Books In the Middle Podcast: Recent Episodes
Tasha Squires
Looking for booktalks for middle school students? Look no farther than this podcast. Browse through the many titles in all different genres for just the right title to get your students inspired, excited and racing to the library for a copy of the book. Looking for written reviews for more titles? Check out the blog Booksinthemiddle.Wordpress.com to expand your own library and give students more options. New episodes typically release every Monday, however during the summer months, they will release every other week or so. Enjoy!
Send us Fan Mail
Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson
Kaylani is not looking forward to spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard with a former best friend, named London and her older sister Cassie. While they had been good friend when they were little, after London's family moved away, they really lost touch. Still, when their grandparents offer to take Kaylani for the summer, the two girls have no choice. And Kaylani can tell, they don't like it. Right away, London wants to leave Kaylani behind, but when she is forced to bring Kaylani to a beach party that ends in tradgedy, Kaylani realizes there are things going on in this perfect family that just don't seem quite right. The only issue is, she might die trying to figure it all out!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
X Marks the Haunt by Lindsay Currie
When Will and his classmates in 7th grade visit the cemetary his mother runs, Will is so worried that someone will find out. And when it comes out, at first it isn't as bad as he thinks! And when he gets placed on a team with his best friend Stash, and two other kids, Michelle and Henry, he even starts to have a good time. Until later when Chris, a kid that Will totally dislikes, presents a challenge that Will knows he shouldn't do, but in an effort to get more friends, decides to chance it. And things go horribly wrong.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
All the Blues in the Sky by Renee Watson
Sage was looking forward to spending her 13th birthday with her best friend, until tragedy struck. When her best friend is killed, Sage struggles to have the energy to move on with her own life. How can she, after she has suffered such a profound horrible loss? And even other students in her grief group at school don't understand what it is like to have a person in your life one moment and then gone the next - well, at least not all of them understand it. Sage wrestles with the question of which loss is greater and can she really find the courage to live the life she wants, without her friend.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
How the Ghost Army Hoodwinked Hitler by Rebecca Siegel
This is the incredible story of how one unit was able to fool the German army during World War II and possibly help save thousands of lives. Because it was a secret army, it is hard to know their true impact, but reading this book will make you realize how there were many different fronts on which the war was fought.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Gaslit by Megan Davidhiszar
Ella is facing a huge medical diagnosis. She found out that the migraines she has been having that are just debilitating are not caused by stress, or diet, but by a brain tumor. Being in high school and finding out you might have a brain tumor that could kill you is not something anyone wants to hear.
But Ella is trying her best to block it out and so she volunteers on New Year’s Eve to babysit for her little cousin, Joey, so her aunt can go check on her sick boyfriend, and Ella has had to cancel her own plans due to a wicked migraine, so she figures why not? When Ella gets to her aunt’s house though, she finds everyone passed out and the smell of gas – the kind that can kill you! Ella tries her best to save everyone, but she isn’t able to. Now, she is trying to figure out what really happened that night, and are other people telling her the truth, or is her mind playing tricks…on her?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Death in the Jungle by Candace Fleming
What really happened to the people of Jonestown in Guyana, South America on the night of November 18, 1978? Were people there willingly, or had some wanted to leave but were not allowed? This book does a comprehensive dive into the personalities, the reasons and the dreams of the people who died in the jungle that day.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up due to the content and the subject matter.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Are You Nobody Too? By Tina Cane
Emily is having a terrible time fitting in to her new school. On the surface, it seems like she should be having no trouble, because she is Chinese American and her new public school has a ton of Chinese Americans, but she was adopted by white parents and didn't grow up speaking Mandarin. Leaving behind her friends at her private school has been hard. Will she ever make new friends and adjust to the new post Covid world?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Slugfest by Gordon Korman
Yash is ready to move on from 8th grade to high school. He feels like he is pretty much there already since he has gotten to skip PE at his middle school and go play on all the JV teams at the high school...because...he...is...that...good. Period. But when his middle school principal shows up at one of his JV games, he knows something is off, but he has no idea just how off! And Yash isn't the only one who is going to be having their summer put on hold, all because of a new state law!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Al Capone Does My Shirts By Gennifer Choldenko
Moose really doesn’t want to leave his home in Santa Monica to move to Alcatraz Island. His father takes a job as a guard so the family can get Natalie, Moose’s sister, into a special school. Even though Natalie is older than Moose she acts much younger, and the whole family has to make changes for her. And this time, that change means Moose is living on an island with Al Capone.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes
Both Dieter and Spence have a few things in common - both have a desire to stand up for their country and do what they think is right. Both have families that care about them going to fight in the war, and both are totally unprepared for the things they will be asked to do and see as they fight in Europe during World War II.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
Matilda, or Mattie as the cook employed by her mother calls her, is not thrilled having to do a ton of work around her family's coffee house. But when the city of Philadelphia is struck by disease that is ripping through the city, Matilda is just hoping she and her family can make it out, alive.
Recommended for grade 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Follow the Water by Ellen Cochrane
When Juliane is 17 years old, she falls out of an airplane almost 2 miles up...and survives! What makes this an even more amazing story, is she is able to survive her days and nights in the Amazon jungle for nearly two weeks, using all the knowledge she has learned from her parents and her time living at their scientific station as she grew up. But even with all of that information, survival will not be easy, or guaranteed.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Grenade by Alan Gratz
Okinawa is a relatively small island off the southern tip of Japan, but at the end of World War II it was the place of the last and bloodiest battle of the whole Pacific Ocean war.
Hideki is a native Okinawan and he and his family have been separated due to the war. Hideki has stayed behind with a bunch of other boys around his age of 14 to become part of the Blood and Iron Student Corps to fight for the Japanese Imperial Army. However, Hideki realizes very quickly that the JIA has no real intention of trying to help any of the Okinawan and in many cases will use them in horrible ways.
Another boy, not much older than Hideki is heading to war too, only he is an American named Ray, in the marines. Both Ray and Hideki struggle to find footing in this new war torn world they both exist in. The question is what toll will this take on both of them, and will they make it out alive?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Hi Everyone!
Another year has flown by! My goodness. I hope you have enjoyed listening to my podcasts this year while I take a quick break for Spring and get more reading done. My breaks from my school are usually not a break at all, but a time to read, and catch up on doing all the many things that I need to do for work.
However, I hope all of you are able to take a moment and enjoy something today or this week.
Feel free to leave me a comment or even support the podcast!
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
How to Tell a True Story by Tricia Springstubb
Amber wakes up to an absolute nightmare when her house catches on fire. Her older brother, though, saves the day, by saving her life. Her brother, Gage, that her dad has been berating for the last year, because he isn't doing exactly what their dad thinks he should be doing becomes the local hero. But is what he did really heroic? Amber starts to wonder after she learns more about herself and her brother.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
The Color of a Lie by Kim Johnson
When Calvin and his parents move to a new town in Pennsylvania, he is not pleased. It meant leaving the life he had back in Chicago, but not only that, it means he can never really BE himself...because his dad plans for the family to pass, as white. The year is 1955, and Calvin and his family are limited in where they can live, work and even eat in the United States, bases solely on the color of their skin. But BECAUSE of how light their skin is, they have the ability to cross between to worlds. And Calvin really isn't sure he wants that ability, especially when it means he won't be able to be with a girl that he meets at his new school, a Black girl.
Recommended for students in grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
The Right Call by Tommy Greenwald
Cal is a talented pitcher - so talented that he has scouts from colleges that are interested in him and that can mean a lot of pressure - pressure on him and it turns out, on his parents. Cal just wants to focus on playing the best ball he can, but soon forces outside of his control begin to spiral in ways no one could have imagined.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Murder Between Friends by Liz Lawson
For years, Grace, Ally and Henry were all the best of friends, but that all changed when Grace thought she saw Henry's older brother in the backyard of one of their teacher's. A teacher who was later found dead. Jake, Henry's brother, went to prison, mostly because of the testimony of Grace. But when he gets out on a technicality, and might have a new trial, Grace is beginning to wonder, did she really see what she thought she saw? Is it too late?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Will's Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes
For as long as he can remember, Will's father has seemed dissatisfied. Will never knows what it will take to make his father, a sharecropper in Texas, happy. Until, one day he comes back from town with a notice about a land rush that will be happening in Oklahoma the following April. Right away, everything changes when the decision is made for the family to try to get some land of their own. But Will's dad acts like he isn't sure Will is up for the journey. Will thinks he is, but as their travel begins, things happen along the way that make Will begin to doubt himself.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Very Bad at Math by Hope Larson
Verity, or Very, as everyone calls her, has everything going for her in 8th grade, except for Math. Even though she is the Student Council President and has tons of great ideas and plans, she can't get out from under the issue of Math and how she can try super hard, and it just doesn't seem to make sense to her! But now, if she can't figure out how to bring up her Math grade, all the things that she has worked so hard for might just be taken away from her!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Louder Than Hunger by John Schu
In 8th grade, Jake finds himself lost, except for the voice in his head, that tells him things will get better if he can just make himself small enough. As in, physically small, so no one will see him and therefore, can't hurt him. He feels the only one who really sees him is his grandmother, who is becoming concerned about his weight. And when things get really bad, Jake finds himself in a treatment center, that he really doesn't want to be in. Because if the voice he has listened to for it feels like, a very long time, is wrong, than how will he figure out what is right? How can he stop the voice and create a new path for himself?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
The Enigma Girls by Candace Fleming
Ever wonder just how everyone communicated during World War II? And all the secrets, spies, and information that could fall into the wrong hands? Who was out there intercepting all of that "chatter"? It turns out, in England there was a place that was dedicated to breaking the German's Enigma Machine that Germany was using to disseminate their battle plans and that place was called Bletchley Park. This "park" was the place where all the secrets were collected and some of the greatest code breaking minds in the country were recruited to work on the war effort. And it turns out, that teenage and young adult woman were some of the best and helping to turn the tide of the war. This books shares some of their stories.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Click'd by Tamara Ireland Stone
Allie is sure her app, called Click'd that she developed over the summer at a coding camp could actually be a contender for winning a huge competition called Games for Good. But when a classmate shows his gaming app for the same competition to their class, Allie gets worried. Is the small sample of playing the game that she did actually enough for the judges? With only a week until the big day, Allie makes a decision. Why not let it go live in her school? What is the worst that could happen?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Dating and Dragons by Kristy Boyce
Quinn is happy to be in a new school - especially since her hold school has no good memories and unfortunately, no friends anymore. So when she gets invited to a new Dungeons and Dragons group, she is excited. And when she finds out it includes a guy named Logan, who she secretly thinks is pretty awesome, it makes everything seem better. But when Logan treats her differently once she gets into the group, she doesn't understand why. Until she learns about the rules of the game!
