971)