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Stay Dead by April Henry
Milan's life feels like it spiraling out of control. She and her father were in a car accident 8 months ago, and he was killed, and she was left with a leg that was severally broken - and has pins in it. But after her father's death, her mom decided to send her off to a boarding school - because her mom took over her father's US Senate seat. Milan feels abandoned, and appears to be acting out (she isn't sure herself) because she has just gotten kicked out of her third boarding school. Not a great look for a Senator's daughter. So when her mom comes to pick her up from the latest school, Milan is hoping to have some time with her. But before she can make amends with her mom, their plane crashes and some deadly secrets are revealed.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
Drawing Deena by Hena Khan
It is frustrating to Deena that her mom always seems to be fighting with her dad about money. It makes her worried that they might split up, and it makes her feel like she can never ask for anything - like the art classes she would love to take. She thinks if she can come up with a plan to help her mom's business make more money then perhaps that will solve things and she won't have to worry quite so much - because it turns out, the worrying isn't good for Deena.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us Fan Mail
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Septys and Steve Sheinkin
Jakob has a job to do for his country of Britain in their time of need. It is the beginning of World War II, and he is part of a team that is working to break the Nazis Enigma code machine. What he isn't counting on is his younger sister, Lizzie, who doesn't believe that their mother was killed in Poland at the beginning of the war. But is it possible that Lizzie could be right?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Blood Gone Cold by Katy Grant
As siblings who used to get alone, Abby can't figure out why she and Natalie seem to be on opposite ends of everything these days. So much so, that even their parents are tired of all the fighting. So when neither girl can agree on what they want to do for dinner, their parents decide to leave them at the rented cabin in the snowy woods and go to town by themselves. At first that is just fine with Abby -who decides to prank her sister by hiding her phone! But when two men show up at the remote cabin, Abby realizes she and her sister are in deep trouble.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
All is Fair by Dee Garretson
Clara is shocked and terrified when she is called down to the headmistress of her boarding school's office and is given a telegram. After all, the year is 1918, she lives in England and her brother, Crispin has been missing in action for several months. Believing the worst, she opens the telegram, only to find a strange missive from her father, urging her to return home. Is this finally her chance to do something important for the war effort?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
I Will Follow by Eireann Corrigan
Shea Davison is an influencer and known on social media platforms for her dancing and honest look at her mother's depression after her divorce. Now things are feeling a bit complicated though. Turns out her best friend, Delancey's dad, and her mom found each other on a dating site and are now getting married! Which should be great, but for some reason, Delancey isn't seeming to be happy about it. What Shea doesn't know though, is that while she is trying to balance her life, someone else is planning on taking Shea's life in a whole different direction - one that will remove Shea from everyone she knows.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri
When the boy was running for his life from the Monks he had been living with, because they were trying to stone him to death, it was Samir who stopped them and it was how the boy because known as the Monkey and began to serve Samir on the silk road with other merchants traveling. However, once Monkey learns just how much of a trickster Samir is, he has other ideas about how to get away from him. But when it seems the whole world is out to get Samir, how will Monkey get away?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride
Faolan is alone after her grandfather dies. And out on the frontier is no place for a teen girl, alone. Which is why her grandfather encouraged her to dress as a boy ever since she lost her parents. But even if she is pretending to be a boy, the town of New Retienne's mayor has his sights set on the land that was her grandfather's. The mayor says that Faolan can't live out there by themselves, so arranges for Faolan to be sent off to a place called The Settlement. Faolan just thinks she has to bid her time until she turns 18 to reclaim her land. But The Settlement has other ideas.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Girl in the Lake by India Hill Brown
Celeste and her younger brother are being dropped off at their grandparents place lake house for a long summer week with their two cousins. But Celeste is worried. She doesn't know how to swim, and here she is ... at a lake house. But it turns out that shouldn't be her biggest worry. Because there is definitely a ghost haunting the house!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Red Palace by June Hur
The year is 1758, and the place is Korea. Hyeon has accomplished her dream of becoming a palace nurse. After many years of studying, she hopes to make her father proud. A father who barely even acknowledges her existence since she is his illegitimate daughter. However, when four women are murdered, one of them a palace nurse and the others students and a teacher where Hyeon studied to become a nurse, she is devastated. Even more so, when the woman who has been like a mother to her, is accused of being the murderer. Hyeon knows she must find the true killer and prove her mentor innocent, but time is running out.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Something Like Home by Andrea Beatriz Arango
Laura is confused. She thought she was doing the right thing - but it turns out that where she has ended up is not at all where she thought she would be. Living with her aunt that she doesn't even know, is not her idea of a solution. When will she be able to go back with her parents? She doesn't want to settle in, because this new place is not home.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Flowerheart by Cathering Bakewell
Clara is devastated to learn that she will not be joining the Council because her magically powers are to volatile. She hasn't been able to control them since she got them, and she doesn't know why. To add insult to injury, her old best friend Xavier is there with the Council - as part of the Council - when she receives the bad news. Who is she if she doesn't have her magic?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Steps by Wendelin Van Draanen
Ruby misses her best friend, Sterling. They haven't been able to communicate in anyway for a long time. And why? It isn't because they drifted apart, or had a fight, no, it is because of their Dads. Their dads are in the middle of an epic family feud and Ruby and Sterling, who are cousins, are just casualties of the fight. But one night, Sterling breaks the rules and gets in touch with Ruby. At first, Ruby thinks this might mean a change in what has been happening, but all to quickly, Ruby gets drawn into the dark side of her family, and she isn't sure who she can trust anymore at all.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim
Wen and her best friend, Henry, have a plan. A plan to help get them out of their everyday lives. Because being immigrants to the country of Australia - not the easiest thing in the world. Especially when you have a father who is resentful of the fact that things didn't work out as he thought they would, as is the case with Wen, whose family has been in the country for around 10 years and in Henry's case, parents who both seem to struggle, particularly his mother.
If they can pass an entrance exam into a prestigious school, Henry really believes things will change. But when an unexpected tragedy hits his house, it is up to Wen to figure out how to keep their dream alive, all the while navigating her father.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
I.R.L. by Jenny Goebel
Lucy is excited because, finally, after months of online schooling, she will get to meet her classmates in person. After after being stuck in a cabin with just her parents for all of winter, in Alaska, no less, she is going a bit stir crazy. They had been doing online schooling because the weather was so unpredictable that it was easier to just keep in online.
Yet, when that first day of in person learning is supposed to happen, the address that her classmate, Maura, texts her isn't a school at all. Well, it was, but now it is an empty burned out shell of a place. Lucy can't understand what is going on. She worries that her new classmates are playing a cruel trick on her. But why would they do that?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, The Original Fight Over Science In Schools by Debbie Levy
When John T. Scopes was interrupted during a game of tennis after finishing his first year of teaching in Tennessee, and asked to go down and talk to some of the local townspeople at the drugstore, he didn't think much of it. But when he arrived he found some guys planning something big, something to put the sleepy little town of Dayton, TN on the map, forever. And it would be an issue that we still deal with to this very day.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Silent Sister by Megan Davidhizar
When Grace wakes up in the hospital, she has no recollection of the past week. Everything feels different, and she is confused. Her sister, Maddy is missing and she appears to have been the last person to see her. So why can't she remember what happened? And more importantly, where is her sister? She must hold the key to that night, if only she could remember.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Songs for the Offseason by Ryan Wolf
Dustin is super excited to be heading off to Japan for a fun filled summer. His whole baseball team is going and he's had to work hard to earn the money for the trip. But when his mom comes into his room, just days before the trip is supposed to happen, and gives him some shocking news, he knows he can't go on the trip. But what he doesn't expect is the summer ahead of him.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Flicker by H.E. Edgmon
With Millie's mom dead, and now Rose's father, all they have left is each other and their little brother Sammy. But how can two girls and a baby make in this new world after the flicker - a massive solar flare that left most of the world charred and barren? Millie is determined to head off and find her grandmother, but Rose thinks they should find a place her dad used to hear about on the radio, called the Sanctuary. What happens when they can't agree, and food is running out?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones by Wendelin Van Draanen
Could life be any worse? Lincoln doesn’t think so. I mean, how many kids have to go to their parents work after school? And how much worse that his mom works in a crazy home, or AKA – old folks home – or AKA a nursing home for dementia patients? Plus, Lincoln is having to deal with moving to a new school and a new apartment and having to deal with the school bus, which all pose their own problems.
Even though Lincoln has a lot to deal with, he moves through life with a journal in his backpack and lots of stories in his head. If he can only stay out of the way of Troy (who makes his life a misery on the bus) and Kandy Kain (seriously that is her name – a girl who won’t leave him alone at school) and various residents at Brookside Manor (one who periodically likes to take off her clothes!) he might be able to make it through the first months at school.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Better than Revenge by Kasie West
Finley has been wanting to be a podcaster for her school since 7th grade. She is anxious and excited that the moment she has been waiting for has finally arrived. What she doesn't count on, is her boyfriend, Jensen, deciding he wants to try out for a spot too. And then, he gets it! While her world seems to be crashing down, he seems completely unfazed by it. So what is left, but revenge? The question is, what will hit him as hard as losing the podcasting position has hit her?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Spirit Sleuths by Gail Jarrow
During the middle of the 1800s in America, there came to be a belief that certain people had the ability to speak to the dead. They were called mediums and a whole religion sprang up around this idea. However, it turned out that everyone who claimed they could talk to the dead, when actually tested, could not. In fact, magicians could see right through all the tricks these mediums played. One famous magician, named Harry Houdini, made it part of his life's work to help expose these hoaxers and to save people from the grief they caused.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Runaway by Wendelin Van Draanen
Holly is a runaway - from her latest foster placement. The guy gave her the creeps and they locked her in the laundry room at night, giving her very little food, so what was the point in staying? She's been homeless before with her mom, but she's never been on her own homeless. Still, she knows what it takes and she thinks she can handle it. But thinking about something and living it are two different things entirely, and as the days turn into weeks, Holly is forced to ask her self, what does the end look like?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly
Beau is in a hurry to get back to his little brother. But first he has to escape the gang of thieves he has been with for many years. When the gangs latest heist goes south, they take refugee in a strange castle - it seems abandoned but has food out and plenty of things they can steal to sell. However, it also appears to have a beast prowling around and when all the men escape, except for Beau, he has to figure out what is going on in this strange castle and what is the deal with the girl at the center of it all named Arabella.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
- the word bastard is used in this podcast.
Support the show
Send us a text
Boy 2.0 by Tracey Baptiste
Coal has just landed in another foster home. And he is upset because the last one with Tom, was a good one. Still, his "new" family seem welcoming enough, if a little loud. But when Coal goes out one afternoon to do a chalk drawing, he ends up running for his life - and it is those moments of terror that fundamentally change everything he thought he knew about himself, and send him on a journey to find out who he really is.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Lifeboat 5 by Susan Hood
Life has become unbearable for Bess in London, 1940. The Germans are bombing the city all the time, and she is scared. Plus she hates the girls at her school who have been bullying her. Maybe the way out is through the organization called Children's Overseas Reception Board. If only she and her younger brother, Louis, can get on board one of the ships that is sending children away from the war. Luckily for her, she does! Where she meets a girl her age named Beth and they become true friends. And they will need each other when the worst happens at sea.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
This year has been a big one for me in terms of my library. I got a new one! Well, sort of. My library got a complete facelift and it does look totally new! And without doors, which, honestly, I'm not a fan of. I would like doors on the library. But alas, no doors look to be coming anytime soon.
Regardless, I have new paint, a beautiful circulation desk, and lovely shelves. So while I can hear everything being said in the office, the hallways, and even the gym, the view is nice! :P
This is all in preparation for 6th grade students joining our school in 2026. I'm glad I've always made this podcast for 6, 7 and 8th grades, since it will work out wonderfully once we have the younger students with us.
Hope everyone has a great Spring wherever you might be!
Support the show
Send us a text
Bye Forever, I Guess by Jodi Meadows
Ingrid is in a bit of a crisis. She doesn't think she actually wants to be best friends with her best friend anymore. Or even just plain friends. Especially after Ingrid feels she has gone too far. But even though Ingrid likes to be invisible, she doesn't want to be lonely. Thankfully she has a good friend online, but when a new person enters her life in an unexpected way, she has to figure out just how to navigate being seen!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
This Book Kills by Ravena Guron
Jess is going to school at a posh English boarding school, with super rich kids. She is not one of them though and has never felt like she belongs. Luckily, her friend Clem took her under her wing right at the beginning when Jess first arrived, so at least she has one friend. But when Clem's boyfriend is found dead in the woods around the school, and Jess wrote a short story that basically laid out how the boyfriend was killed, things gets really serious, really fast.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Song of a Blackbird by Maria Van Lieshout
Annick knows her grandmother, her Oma, is very sick, and she's hoping that Oma's siblings will be a bone marrow match for her. But when the test results show something surprising, it leads Annick back to a dark time in her Oma's life. A time when the Nazis controlled her country of the Netherlands and how prints that have hung on the walls of Oma's home for years, just might be the way back to that time and solving the mystery of what happened to Oma's biological family.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Peach Rebellion by Wendelin Van Draanen
Ginny Rose and Peggy were great friends as young girls, but then Ginny Roses' family moved away. So, years later when Ginny Rose appears, Peggy is ready to leap right back into their friendship. But now they are older, and things that didn't matter when they were little suddenly seem important now. Will their friendship survive?
Recommended for grades 7 and and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Judgement of Yoyo Gold by Isaac Blum
Yoyo feels lost for the first time in her life. Up until now, she has known exactly who she is - the sister who keeps the house running and a daughter to the Rabbi in her community. Which can come with a lot of pressure, but she has always been able to handle it. She has never questioned why she does what she does, or the rules that her Jewish Orthodox community follows. Until her best friend Esti, is sent away for breaking some of those rules. And Yoyo begins to realize that even though Esti is not the only one who has broken rules, she seems to be the communities scapegoat. Yoyo decides she wants to call attention to the hypocrisy in her community, but how?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Signed Sealed Dead by Cynthia Murphy
Paige and her parents have just moved into her dad's old hometown of Shorehaven. But everything is new for her and her mum, because Paige was born in England and so was her mum. The new house they move into though, has a past. A past that involves a dead girl, and Paige finds something that might help lead her to the girl's killer. Or get Paige killed in the process....
Recommended for grades 8 and and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Ghost Boys By Jewell Parker Rhodes
Jerome has a tough time at school, mostly because of three boys who like to bully him on a daily basis. Still, he tries to put on a brave face for his parents and grandmother. But he has a plan for how to avoid them, most of the time. However, on this particular day, a new boy comes to school, named Carlos. Right away Jerome can tell, Carlos is going to be the bullies' next victim. So, Jerome lets Carlos in on one of Jerome’s favorite hiding spots. It is in that hiding spot that something new happens. Jerome makes a friend. But later on that same day, Jerome is shot, and killed by the police. Jerome never leaves though, he haunts his old apartment, seeing his family grieve and change, hoping he will be able to leave, but still he stays. Until one day he sees a boy like him, only from a different time.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Offline by Donna Cooner
Annie is always on Social Media. She likes to document all aspects of her life. She enjoys getting the likes and the responses. And her boyfriend, Jameson, and she make such a cute couple, why wouldn't she want to document all their moments together?! But then a video comes out showing Jameson wanting to break up with Annie, and all those likes disappear. Annie wants to take a break from it all, but does she have the strength to actually go off of Social Media?
Recommended for grade 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Dust by Dusti BowlingAvalyn feels like she is always fighting a battle, a battle with her own lungs. She has asthma. Really bad asthma. So, when she almost died at the age of two, her parents moved her to the town of Clear Canyon City in Arizona. A place where there were virtually no allergens, just the occasional dust storm.
But things are changing, regarding those dust storms. Avalyn has noticed that ever since a new boy named Adam has moved to town, dust storms, BIG dust storms are happening....a lot! And it is getting to the point where Avalyn is struggling to breath!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Unfriended by Rachel Vail
Truly was excited that her old best friend, Natasha, had invited her to the Popular Table at lunch. Honestly, she thought that Natasha had completely forgotten about her. But what Truly doesn’t realize is that as she leaves her current best friend, Hazel, behind, that things will not be the same after accepting that invitation.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho
Life has not been great since portals directly from Hell opened up about 2 years ago. Most people have just accepted this is how life is now - you might get killed by a demon, but if you just try to avoid the portals, you should be okay. Still, the portals are like, everywhere, including some stores. Like the store where Jasper works. Jasper had an accident a few months ago and can't remember much that happened before then. He knows his parents were killed 2 years ago, when the portals first opened, but really, nothing else. When the portal that is in his store starts acting up, Jasper and a coworker find themselves at ground zero, and not in a good way.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
*Some swear words in the podcast booktalk.
Support the show
Send us a text
Jupiter Rising by Gary D. Schmidt
Jack and his family are set to adopt Jupiter, the son of a former foster child named Joseph that had tragically died a few years previous. Everyone loves Jupiter. But when their case manager comes to inform them that Jupiter's grandparents now have decided they indeed want custody, Jack's world begins to implode. He can't imagine a world without Jupiter.
This is a sequel to Orbiting Jupiter, which should be read first.
Recommended for grade 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Hello All!
I hope you are able to have some time off, read some good books, and otherwise recharge your batteries if you work with students.
If you are a student and are looking for some great books to read, hopefully you will find some in this podcast!
Enjoy!
Tasha Squires
Support the show
Send us a text
My Salty Mary by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows
She was devastated! How could he NOT be in love with her? She saved his life, gave up her tail for him, and he wanted to marry someone else? Mary couldn't believe it was happening to her. And why hadn't she turned into sea foam. Any Mer person that had their heartbroken always did! Mary decides to throw herself overboard, but even then, no sea foam....and she doesn't drown either. In fact, she gets picked up by a ship, and it is a pirate ship. She has a choice - join, or walk the plank. Turns out, Mary is quite the pirate!
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
It Happened to Anna by Tehlor Kay Mejia
Sadie is alone - or so it feels. She has her dad, but in terms of friends, she has none, and that is just how she wants it, sort of. Because the last good friend that she had was killed, and Sadie feels for sure it was her fault. Due to the jealous ghost that lives in Sadie and has since Sadie can remember. What Sadies doesn't know is why and if she will ever be able to be free from it to live her life.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Tig by Heather Smith
Tig and her older brother, Peter, have been abandoned by their mother a few months prior to them being discovered living on their own. They are taken in by their mother's brother, their Uncle Scott and his partner, Manny. The problem is, everything is too perfect, for Tig anyway. After all, people can say they love you but leave you when you are not perfect.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Internment by Samira Ahmed
The future is here and for Muslims, like Layla, things are not good in the United States. The president has made it very clear that Muslims are to blame for everything (sound familiar - think World War II and Jewish people) and many are losing their jobs and having their lives restricted. In fact, Layla's father, a professor at a university, has lost his job and people are now burning his books - and other muslim authors and books that the president and his followers don't think are appropriate for American society to have access to read.
It is in this atmosphere that Layla and her family and others find themselves in. One night when her family is taken from their home - right as night has fallen - and ordered to leave, Layla can't believe this is happening to her, an American citizen, all because of her religious beliefs.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
*the word "damn" is used in this podcast
Support the show
Send us a text
Places We've Never Been by Kasie West
Norah is super excited to be heading out on an RV trip with her mom, her older brother and her mom's good friend along with her three kids. Especially since one of those kids is Skylar, her bestie from four years before - all through elementary and part of middle school. But in the years since, Norah and Skylar have lost touch, for the most part. Still, Norah is eager to begin just where they left off.
However, when Skylar shows up, he doesn't appear to want to have anything to do with Norah, let alone resume their close friendship! Norah is confused and frustrated and not a little hurt. What happened to her fun friend that she could confide anything to? Has she really changed as much as Skylar seems to be implying?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Viveca is ready! This is her year for it all to be done and great! She is a senior and on track to be the valedictorian of her class. She has a good friend, Wren, who helps Viveca through her anxiety and helps get her out of her comfort zone, but in a good way. So, all is on track to go to the college of her dreams - the one that her mom went to for one year until she had to come back home and take care of her dad. Viveca just needs to get into the college and everything will be as she has always dreamed it would be.
Enter Jamison Sharpe, a transfer student into their prep high school and he is good lucking, popular right from the get go, and seems like he can do no wrong. AND he is gunning for Viveca's spot for valedictorian. Viveca is incensed! How can he come in and just take her spot with his perfect everything???? It isn't fair!
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Warrior on the Mound By Sandra W. Headen
Cato loves baseball and plans to follow in his father and big brother's footsteps to become a professional pitcher in the Negro League....just as soon as he can convince his grandfather he is old enough to head out. But there are secrets surrounding his father's death that no one wants to reveal to Cato. And when he and his teammates trespass onto a whites only ball field, some of those secrets come to light.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Star Splitter By Matthew J. Kirby
The year is 2199 and people can visit deep space, because teleportation is possible. Jessica is going to be with her parents for a year on a planet that has been designated Carver 1061c, to examine it for possible habitation by humans. But she isn't happy about it. She wants to stay on Earth, with her grandparents and her friends. Still, she doesn't appear to have a choice. When she wakes up though, it isn't on the ship, orbiting the planet, but it is on the planet in a lander that has crashed. And she isn't alone.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
It Found Us by Lindsay Currie
It started out as a harmless game of hide and seek in the local graveyard, but Hazel and her brother, Den, realize quickly, there is nothing normal about the graveyard, or maybe who is buried there. When Den's best friend disappears during the game, the race is on to figure out where he is and if they can get him back!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee
When Jo loses her job, unexpectedly, at the milliner's hat shop, she isn't sure what she will do next for employment. After all, she and Old Gin need her wages to help them keep them going. Luckily, they don't have to worry about where they live, since they have been squatting in the basement of a printing shop for all of Jo's life. The owners of the print shop have no idea that Jo and Old Gin have been there for years, but when she hears the owners might have to move, she worries that means the end of their free living space. Jo gets an idea for how she can help the owners of the shop stay in business - by becoming an advice columnist for their paper!
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Support the show
Send us a text
Iveliz Explains It All by Andrea Beatriz Arango
This is it! A new school year full of new opportunities - like making good grades again, and maybe making some new friends even though she has a great one in her friend Amir, and this year, she will not get into any trouble at school. Well, these are all goals that Iveliz has for herself as she starts seventh grade, but having them come true is a bit harder than she ever imagined. She is struggling with the fact that her grandmother has come to live with them from Puerto Rico (PR) and she is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, which Iveliz doesn't really know much about. And while she loves her grandmother, she doesn't understand why her Mimi keeps saying that the medicine that Iveliz takes is not necessary.
Things begin to spiral at home and at school, and Iveliz thinks she can manage it all on her own, especially since she is not very close with her mother, after the incident, which is the whole reason she is having mental health issues. So where do you turn when every door seems to be closed?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Support the show
Impossible Escape by Steve Sheinkin
For Rudi, escape was all he thought about. Escape and getting information about what was actually happening in the concentration camps in Europe out to the world. After all, how could people really know just how awful things were in Poland and some of the other countries where the Nazis had established these killing centers. For Greta, it was all about trying to stay out of the concentration camps, and avoid being rounded up. For both Rudi and Greta, time is running out.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Canyon's Edge by Dusti Bowling
When Nora and her father set out on a hike to a canyon they have never visited before, Nora is hopeful. After all, this year has been awful. First, to lose her mom on her birthday to a shooter has been horrific, but then to see her father change from a confident outgoing person, to someone afraid of everything, has been incredibly hard. The fact that he has removed himself from the world is bad, but he wants to remove Nora from it as well and so when she asks if she can start going back to school again, she is met with her father shutting that idea down fast.
But just as fast as that conversation is over, something neither of them thought was possible or had considered happens. A flash flood...and they are in a slot canyon with high sides and no way to outrun the water!
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
In the Same Boat by Holly Green
It is redemption time, at least that is how Sadie feels after wanting to quit the Texas River Odyssey with her dad last year. They didn't quit, but they did have to pull out after Sadie was injured during the race. She figures that she will do better this year since she is teaming up with her older brother, Tanner, because her dad has decided that last year would be his final year of racing. Sadie is determined to do well this year, but when Tanner bails on her at the last minute, she is left without a partner - since she can't run the race solo at her age. Much to her surprise, and old friend turned enemy, named Cully, volunteers to be her partner. She can't figure out why after all these years Cully is willing to step up and work with her, but she badly wants to run the race and be successful. But can she trust the boy she once thought was her everything, after all so long?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Once in a Blue Moon by Sharon Flake
One night, James Henry and his mom were at the lighthouse and then something happened that made James Henry scared. Very scared. So scared that he doesn't like to leave the house because who knows what could happen to him and to other people too. He used to have no problem being outside, but now everything feels too much, including school. Luckily, his twin sister Hattie is there to help him along.
But when a new girl moves to town and starts taking Hattie away from the house, James Henry feels like his one main supporter is leaving him. Hattie is convinced that a blue moon that will be coming up soon makes anything possible. If she can only get James Henry to the lighthouse the night of the blue moon, he will be fine again. However, as with any plan, things always go wrong!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Lumara by Melissa Landers
It was supposed to be a fun trip to meet her boyfriend, Nathaniel's parents and family. After all, it was a wedding, the first one that Talia had ever been to. And she was super surprised that her dad agreed to let her go during her Fall break, since he only got to see her during her breaks from boarding school. Maybe she should have known something was up by how easily he agreed to let her go. But even she could never have imagined what was to come.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Busted by Gina Ciocca
When Marisa catches her best friend's boyfriend cheating on her, she has to tell her. But what she doesn't expect is that others will start to think she should help them as well! It seems crazy to Marisa, but then she gets caught up in helping an old friend of hers figure out what is going on with HER boyfriend, and things start to get out of control!
Recommended for mature 8th graders due to content and language.
The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh
Matthew is stuck at home during Covid, just like the rest of the world. Still, it isn't too bad, except that his parents are divorced and his dad took a job assignment right before Covid hit...in Paris! So now his dad is stuck there and Matthew is stuck with his mom and his GG - his great grandmother who is 100 years old. So not a lot of excitement happening around his place.
Until his mom tells him he needs to help his GG clean out the boxes that are still packed along the side of her bedroom wall from when she came from the nursing home. When he shows his GG a picture of her from when she was young, she gets very upset. It turns out that his GG went through something horrible as a child and it is up to Matthew to see if he can get the story, the true story, of what life was like in Ukraine in the 1930s from her.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Island by Natasha Preston
Paisley thinks this is it! Her big break! She has been invited along with five other teenage influencers to
come to an island amusement park created by a billionaire to drum up business before it does its official launch to the public. And this isn't your regular park. No, this is an exclusive resort that caters to rich people and is not designed for little kids. It has a dark, gothic theme to it, which is perfect for Paisley, since she does true crime podcasts. The others do a wide range, from make up to video games. Still they all have in common the fact that they have a large following, and it is about to get bigger with this invite.
At first, it is everything Paisley and her fellow influencers could wish for. The resort is amazing, the staff - although limited in number - helpful, and Paisley finds herself surrounded by attractive guys that she has her pick of crushing on! But very quickly, something feels off. Is it the resort owner, Malcolm, who is reserved and a bit dismissive of his guests? Or his assistant, Camilla, who seems to be a shadow but always there? Before long, things go terribly, terribly wrong. And Paisley and her fellow influencers are stuck on an island with a killer on the loose.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Shot Clock by Caron Butler and Justin A. Reynolds
Tony, or Tone as most people call him, is in shock. Shock that his best friend has been shot and killed by police. And for no reason. Wrong time, wrong place, or so it seems. Because Dante had it all going for him. He was great at school with a 4.0, an amazing basketball player who was nationally ranked and already had his college picked out, even though he was only a sophomore in high school. So, why? And how is Tone or anyone else supposed to know how to move on? After all, you are told if you do everything right, you will be able to come out on top. But now Tone knows that isn't true.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Agent Most Wanted by Sonia Purnell
Virginia Hall never wanted a simple or traditional life for herself, even if that was what her mother wanted.The life of a society wife moving in high circles in Baltimore and even better if she married into money was her mother's fondest hope! But Virginia's father was always supportive of her doing what she wanted - including riding horses bareback and going hunting. So when it was time to head off to college or get married, you can guess which way Virginia decided to go. But at first, college didn't really help her adventurous spirit. It wasn't until she went to Paris to study abroad that she realized how much she loved being in France.
Virginia was in Europe when things were starting to really go south in terms of the dictators who were coming to power, including Hitler. She was able to see all the politics and thought she could be helpful in the foreign office, perhaps working somehow for the state department. However, right away it became obvious that as much as she wanted to help her country, that they didn't really see the benefit of a woman working for them, other than as a secretary. Virginia became disillusioned after several posts of just doing clerical work when she knew she could do so much more.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Snowglobe by Soyoung Park
In the new world, after catastrophic climate change and the Warring Age, you either live in Snowglobe, or want to live in Snowglobe. After all, who really wants to live outside of the warm dome of Snowglobe, where the weather is climate controlled and there are luxuries that others can only dream about. Ever since she was little, Jeon Chobahm has wanted to be a director. After all, there are only two ways to enter into Snowglobe. Either as a director, or as an actor. Because, everyone in Snowglobe is having their lives recorded are they are either part of a show or helping to direct that show. All of Snowglobe is a reality television show for the rest of the world to watch as they sit in their small, cold houses or work to make electricity for Snowglobe.
But one night, when she and her brother are coming home from working at the local power plant, Chobahm comes across a former actor in dire straights. No one can survive in the cold, and so she makes the decision to try to save the woman. Little does Chobahm know that her life is about to change in strange ways she can not even imagine.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
- the word "damn" is used in this podcast.
The Wager: A tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
This is an adult nonfiction book, but for students who love a good real life adventure story, this is it! Follow the main characters in this real drama on what ship life was like during the late 1700s, chasing ships carrying gold, being away from families for years and even having to deal with that mystery that turns out to be a lack of vitamin C! Fascinating look at a real shipwreck and the amazing story of those who actually survived!
Recommended for 8th grade and up simply due to length and complexity of the story.
The Secret Battle of Evan Pao by Wendy Wan-Long Shang
Evan, his sister and his mother are all traveling across the country to run away from something that Evan's dad did. Something that the people back home are super upset about, and so are Evan and his family. But the new place they move to, isn't exactly like their old place. Here, Evan is the only Chinese American in his school and he is just trying to get along with everyone. Unfortunately, there is one boy at his school who seemed determined to make a big deal about Evan, and not in a good way. Sometimes though, it takes getting to really know a person before you know what is a big deal and what isn't.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Royal Blood by Aimee Carter
So it turns out that Evan is actually of royal blood. As in, she is the child of the reigning King of England. But she is a secret child, because he father had an affair. Yikes. How can you be a secret royal? Well, Evan finds out it is really hard to be one, especially once it comes out! And then someone dies and things start to get really messy!
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
- The word "hell" is read in this podcast.
Heroes by Alan Gratz
Frank worries constantly about all the bad things that could happen to him. To is family, to his friends, and everywhere he looks he sees potential disaster just waiting to happen. Until a real disaster does happen. Frank and his best friend, Stanley, find themselves in the middle of the attack on Pearl Harbor and Frank is left wondering if he can ever step up and do the right thing when it counts the most.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Girl Forgotten by April Henry
It all started out as a new podcast on an old unsolved mystery involving a girl who was murdered. But what Piper doesn’t realize is that by digging into the past, some people in the present take notice and don’t like where her digging might lead.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
This Golden State by Marit Weisenberg
Poppy and her family are on the run, from something, or someone? Maybe the police? Poppy honestly doesn't know. She's never known. All she does know is she and her family have been running since, well, forever. Her whole life at least. So when they pack up and leave again, while it isn't great, she isn't surprised. Just surprised that she keeps making the mistake of thinking her life could be a bit normal, if just for long enough to graduate from high school.
But this latest move, things are different. Her mom especially seems different. The house is different and Poppy realizes that if she is going to get answers, she is going to have to start looking more closely than she has ever done before.
Recommended for 8th grade and up due to some mature content.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Welcome to the world of the Grisha, where magical powers are real, everyday occurrences, even if some people don't think they should be! Inej is part of the Dreggs, which is a gang that runs part of Ketterdam, but not all of it, since a bunch of other groups are vying for it as well. Still when Kaz - the second in command of the Dreggs, for lack of a better term, gets the opportunity to pull off the heist of a lifetime, with just as great a reward, he can't say no. And neither can some of his most trusted members. But it is a job that could very well get them all killed.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti
Five teens went into the woods for an overnight camping experience. But it turns out, one of them has an agenda that hasn't been shared. The night ends in terror for all of them, and a possible death for one of them. As the four who make it out of the woods begin to tell their story to law enforcement, some of what they say matches, and some of it takes a turn.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Hi Everyone!
I'm on break...well, a week ahead of time, because I need to read some more books! I have run out of material and I need the time to read and create more podcasts!
If you have a book you would like me to feature on this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at tasquires66@gmail.com.
My podcast will resume on April 2nd. Until then, read and enjoy your time off - if you are lucky enough to get a Spring Break!
The Darkest Hour by Caroline Tung Richmond
Lucie is a covert op during World War II, stationed in France because she grew up speaking French. Her job is to take out spies and to uncover plots against the Allies. When she and her fellow ops find out about a terrible plot that could endanger the entire world, Lucie believes she is doing the right thing. But only time will tell if what she thinks is true, actually is.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up due to content.
Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow
Simon, and his parents, are looking for a place where no one knows them or can look them up. And moving the the National Quite Zone in Grin and Bear It, Nebraska. It has a ton of radio telescopes where scientists spend a lot of time listening to space. Hence, there can't be any interference from things like cell phones, internet or even microwave ovens! It sounds perfect to Simon. But as with all things, nothing is ever perfect!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
This book is also available in large print from Thorndike Press.
Hands by Torrey Maldonado
Trevor is worried about what will happen when his stepfather gets out of prison. After all, he told Trevor's mom it was all her fault he was getting locked up and he was going to get her back. Trevor has promised to keep his family safe. But the only way he thinks he can do that, is with his hands. However, no one else seems to think this is a good idea. What do you do when you have no idea what to do?
Recommended for grade 6 and up.
Red, White and Whole by Rajani LaRocca
Some days, Reha wonders just how she can navigate between her mother's expectations that she hold true to what her mom believes is a true Indian girl, and just being an American kid. In middle school, it seems harder than ever to find the right path, even with what to wear to school. But then something happens that makes Reha feel closer to her mother and wondering if she has to chose.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Dinged by Tommy Greenwald
Everyone thinks Caleb has it made. He has a cool girlfriend, a dad who is a former NFL player and he has just made starting quarterback for Varsity as a Freshman! Life is amazing, right? Well, it pretty much is. Except that his girlfriend HATEs football and his dad has started to act a little weird lately. And maybe, just maybe, football isn't the answer that he once thought it was.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson
Sage remembers that one summer when everything seems to be the same, yet changing. It was the summer she really remembers the fires, all the fires in the neighborhood, and worrying whose house would burn down next. Would it be hers? Would those blankets in the the closet her mom gave people whose houses had burned down be used for themselves? And it was the summer she met Freddy, who became a true friend, especially when she began to question all she thought she knew about herself.
Recommended for grades 8 and up, only because it is a book that students need some life perspective to read. Completely fine for grades 6 and up in terms of age appropriateness of the content.
Maddie's Ghost by Carol Fisher Saller (Mystery)
Lainie is looking for something that she might not ever be able to find. After all, her own mother wasn't able to find it. The "it" is proof of her (Lainie's ) great grandmother's innocence in a murder she was hanged for back in the 1930s. Lainie keeps feeling like she knows something about it, but how could she? Her great grandmother, Maddie, has been dead for years.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum
Class can be boring, or interesting, depending on what comes out of Hoodie's (yes, like the sweatshirt) friend's mouth. Because his best friend, Moshe Tzvi could make some interesting arguments with the Rabbi during halacha class where they were all learning about Jewish law. But on this particular day, Hoodie was more interested in the girl who was dancing outside the window of his school. Clearly, the girl was not an Orthodox Jewish girl, the only kind that Hoodie was supposed to notice, if he noticed any girls at all, which he also wasn't supposed to do.
And that sets off a whole chain of events that Hoodie couldn't stop, even if he wanted to.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The Order of Things by Kaija Langley
April really, really, REALLY wants to learn to play the drums. Problem is, her mother would pick that as the very LAST instrument she would like her daughter to learn. Still, April is detemined and has help from her best friend Zee, and his dad, both who love music. In fact, Zee is so good at playing the violin, he was accepted into a special music school. It is going to be hard for April to not got to school with her best friend Zee every day, but she will figure out a way to make it work. However, April has no idea just how bad things are going to get.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Rez Ball by Byron Graves
Tre is living in the shadow of his older brother, who was a basketball star to their Indian Reservation - after their own father. But his brother Jaxon is dead, killed in a car accident before he could lead the high school team to a state championship. Tre is hoping that he can be the one to help the team gain their much longed for victory, but does he really have what it takes?
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up due to realistic content and language.
Hi Everyone!
I hope you had a great year and were able to read some of the books that I booktalked on this podcast. Please share, subscribe and recommend this podcast to anyone you think might enjoy it.
I'll be taking a break for the next couple of weeks to catch up on my reading and to record some new podcasts. You can expect weekly podcasts to resume on January 8, 2024.
Until then, please look back over the more than 250 episodes of books for middle school students!!!
Gone to the Woods by Gary Paulsen
As a young child, Gary Paulsen was often placed in situations that were not safe or healthy. At one point, he was sent off on a two day trail ride to live with people he really didn't know well. But that was where he learned his appreciation of the woods and all it could offer. In the years to come, that was the place he would often retreat to, to feel safe and comfort and often, just for food to survive. This is his story of surviving his own childhood.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Crash From Outer Space by Candace Fleming
It happened on a hot summer night in New Mexico, just outside of Roswell, a strange storm and an even stranger thing falling from the sky. Just what had Brazell seen and what did he and his kids pick up from the desert. Was it a bunch of sticks and tape, or was it evidence of an alien crash? And what about others who reported to have seen bodies of aliens and then the military showing up to collect them? What is truth and what is fiction?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Great Destroyers by Caroline Tung Richmond
Jo can't believe that her big break just might have arrived! She is a mecha machine fighter, and because one of the United States' best fighters has gotten injured, she has been asked to fill in for him. What Jo can't know though, is that before she even gets into the ring, so much is against her, including her own coach, and to make matters worse, if a family secret gets out, it could ruin all her chances for a better life for her family.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Mascot by Charles Waters and Traci Sorell
Cassie is really struggling in her new school, mostly because of the mascot. She feels it is offensive and while many of her classmates see it as tradition and a point of pride, she believes it is anything but. Her year in 8th grade gets taken over by the idea of changing the mascot to something that isn't derogatory but knowing it will be a huge up hill battle.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Titans Clash by Sigmund Brouwer
Jack loves to play basketball, and while he isn't the best, he is pretty good. He knows he has to work for everything, but he is willing to put in the time. He does wish that his dad would be a bit happier though, when he does do well. But for the last few weeks, he knows why his dad is more down than usual. Jack's mom was in a terrible car accident and she hasn't been able to leave the hospital.
But then something happens with Jack's dad, something that Jack can't even begin to believe and it feels like quickly basketball isn't as important in life as it once seemed. Jack isn't sure how to put his family back together, but he knows he has to try.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
Everyday things are getting worse. Everyday, some new restrictions are happening. Less food, more time waiting in line for little to nothing, school isn’t safe, home doesn’t feel safe, and now Christian has been targeted - targeted to spy. To spy on everyone in his life, it seems and he has no idea who he can trust in Romania in 1989.
Recommended for grade 8 and up.
Refugee by Alan Gratz
Josef, Isabel and Mahmoud all have the same thing in common, even though they are separated by as much as seventy-six years. They are all fleeing their homelands because of awful things that are happening there.
For Josef, his family is Jewish, and after his father is taken away and put in prison in Germany, Josef and his mother and little sister are worried they might never see him again. They are desperate to find a safe place, but is anyplace safe for them in the world?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Dry by Neal Shuterman and Jarrod Shusterman
It was being called the Tap-Out. As in, nothing left; it was all gone. Only most people had no idea it was coming. Well, a few had an idea. After all, there had been water restrictions to make sure that people weren't wasting water. Like no more private swimming pools, and of all things - water balloons! But really, who would have thought that one day when you went to turn on the water, it simply wasn't there...at all!
Rivals by Tommy Greenwald
When is it more about the play than the player? Is it ever okay to play injured for the sake of the win? Just that one game? Alfie is hoping to be a sports journalist and reporter some day, and she's getting lots of practice in her middle school with her radio program and the school newspaper. She pays attention to the details and she noticed one of the players from the cross town rival team might be limping a bit in the big opening game of the season. And her sharp eyes aren't wrong. But her reporting opens up a whole lot more than just a player playing hurt.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Possess Me by K. R. Alexander
Kaden loves strange objects, or what others might think of as strange. So even though Kaden has grown up hearing about a place called Blood Manor where a lady brought in tons of strange and exotic things, Kaden has never gone there - mostly because rumor has it the place is haunted! Years ago there was a terrible fire, even though the Manor didn't really burn down. The lady who owned it vanished and no one could even ever determine what had caused the fire. Still, Kaden realizes something interesting might have survived the fire. But it isn't until one night when Kaden is forced to the Manor that things get deadly.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
They Went Left by Monica Hesse
Zofia is struggling at the end of World War II. She has spent years in concentration camps and that time has left her both physically and mentally fragile. One thing has kept her going all these years. To find the one person she believes will help her move on with her life, even when everything else has been destroyed.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.
Victory. Stand! By Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes and Dawud Anyabwile
Never when he was younger and growing up in Texas, did Tommie think he would someday be a world class sprinter, or the center of a national controversy. But one day, he was.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Alone by Megan E. Freeman
It was supposed to be a secret and fun night with her two best friends. There are a few advantages to having parents that are divorced and being able to say you are at the other parent's house is one of them. Or so Maddie figures when she sets up a fun Friday evening with her friends at her empty grandparents' apartment. But things don't go according to plan, and Maddie suddenly finds herself in a situation she never expected.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Riot Act by Diane Tullson
Daniel and Nick are best friends and have been for years. So when they decide to go downtown to watch the hometown team in the final game, they are stoked! Even though Daniel's dad, a police officer, tells Daniel to stay home, that things might go badly with so many people going down to watch the game on big screens. Even Nick's sister tries to talk them out of going, but Daniel and Nick are determined. But not prepared for what happens.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
A Work in Progress by Jarrett Lerner
Will's life gets changed, one day in fourth grade. It happened in the hallway at school, when a boy named Nick came up to him and called him fat. In front of everyone. Even though Will's friends came after him and told him that Nick was a jerk and an idiot, from that moment on, Will can't stop thinking about that word. And how even though he knew he was heavier than others, he didn't realize that was how everyone saw HIM.
So, now in 7th grade, it is how Will totally defines himself. He can't stop thinking that it is all anyone ever thinks about him. He is Will, that FAT kid. How can he change himself and make himself known for something other than that?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Grape! by Gabriel Arquilevich
What happens when you do something that might make sense to you, but no one else? Grape has that happen...a lot! So much so, that he finds he could get kicked out of his school and be sent off to another one. One without his friends and well, who really wants to get booted out of their school?
The problem is, he has to write down to his principal why he did the thing he did to maybe get kicked out of school and how it all led up to that moment. And for Grape, that means he has to go all the way back to figure out just why he does what he does. He just hopes what he writes will be enough to keep him where he wants to be.
Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix
When the children of Clifton start to get sick, Jessie isn't too worried. After all, the doctor in the town typically gives them little pills under the counter after telling them some local things to take, but lately, the doctor hasn't had the pills anymore. And Jessie's mom is getting more and more worried about the sick children.
Her mom tells Jessie to meet her out in the woods one night, away from everyone, but won't tell her why. That is, until her mom is sure they are all alone.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Black Birds in the Sky by Brandy Colbert
So much of American history has been glossed over, removed or simply omitted from text books and classrooms, and even the memories of the townspeople who lived through certain events. Such is the case with the Tulsa Race Massacre that happened in 1921. Unfortunately, it was not an event that was shocking because it was the only such occurrence, rather, it was part of a string of such happenings as to make it, sadly, too common.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Perfect Score by A.M. Ellis
She misses her old school, doesn't get to see her friends as much as she'd like anymore, and she and her mom STILL are at odds with what Jolene plans to do as a career. So, yeah, life really isn't great these days. The only thing that is going well are how many Cold Cases she and her friends have been able to solve.
Jolene has just picked a new case for her and her friends to try to solve, when she goes to take the elevated train back to her new, private school. But she sees her guidance counselor, Mr. Medina on the other side of train platform. She's surprised to see him, because he should be in school - just like she needs to be or she'll be late. So what is he doing there? She tries to get his attention, but then, before her horrified eyes, she sees someone push him onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train!
The death of Mr. Medina shocks Jolene. She had known him for years and was the reason she was at her new fancy school. But when the police rule it a tragic accident, Jolene can't believe it! After all, she saw him get pushed. However, every where she turns, people keep telling her to forget about it. What did Mr. Medina know and how can Jolene prove he was murdered?
The Perfect Score by A. M. Ellis is a great mystery read and it looks like there will be more.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Summer of June by Jamie Sumner
This is it! This will be the summer that June is able to rid herself of her anxiety - anxiety that has made life very difficult for her, and she knows, her mom. Even if her mom doesn't say it. She has until the fall to make it all better. The only problem with that is, well, not everything can be put on a schedule, and June is about to learn that the hard way.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
This book is also available in large print from Thorndike Press.
I Know You're Lying by Daphne Benedis-Grab
When four students are called down to the office, they each have no idea why. But when their principal tells them they are possible suspects to a crime that happened before school started that day, they are all floored! Could one of them have done this, and why?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Silent Unseen by Amanda McCrina
Maria is trying to make it home to her parents in Poland. Kostya is trying to make it home to save his mother and sister from a vengeful cousin. Neither of them has much hope of surviving the journey home, but they have to try. Neither of them knows they will meet each other, and how their lives will become entangled and neither knows if they can actually trust the other one.
Recommended for 8th grade and up due to the complexities of the story.
Playing the Cards You're Dealt by Varian Johnson
Ant used to love his nickname, now, not so much. He used to love playing Spades for fun, but now, not so much. Mostly because he wants to make his father proud. He wants to be able to win the big local Spades tournament coming up, but the year before, he and his best friend and partner, Jamal, pretty much flopped. Now Ant has to figure out how to win while at the same time trying to figure out what exactly is going on with his dad.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Rites of PassageBy Joy Hensley
Sam is only carrying on the family tradition of going to Denmark Military Academy - just like her father and her two brothers did. However, they were male, and she’s a female. And it turns out one of five who will be the first girls ever let into the prestigious DMA. So many, including her older brother at the school, don’t want her to succeed. With so many things against her, is it possible?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The Miscalculations of Lighting Girl by Stacy McAnulty
She was average and “normal” until she was eight. Then, she was struck by lightning. Yeah, really! At that point, Lucy’s life changed. Suddenly, numbers made a whole lot of sense to her, so much so, that they become just about the only thing that does make sense. After being struck by lightning, part of her brain goes into overdrive and pretty much overnight Lucy becomes a genius – at least in math. She’s so good that she’s ready to go to college at the age of 12. Because she’s been so far ahead, her grandmother pulled her out of public school and let her do online courses. But for some reason that Lucy can’t fathom, her grandmother has it in her head that Lucy needs to complete at least one year of middle school before she’ll let Lucy enroll in college. Lucy can’t imagine what on earth she could possibly learn in 7th grade, but her grandmother is determined.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Allies by Alan Gratz
Everyone had their reasons for being there that day. Whether it was to avenge people who had already died, to help fight for their country, settle an old score, or simply because they had volunteered, everyone had a story to tell as to how they had gotten to that spot. But what almost all of them could agree on, was how awful everything was turning out.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Shadowed Unicorn by Sheila Kelly Welch
Ever think it would be cool to have a clone? Someone who could do all the things you don’t want to do? What if that person was your identical twin? Would you consider that person a clone? What makes you an individual if another person in the world shares your exact DNA? Brendan is struggling with finding his own identity in The Shadowed Unicorn by Sheila Kelly Welch. Being a twin is hard enough, but being the responsible twin gets old at times. Nick never seems to care what others think, and it’s Brendan who feels he needs to worry about everything. When the family moves to a small farm in the countryside of Pennsylvania after their father is killed, Brendan’s sister Ami seems to be coming apart at the seams. Brendan begins to question her grasp on reality as she becomes swept away in a fantasy world.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Switch by Roland Smith
Henry was looking forward to some alone time from his family to explore his new phone, when suddenly, an airplane crashes down in their farm field! But that is only the beginning of the horrible things to come. Something has caused all things with modern electrical components to fail, and that means a world without electricity, for most people. Henry's world just got a lot more complicated and scary.
A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee
Living in a small village with only her father, Miuko tries to stay out of trouble. But it always seems to find her. Mostly, because she is quite opinionated! But it is hard for her father to run the family inn by himself so she helps where she can. One day though, when he sends her to purchase more teacups, she has to leave the boundaries of the village and on the road back, she encounters a Yagra, or a demon spirit and her adventure/curse begins!
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley
Aza Ray is struggling – to breath. Every since she was about a year old, and suddenly developed a serious problem with breathing, Aza’s life has seemed an endless series of trips to the E.R. and hospitals, where doctors struggle to figure out what on earth is Aza’s problem. In fact, they can’t find another person alive like her, and have named her condition, after her!
Aza tries as best she can to be “normal,” but seems to fail. She wasn’t supposed to make to 10 let alone almost 16. But here she is, just a few days shy of that big milestone. She has a great family, two supportive parents, a crazy fun younger sister and a great friend, Jason. Jason, who, just like her family, is trying everything possible to keep her living just a little bit longer.
One day at school, not long before her birthday, Aza sees something in the sky that she can’t explain, as much as she’d like to be able to. Her family think it must be the results of all the medications she is taking, but as she talks to Jason about it – he gives her another possible explanation. An explanation that sounds almost as out of this world as what she saw.
Hi Everyone!
I hope you are all enjoying a break! If not, now is a chance to go back through all the podcasts and discover some from a long ways back!
I'm hoping to have an exciting announcement in the next few months, so stay tuned for that!
Have a wonderful week!
Rez Dogs by Joseph Bruchac
Malian is with her grandparents during COVID because of the shelter in place order after a long weekend turns into months. Her parents are still in Boston, and while she is able to have contact with them, she misses them. Living with her grandparents is giving her time to learn more stories and more about her culture. But something surprising happens, and it all has to do with a Rez Dog that shows up one day.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
This book is available in large print by Thorndike Press.
Illegal by Francisco X. Stork
They made it through the desert but now, Sara is in a detention center in Texas hoping to get asylum in the United States because she knows if she goes back to Mexico, there are people there who will kill her. Her brother, Emiliano has been hiding at a ranch in Texas after being rescued from near death in the desert. But he has a very important phone – a phone that Sara has been risking her life for, and now Emiliano’s life – because it contains information that could bring down a whole human trafficking smuggling ring being run in the United States.
Emiliano ends up going with his Father to Aurora, IL because Sara’s contacts tell him they will be able to get the phone unlocked and help get the information out that will save the poor woman who have been trafficked. However, once Emiliano gets to Illinois, it becomes clear that his father will do more to protect his new wife, than he will to help Emiliano and his sister. Who can Emiliano turn to when anyone who moves to help him might end up dead?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Fallout by Steve Sheinkin
Most people have never heard the name Vasili Arkhipov, but we all should know about him. If it weren't for him, the world would be a very different place, and humans might not even be on it anymore. Or, if any of humanity had survived, it would certainly not be in the current world we exist in. Why? Because in the early 1960s, the Cold War was raging between the United States and the U.S.S.R. and Cuba had just become the hot spot.
After World War II, Europe was just trying to rebuild, but the United States and the U.S.S.R. both emerged as the most powerful countries in the world. The Soviet leaders wanted to make sure the world would sit up and take notice of them, and make sure no one ever invaded them again, like Germany had during World War II. As the world entered the nuclear age of weapons, the knowledge that life on earth could actually be destroyed kept everyone on edge. In the United States, President Kennedy encouraged all Americans to build fallout shelters that would allow them to survive a nuclear holocaust. However, people that had actually lived through a radioactive experience, knew first hand how horrible the effects were, and how helpless humans are in the face of such a disaster. Which is where Vasili Arkhipov comes into play, and how he may have literally saved the world.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi
Amal Shahid was arrested for supposedly putting another boy in a coma. But he says he didn’t do it. What do you do when no one believes you, except your mom, and there appears to be footage of the attack? How do you keep up hope?
Recommended for grades 8 and up due to mature content.
Stella by Starlight by Sharon Draper
Stella has found lately that she does better with her writing when she goes outside at night. But this particular night, she has already gone to bed, when her younger brother, Jojo, comes to wake her up. They both go outside and see across their backyard to a pond, where there is a cross burning, surrounded by what appear to be men in white sheets and hoods. They aren't sure what is up, but they feel like it is something bad. After letting their parents know, they realize they were right to feel uneasy. Turns out, those men belong to the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. And this concerns everyone in Bumblebee, North Carolina who is black. Including Stella's family.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson
ZJ loves his dad. And so does everyone else! After all, he's a pro football player and what is better than that? His friends all think he is super cool because of his dad, and ZJ doesn't mind one bit. Even though his dad has to be gone a lot for football, when he is home, he makes up for it. He is the best. Until one day, he gets super mad at ZJ and his friends, for no real reason. Then he starts complaining about his head aching all the time. He stops playing football too, because his hands shake and his head hurts. Why is his dad acting this way? It makes no sense to ZJ and not to his mom either.
Recommended for grades 6 and and up.
Linked by Gordon Korman
He only went back to school because he forgot his phone in his locker. It just happened he was the first one to see the ugly sign of hate - a swastika. While the school engages everyone in a ton of social and emotional learning, the students are trying to figure it out for themselves. Who put up this symbol?
Lincoln, or as everyone calls him, Link, is used to pulling practical jokes. His dad is so set on making their town known as a vacation spot and wanting Link to live up to his potential, that sometimes, for Link, it is just too much. But when this symbol of hate keeps showing up at his school, even after all the lessons, Link, who for one didn't even know the history behind it, finds out something about his own history that changes everything for him. And because of that, for everyone at his school.
Recommended for grades 6 and up!
Across the Desert by Dusti Bowling
Each day it gets harder and harder for Jolene to hide the fact that her mother is a drug addict. She knows that if she asks for help, or draws attention to herself, that will inevitably lead to people finding out about her mother, and Jolene will get placed in a foster home. Mostly, Jolene spends her time in the local public library, reading, or working on her maps. She loves the days when she can sit and watch a live stream of a girl around her own age who takes up an ultralight and flies over desert areas in Arizona. Jolene loves to watch her and dreams of the day when she, herself, can escape and fly off somewhere fabulous. Usually, Addie, with her ultralight goes up for a while and entertains Jolene (who is always the only one watching the livestream) but then something goes horribly wrong, and Addie and her ultralight go crashing down to earth. Addie begs Jolene for help, but Jolene doesn't even know her real name, or for sure where she went down.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Two Truths and a Lie by April Henry
All of them were super excited to be heading to the state capital for a major theater competition. Everyone had their parts down and was ready to show the world, or at least the other competitors, just what they had! Nell isn't a front of the house kind of person at high school. She likes bringing her talents to the back stage crew, where she really excels.
When the group sets off and it begins to snow, no one is too worried. However, when a four hour trip gets longer and longer because of the blizzard conditions, all of them are thrilled to see a sign for lodging. Turns out they aren't the only ones taking shelter from the storm, but the place they have found is pretty much run down and old. Luckily for Nell's group, another group of teenagers, also heading to a competition, but for robotics, is forced to stay the night as well. Nell immediately feels a connection to one of the other teens, and is looking forward to having a nice time. Until the group decides to play the game Two Truths and a Dare. When Nell pulls out a sheet of paper which appears to say someone in their group is a murderer, things take a twisted and terrifying turn.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Small Spaces by Katherine Arden
Ollie is having a hard time reengaging with the world. Life has been hard for her and her father for about a year. Ollie doesn't hang out much with her old friends, and doesn't do the same things she used to. And while her dad tries to make life the same, it just isn't. On her way home from school one day, she stops by her favorite spot by the river. Only, someone is already there. This person changes not only Ollie's life, but the lives of people around her, forever!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman
Valentina knows right away that morning that something is wrong. Her mother tries to make excuses for why her father didn't come home the night before from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant where he works. But even though Valentina has been told over and over again that the plant is safe and that nothing could ever happen, she clearly sees a fire in the distance, where the plant is located. Still, her mother insists that she go to school like usual. When she gets outside, things are even stranger. There is a weird smell to the air and even the color of the sky is wrong. And where are the birds, which was her first hint something was wrong?
At school, the girl who seems to hate her the most, Oksana, appears determined to create a problem between them, yet again. Valentina is worried about her father, and she wonders if Oksana's father returned from the plant since he works with Valentina's father. Oksana has her own worries, as her father is missing too. But she has other reasons to be concerned about whether or not he will return.
What neither girl knows is that the plant has had a terrible disaster, one that will impact the rest of their lives forever and bring them together in ways they never could have imagined.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg
**The Vietnam War is over, but for Matt, it continues in his mind and in his new home. As a child taken out of Vietnam at the end of the war, he has been adopted into a family who loves him. However, he questions why his biological mother gave him up. Was it love or something he did that made her give him up? And how can he fit into a life where he feels so different?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Avery was having a really bad day, or week, or maybe years? After losing her mother at the age of 15, two years later she is living with her half sister Libby and they are both trying to make ends meet. So when a strange boy shows up, telling Avery her presence is requested, no required, at the reading of his dead grandfather's will, it all seems just too crazy to believe. And then the will is read!
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Northwind by Gary Paulsen
Leif had been bounced around his whole life. After his mother died he was picked up by sailors and found his life was on ships sailing the ocean. When Leif and some other men are put off a ship to harvest salmon, they never expected to be visited by some other men who bring death to the camp. At that point, Leif is sent away with Little Carl, a small boy, to see if they can survive in the wild by themselves.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
BeanballBy Gene Fehler
This was their year, or so Andy and Luke thought, to go to the State championship in baseball. While Andy knows he isn’t the best player, Luke, aka The Wizard, certainly is. But in one of the first games of the year, something goes horribly wrong and the lives of the players on the team will never be the same.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Amelia Westlake Was Never Here by Erin Gough
It all started with a comment. A completely inappropriate comment made by their physical education teacher. One that Will was not going to let slide by, and of course, it meant that she got in trouble for it and ended up in detention. The worst part for Will was the fact that Harriet heard what the coach said to Ruby, and just gave him a pass. But that isn’t very surprising for Will because she knows Harriett is a total suck up to all the teachers at their elite high school in Australia.
But when Harriet shows up later that day in detention with Will (not because she got into trouble but because Harriett is trying to suck up to the teacher who is monitoring detention that day) they do strike up a conversation and shocker – Harriet admits that what the coach said was actually not very nice. And perhaps he is sexist. But then Harriet really throws Will for a loop. She tells Will if she is so upset about it, she should do something about it. The question is, what? What could Will do that would make any kind of a difference. And from that conversation, Amelia Westlake is born! And little do Will and Harriet know, but their collaboration will indeed change things at their school, forever!
Amelia Westlake was Never Here by Erin Gough is a fabulous book! I loved all the humor and all the ideas that the girls came up with to point out the foibles with their school. The book is for mature students since there is a lot of swearing and some mature content, but it is all realistic to the situations and the age of the characters. Start reading this book, and you’ll have a hard time putting it down!
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.
The Gathering by Dan Poblocki
She knows everyone thinks she is “crazy Poppy” but she really does see a girl in the mirror – in any mirror- that she looks into. And not only that, but the girl gives her things. Things that Poppy sees in the mirror and then finds in real life. But Poppy has no idea who she is and why she appears only to Poppy.
And Marcus has for years heard music that he must play- music that only he can hear. But it drives his mother nuts because she doesn’t like to hear Marcus play. It reminds her too much of her dead brother, who was a musician too.
Azumi has lost her sister in a woods in Japan, and it has been over a year, but she can’t let go of her. In fact, she is sleep walking. Then there are Dash and Dylan, two popular television stars who have their own secret story.
What do all of these kids have in common? They have all been summoned to the house called Larkspur, all seeming to be an answer to all their problems, but have they solved them, or just found themselves locked in a sinister house that has no plans on letting them out alive?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Love, Life and the List by Kasie West
Abby knows Cooper doesn’t like her “like that” after that disastrous discussion last summer, but it doesn’t mean she can just turn off her feelings. Still, she has to pretend, right? After all, she doesn’t want to lose Cooper as her best friend, and it will totally mess up their group of four friends. But two of those four are going away for the summer, leaving just Cooper and Abby. Abby and Cooper. Okay, she really needs to stop thinking anything will change.
So she will focus on her artwork this summer, in the hopes of getting into a special course at an Art Institute. That means the local art museum that she works at will hopefully showcase her work in a local artists show they have. But when the museum director looks at her work, he tells her she needs to grow, that her work lacks heart. Devastated, Abby sets out to learn how to get more “depth” into her work. So with the help of family, she creates a list – a list of experiences that will hopefully impact her artwork in a positive way. And who better to help her with this list than Cooper, her best friend?
Love, Life and the List by Kasie West is everything you want in a romance. West does a great job of creating characters we care about and want to see have that happy ending.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte
Mary has spent her whole life on Martha's Vineyard - an island off the coast of Massachusetts, living with her parents and her older brother. Tragically, her older brother died in an accident the year before, leaving Mary with feelings of guilt.
But now a stranger, a scientist has come to their island to study people like Mary. People who are deaf. To Mary, this seems strange, after all a lot of the people she knows are deaf and pretty much everyone in the village uses a form of sign language. But the scientist makes it very obvious, he considers those who are deaf to be less than those with hearing. And Mary isn't sure how to take that.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
What Lane? by Torrey Maldonado
Stephen has some good friends, but lately, his best friend Dan, has been hanging out with his cousin, Chad. Chad, for lack of a better word, is pretty much a jerk and seems to be mean on purpose to Stephen. Any time Chad is around, Stephen just wants to leave. So when a bunch of Stephen's friends hang out one day, and Chad starts to challenge Stephen to do something he isn't comfortable doing, Stephen wonders if his friendship with Dan will survive since his parents always say people will pick family over friends.
As the days go on, Stephen begins to see that not only can Chad be a jerk at times, but he can also encourage the kids in the group to do things that begin to become dangerous. And Stephen is starting to see things in the world that he never thought about before, things that his dad thinks he should be prepared for, but his mom thinks he's too young to know about. How is Stephen supposed to get his friend Dan to understand the attitudes that his cousin Chad shares are hurtful and not right?
Recommended for grades 6 and and up.
The Cousins by Karen McManus
It was strange that their grandmother finally wanted to see them, after all this time. After all, she’d cut out her own children from her life, so easily it seemed, all those years ago, so why did she want to see them now? For Milly, Aubrey and Jonah, the mystery of what happened then begins to blend in with the now.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Following by Jeffry Johnston
**Ever since his parents were killed, Alden has been driven to figure out the why. Why do people do what they do? And for him, the best way to figure that out is to follow people. Even though his best friend Charlie tells him it is a bad idea, he can’t seem to stop himself. After following a guy from school one day, Alden begins to believe Charlie, since he sees something he just can’t unsee.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.**
From a Whisper to a Rally Cry by Paula Yoo
On the evening of June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin was beaten in the middle of a street in Detroit, Michigan after going to a club for the evening. He was going to be married in a little over a week. Instead of people attending his wedding, they went to his funeral. The question is raised was Vincent killed because he was Asian? For the first time, across America, Asian Americans were unified in wanting to make sure justice was served.
Hunted by Meagan Spooner
Beauty, as she used to be called when she was little, knows she doesn't like life in town, even if her two sisters do. She struggles with the expectations of what life might and probably will be like for her. Basically, finding someone to marry, setting up a house and then having children. But, does she really want that? Or should she just accept that is what happens when you get older and grow up. Like how she used to be called Beauty, but now goes by Yeva, since that is a more proper name. Yeva still longs for those old days with her father when she would go hunting with him in the woods. But since her father became a respectable merchant and moved the family to the city, those days seems like such a distant memory for both of them.
When her father unexpectedly loses everything however, it appears the only avenue left to them is to return to the old hunting lodge and for her father to turn back to hunting. But he is much older now, and seems plagued by a mystery creature, or creatures that lurk in the woods. Yeva is concerned about her father, and when his dog comes back without him one night, she knows it is up to her to save him, or die trying. What she never expects is to find the creature that her father has been ranting about. And just what she will do to try to escape from him, once the creature has caught her.
Hunted by Meagan Spooner is a great retelling of the old fairytale Beauty and the Beast. This one has some different angles to it from some of the other stories out there and it adds to it. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys reading retellings of classic tales with new spins on them.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
Mare knows her time is running out before she will have to leave her family and fight in the war with the Lakelanders. But she is as prepared as she can be. After all, she's got three older brothers already fighting in the war, and an injured father from his time serving. What she isn't prepared for though, is her best friend, Kilorn going to war. When he loses his apprenticeship, Kilorn is sure to be shipping out soon for the warfront - something Mare can't face. So she decides she will find a way to save him. But is the cost too much?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame by Supriya Kelkar
Things were changing in India in 1857. But it turns out, not fast enough for Meera. She longs to learn to read and write like the boys her father teaches, but she knows that isn't something that her father approves of for girls. In fact, Meera is getting ready to go off and be with her husband, a boy named Krishna when she turns 13 in just a few days. She has been married to him since she was a little girl, but will go join his family now that she is older. Her parents believe in a fringe practice called sati, where if a husband dies before the wife, the wife will follow him in death by sacrificing herself on his funeral pyre. Meera was young, but she still remembers when her aunt had to do that after her uncle died. Still, she is young and her husband is as well, so she isn't worried about this. However, there is unrest in the state of India, and many are rebelling against the control of the East India Company, a British company that had been ruling over India for over a hundred years. Meera's life gets caught up in that struggle. Can she figure her own way out?
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
That’s Not What I Heard by Stephanie Strohm
**Kimberly and Teddy have been a couple since, well, it seems like forever. Now, senior year is upon them, things are going to be amazing. Until one day, as they are leaving the cafeteria, Teddy asks Kimberly a question - one she is shocked to hear. And very quickly, it spirals and soon the whole school has picked a side!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Eyes of the Forest by April Henry
So it is a real thing. Not being able to write. And R.M. Haldon's got it bad. So bad that maybe he needs to think outside the box to get something written, anything written to finish up his epic fantasy series, Swords and Shadows. After all, he has fans waiting, and waiting and really waiting for him to tie up all those loose ends. So why can't he, when the first books came so easily to him?
Bridget, his assistant, knows that he is stuck, but she's sure that he will be coming around soon. Or she at least hopes he will. Still, she has no trouble re-reading all his other books in the series. Still, it is strange that Bob (as she calls him, since that is his name) hasn't been contacting her as much lately. Or at all. Typically when he's writing, he likes to check in with her. And as crazy as it seems since she is a teenager, she really is an amazing assistant because she knows all of his books, inside and out, and can help him keep the continuity of the stories going. So what is going on? Is he really writing, or has something happened to him? And if so, is there anything Bridget can do to help him?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The Dozier School for Boys by Elizabeth A. Murray
Boys in Florida from 1900 to into the 2000s could be sentenced to a school for boys if they committed a crime, or were truant from school. Some parents actually agreed to send their boys there, hoping it would set them on a good path for the future. But for the boys sent to the school, it was often not a place of learning but a place of pain and horror. Not until the boys became grown men did many of them finally speak to the terrible things that were actually happening at the school. This is the story of that school and some of the boys who made it out, because not all did.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Ripped Away by Shirley Reva Vernick
Abe has always had a "thing" for Mitzy, but has never been able to do more than just nod her way as he walks by her on his way home from school. Not that there is anything waiting for him at home. Just the every day life of one of the many who blend in and go about their lives. But today, for some reason, he decides to take a little detour and go into a store front shop. There he meets a woman who says she will tell him his fortune. Not that he thinks he has anything fortunate to look forward to, but what the heck. Only what she says surprised him, and even more so, when he goes to leave the shop, he blacks out, or thinks he does. When he comes to, he is in London of all places and not in his own time! In fact, it appears he has traveled back in time to the exact moment that the infamous Jack the Ripper first strikes!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Bloom by Kenneith Oppel
Petra and Anaya have horrible allergies and they seem to get worse at the years go by. Seth was abandoned as a small child and has been in and out of foster homes his whole life. But it turns out they all have something in common when a strange rainstorm happens around the world - delivering what appears to be some kind of plant life. The plants seem to make everyone sick, but them. What could possibly be going on?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Flood by Ann E. Burg
In 1889 in Johnstown, PA, something horrible happened. An earthen dam that had been holding back a lake for years, suddenly gave way. Johnstown was at the bottom of that lake. For years people had been worried about that lake and the dam, but the rich folks who controlled the lake never did anything about it. This novel in verse looks at the people who were just trying to live their lives when it all came to a horrible end.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Loving VS. Virginia by Patricia Hruby Powell
Richard and Millie had grown up together with their families in Central Point, Virginia. It was an unusual area for that time in Virginia – black and white families would often get together for events and to just hang out. The rest of the segregated South seemed to disappear in Central Point. When Millie was in high school, she and Richard started to date and in time fell in love.
But there was a problem. Richard was white, and Millie was black and Native American. In Virginia, people who were white could only marry other people who were white. Millie and Richard went to Washington, D.C. to get married since they knew they couldn’t in Virginia. But in the dead of night, the Sheriff arrested them for being together. They were tried and found guilty of breaking the law for living together because they were of different races. Their sentence was they could not return to Virginia for 25 years, or face the possibility of going to jail. Both of them wanted to live in Virginia – it was where their families were and where they wanted to raise their children. Would they never be able to return home?
Recommended for students in grades 7 and up.
- The word Hell and Bastard are read aloud in this podcast.
Baseball Genius by Tim Green
Jalen loves baseball. But he has a problem. He wants to get onto the best travel team in his area, but that costs money. Money he and his dad don't have. So it just so happens that his best friend Kat lives next door to a famous Yankee's player. And it just so happens that Jalen knows there are baseballs that this famous player has hit and signed - which are worth money. If he can only get his hands on those baseballs, Jalen's money problems will be over, or so he thinks. But when things don't go quite according to plan, Jalen realizes his he might have another way to solve his problem, and it involves the famous player!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
A Pho Love Story by Loan Le
Both Bao and Linh are the children of Vietnamese immigrants. Both of their parents' own a Pho restaurant and are in stiff competition with each other. That means they don't want Bao and Linh associating with each other, even though they go to the same high school. One night though, Bao sees Linh, utterly dejected, sitting in the alley behind her parents' restaurant and does what no one has done before. He crossed the street and offers to help her. That one small act turns into many more and it soon become clear, there is more keeping Bao and Linh's families apart than just the restaurants!
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Truly Devious by Maureen JohnsonStevie can’t wait to get away from her parents – parents who don’t share the same beliefs that she does. They work for a Senator that Stevie can’t stand. So when she finds out about an old Cold Case – a murder that hasn’t really ever been solved, and it is at a school – she decides she has nothing to lose and applies to it. However, Ellingham Academy is filled with students who are exceptional in some way. And Stevie isn’t sure how she made it in. Other than the fact that she is pretty obsessed with the Ellingham murders.
As she meets her house mates, two other girls and three boys, she wonders if she’ll end up being true friends with any of them. Luckily, she was able to chat with two of them over the summer leading up to their arrival at the school, but still. As the school year gets underway, Stevie is fascinated to be at the place where the murders happened – or at least the kidnappings. She decides to make it her school project to solve the murders. But deciding something and doing it are two different things entirely!
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Trash by Andy Mulligan
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, or at least a nice sized chicken! That is all Raphael thinks when he finds a leather bag, map, key and some eleven hundred pesos in Trash by Andy Mulligan. And that means enough for a nice chicken for a dump boy and some of his relatives and friends in the Behala dump site. But when police come swarming over the dump site that night asking if any of the trash pickers have found anything of “interest” Raphael and his friend Gardo realize quickly this was no ordinary bag. And so in order to find out why the police are so interested in this bag, the boys will risk their very lives to put an old wrong right, and in the process help themselves a bit too.
Recommended for 7th grade and up due to some violence.
Chirp by Kate Messner
Mia's family is moving back to the place she grew up in Vermont, after having lived in Boston for a few years. Mia is happy to leave Boston and its painful memories behind. She's just happy she gets to be back with her Gram again and helping her with the business she runs. Mia's mom though, wants Mia to be "involved" this summer and that means Mia can't just park herself in front of the television and watch all the seasons of her favorite shows. What she doesn't expect is to find two really awesome camps and a Gram who is convinced someone is trying to take down her business.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Under the Never SkyBy Veronica Rossi
Her life had been pretty predictable up to this point. Aria had her close group of friends, her mother, Luna, and well, the Realms. Life in the Realms made everything seem fine. Until her mother has to leave their pod and go to another settlement called Bliss to do her research, leaving Aria behind. Still, not the end of the world, until contact is lost to Bliss. In an effort to find out what has happened to her mother, Aria befriends the son of the Head of Security, Soren, thinking he must know something. However, things go very wrong when Soren decides to break into a part of their pod that hasn’t been used for years. He and some of the boys start a fire and then attack Aria and her friend Paisley. Out of the burning night a person appears, an outsider, who rescues Aria from Soren’s attack.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.
Ink by Alice Broadway
Leora and her mother have just had to say goodbye to her father and husband forever. He has just died. Now they both wait for the moment when they can bring him home, after the Weighing of the Souls ceremony. They won’t bury him, they will instead bring home his “skin book.” Everyone, after they die, has their skin removed and bound into a book. This book will then stay with the family forever. After all, everyone’s story is on their skin. For every important event in a person’s life, in Leora’s world, people get tattoos. Everyone’s story is there for everyone to read, on their skin.
For as long as she can remember, she has wanted to be an inker – the one who puts tattoos on people. But with her father’s passing, life seems to not be so simple anymore. And when something happens that appears to put her father’s soul in danger at the ceremony to come, Leora is beginning to wonder if there is really anyone she can trust.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
ExposedBy Kimberly Marcus
What does it mean to be best friends? Can a true friendship survive anything? Liz and Kate have been friends for so long, even when they have a fight, it doesn’t seem like the end of the world. But after one fight, Kate won’t talk to Liz and she doesn’t know why. When she finds out, she wonders if their friendship can survive.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Lions of Little Rock By Kristin Levine
**Marlee, a 7th grader attending a junior high school watches as her older sister, Judy, is forced to leave town and attend high school where their grandmother lives after their public high school is closed to prevent black students from integrating the school for a second year. For Marlee, this seems the most traumatic thing that can happen to her, until she becomes friends with a new girl at school. A girl named Liz. Liz is different in that she challenges Marlee. Marlee soon must answer the question when do you have to stand up and when is it okay to keep quiet?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Simeon’s StoryBy Simeon Wright
Much has been written about the murder of Emmett Till however, most of it has been written by people who didn’t know him first hand, or based on the account written by the white men who killed him. Here, finally, is an account written by Emmett’s first cousin, once removed, who was one of the last people to see Emmett alive.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Darkest Corner By Mildred Barger Herschler
How would you feel if you knew your father was responsible for the death of your best friend’s father? Teddy sees her friend’s father hanging from a tree and will never forget the fact that her own father was there at the lynching. Teddy has to figure out how to live with a father who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan, while being best friends with a black girl in the South during the 1960’s.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
StrandedBy Melinda Braun
Emma is looking for a way to forget and hopefully move on. It’s been almost a year since her little sister died in a horrible accident. One that Emma feels responsible for – and she wonders if her parents blame her as well. So when she sees an advertisement for canoeing in the Boundary Waters of the North, she decides it looks like the perfect place for her. Emma picks a week that falls on the one year anniversary of her sister’s death, in the hopes she’ll be able to forget, at least for a while. But the trip turns out to be anything but a way to escape.
The Grand Escape: The greatest prison breakout of the 20th Century by Neal Bascomb
Captured. Probably one of the most dreaded words or events that could befall a World War I soldier or pilot. After all, it meant time away from the war effort, time away from family and the ability to communicate regularly with them, time away from life in general. The waiting and wondering and the petty and overt cruelties suffered by the Allied captured men by the Germans day in and day out, took its toll on the most hardened souls. This book describes what life was like for the thousands who were kept behind enemy lines, but focuses on a few that were kept at a place called Holzminden. This camp was where many of the Allied pilots were housed, and most of them had already tried to escape from other camps. One made it as far as what he thought was neutral Netherlands, only to realize that there was a German town with the same name, just before the border. Still amazing attempts were made to tunnel under the fences and get to freedom.
Recommended 7th Grade and up.
White Rose by Kip Wilson
**At first, they didn’t realize just how horrible things would become. While their father had a feeling and voiced his disapproval of Hitler, Hans, and Sophie were not so sure. However, soon they began to see how things were falling apart, and how they could not sit by and watch German soldiers killed, Jewish people killed, innocent civilians killed. This is the story of two siblings and a few of their friends who worked to defy the Nazis during World War II. This fictional account is based on real letters, pamphlets and information gathered from the time of these events. Hans and Sophie Scholl were real people trying to make a difference in a world that seemed to have gone insane.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.**
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
The war sort of came to an end, when both the Confederates and the Union decided it was more important to fight the UNdead (or shamblers they are popularly called) than each other. Of course, the country is still in a state of chaos and disorder, which means it is just right for new groups of politicians to rise. No longer are the Democrats or Republicans in power, but rather the Survivalists and the Egalitarians. All this seems to be too lofty for Jane – she just wants to get back to her home, Rose Hill, where her mother and all her Aunties live. But Jane, along with all the other able bodied young Negros, have been sent to combat schools. It is believed that by training young black children in the art of fighting the shamblers, the whites will then be protected.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
famous by Jilly Gagnon
When Rachel snaps a quick picture of Kyle, a boy she's been crushing on for way too long, and sends it to her best friend Mo, she has no idea how much her life is about to change. Kyle has no idea why so many girls are suddenly coming up to him at work asking for "fries with that!" and then running away laughing, after taking a picture! But as soon as work ends, he figures out that Rachel took a picture of him working and it has gone viral! Both Kyle and Rachel discover things about themselves as they take the web by storm!
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Love, Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
Maya is looking forward to college as a place to dream big and follow her dreams – as in becoming a film maker. Ever since her father put a camcorder in her hands, she has been hooked. But the problem is, her parents see it as only as a hobby, not a career. With the school year winding down, and her parents clueless as to the fact that she wants to go to New York to study film, not stay in the Chicago area and be close to them, she has her work cut out for her.
To add to the complication of her life, a boy that she’s been crushing on for what seems like a long time, suddenly is paying attention to her. In fact, over their Spring Break vacation, they get super close. Or at least Maya thinks they are. But in the back of her mind, she knows he has a serious girlfriend, or at least they used to be serious. Maya isn’t sure about a lot of things anymore.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Race Against Time by Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace
When the sharecroppers got together to discuss how to unionize, they knew they were doing something dangerous. After all, black people in the United States didn’t just decide they wanted to get a fair shake of things. After all, historically speaking, why would they think that was even possible? And in 1919, especially in the South, there was no way they were going to get fair prices for the cotton they had spent months growing and cultivating, unless they worked together. Even as they headed into the meeting at the church, they were nervous. Nervous enough to hire guards to be on the look out. But what happened was beyond their worst imaginings.
A white mob of law enforcement as well as other members of the town of Elaine, Arkansas began shooting into the church and ran off the people in it – including women and children. Many fled for their lives into the surrounding woods and fields and many more were gunned down as they tried to run. It is estimated around 250 blacks were killed over that night and the next few days.
Twelve black men were arrested and charged with murder. Most were tortured to get them to falsely confess. All were sentences to death. Enter Scipio Africanus Jones, a man who had been born into slavery and through perseverance and determination, became a self taught lawyer.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Hi!
I've been doing these podcasts for a few years now, and I'd love to know who is listening to them, and if I have any teachers that are using them with their students.
Please feel free to email me at tasquires66@gmail.com or if you'd like - you can tweet me @tasquires - either way, I'd love to know who my audience is out there.
Also, if you are enjoying these podcasts, please rate them on the app you use to listen to them.
I'll be back with more episodes after my Winter Break, so look for the next one to air on January 10th.
Until then, I hope you have some great books you are reading!
Tasha
The Night She Disappeared By April Henry
She wasn’t supposed to even be working that night, the night she disappeared. Kayla is a popular girl in high school, friends with everyone, but one night when she goes out to deliver pizzas, she doesn’t return. Her car is found with her purse, keys still in the ignition and Gabie, the girl who was supposed to be working that night, and Drew, Kayla’s coworker the night she disappeared are left with too many unanswered questions. What has happened to Kayla?
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Odette’s SecretsBy Maryann MacDonald
She doesn’t understand at first, why she must keep certain things a secret. Growing up in Paris with a loving mother and father, Odette’s life is wonderful. She gets to stay after school with her godmother and father, who dote on her endlessly. However, even as Odette’s life seems perfect, the outside world isn’t. Odette begins to have to keep secrets, because she is a Jew and if it comes out, it could mean the end of her life.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Starfish by Lisa Fipps
Ellie has been haunted by a nickname ever since she was five years old - when her older sister gave her the name of Splash. And it wasn't meant in a kind way. Ellie was a big kid, and her sister was referring to her size. It has followed her in school and at home, and while her mom tries ever diet under the sun to get Ellie to lose weight, the kids at school have no problem making jokes about her weight. When her best friend moves away just before 6th grade starts, it seems as if her life just can't get any worse. Who will be there to support her when she's down. What Ellie doesn't know is that change is on the way.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
ScytheBy Neal Shusterman
In the future, humanity has solved all of its problems. Even death doesn’t happen anymore. Still, the earth does have a certain limit on how many humans it can sustain. Hence, the reason for gleanings. A whole society of Scythes has emerged with their sole purpose of killing or gleaning those who have been deemed necessary to remove for the sake of the population. Citra and Rowan have been chosen to become Scythe apprentices, yet neither one is sure at all they want the job.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly
**You know the story of Cinderella, but what happened to her stepsisters after she went off to marry the Prince? After both of the girls cut off part of their feet to try to fit into the glass slipper, the village shunned them after their treatment of Ella became known. Isabelle believes if she had only been pretty, like Ella, everything would be different. But would it, and is that truly what is in her heart?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
No Summit out of SightBy Jordan Romero
Who would have thought that a mural that Jordan saw every day going to and from recess would be so defining in his young life? At the age of 9, Jordan sees a mural showing the highest mountain peaks on each continent and gets it in his mind that he will climb them all. And he sets out to do just that.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian Football TeamBy Steve Sheinkin
**Jim Thorpe began his life in Oklahoma living with his father and his mother, his father’s third wife. Of Potawatomi and Sac and Fox ancestry, Thorpe never was one to like school. In fact, when his parents decided he should attend an Indian school, he ran away from it at least three times. It was 23 miles from his home. He simply ran back home! However, when his father finally felt he could do nothing with him, he sent him off to the most infamous of Indian schools of the time, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, located all the way across the country to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Cracking the Bell by Geoff Herbach
Football is what has kept him sane for years now, and without it, Isaiah can’t see how he will be able to focus and function. He has become such a good player that he is being recruited by Cornell, but he hasn’t told his parents yet. And that is because of what happened to his sister years ago, and why Isaiah needs football.
All that changes though, when he gets hit, bad. So bad, that he hears witches screaming in his head and he doesn’t even remember getting up and going home that night. It scares him though. Because is this game, and it is a game after all, worth everything?
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From by Jennifer de Leon
Liliana is floored when she is called to the office of her high school at the beginning of her sophomore year and finds out she has been accepted into the METCO program. The only problem is that Liliana has no idea what the METCO program is. So she goes to talk to her guidance counselor, who, it just so happens is a graduate of the METCO program. Liliana is shocked to discover that her parents signed her up for this opportunity when she was young and her name has final come up. The METCO program takes kids from the urban areas of Boston and puts them into schools in the surrounding suburbs. The white surrounding suburbs. Liliana, a proud Latina, isn’t sure she wants this “opportunity.”
But things are messed up at home. Her father has gone missing. Although, it soon becomes apparent that her mom knows where her dad is, but doesn’t want to share that information with Liliana and her younger twin brothers. Her mom is STRESSED out, understandably so, but Liliana has no idea how to help out since she doesn’t know what is really going on.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Who Killed Christopher Goodmanby Allan Wolf
He was a newer kid in town, but even though he was different, it was different in a way everyone liked . Everyone thought Christopher Goodman was a cool guy, because he was just so nice and helpful to everyone, all the time. Some of the teenagers knew him better than others, and some didn’t know him at all. Still, when he’s killed the night of the local festival, everyone takes a moment to think of what could have been.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Words We Don’t Say by K.J. Reilly
**Joel has it all figured out. For example, he’s figured out that the school could actually save money by buying all the juniors and seniors cars and it could be less than the annual transportation budget. Or maybe motorcycles if the cars turn out to be too expensive. He also knows how to really let people know how he feels by writing text messages to them and then, just not sending them. Yup, he has his whole life figured out, for sure. Or maybe not. Most assuredly not. In fact, Joel is pretty messed up.
Recommended for grades 8 and up. There are copious amounts of swear words in this book, all, in this reviewers opinion, used completely authentically. However, if that is something that concerns you, you have been told!
No swear words are in this podcast however, but the word Bleeping has been substituted for one.**
Blended by Sharon Draper
It has been a while since her parents got divorced, but it doesn’t mean that things are easier now for Isabella (as her dad calls her) or Izzy (as her mom calls her.) See, they can’t even agree on what to call their own child! Every week, Izzy finds herself in a new home – either living with her dad or her mom. It is hard to feel like she truly belongs anywhere. And now that she’s in 6th grade, she is realizing there are some things harder than just knowing whose week it is, but how does she, a child of a white mother and a black father, fit in to the world around her.
Life just keeps seeming to get harder and more complex for Izzy. She plays piano and has a huge recital coming up that she is both excited for and a bit stressed out about and on top of that, something really horrible happens at school that makes her begin to wonder if she knows people at all or what they stand for. What does she believe and stand for? And her parents can’t seem to agree on anything, big or small and it is all becoming way too much for her to handle – why can’t they see that?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
This is Our Story by Ashely Elston
When she heard the news, it took her breath away. She was just getting to know Grant, and now, suddenly, he’s dead. Shot by one of his best friends on a hunting trip. But who did it and why? Kate, and everyone else, can’t wrap their heads around the fact that one of the most popular boys in their small community has died and no one is saying who pulled the trigger.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
UnwindBy Neal Shusterman
What do Conner, Risa, and Lev all have in common? They are all considered unwinds. What exactly is an unwind? An unwind is a kid between the ages of 13 and 18 who has been deemed by their parents to be unfit to go on in their current state, or who has pledged their life as a tribute for their religion. Basically, they will be taken away, and their body parts harvested. What would you do if you were to be unwound? Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Midnight Without a Moon by Linda Williams JacksonThat summer was a hot one, just like all the others in Mississippi. Yet Rose Lee was used to the heat, even if she never got USED to it. It just was. But that July, she and her brother Fred Lee got bad news, news that they should have seen coming but didn’t. Their mother, who had married a man to take care of his younger children, was moving to Chicago, without them. Not that they had seen their mother much since she’d married Mr. Pete, but still, now she was moving to Chicago, without them, and didn’t seem to have any issues with it. Of course, she’d already left them with her parents, Papa and Ma Pearl, about seven years ago, so why should she start acting like a mother now? Still Rose is terribly hurt by the fact that her mother is showing she obviously doesn’t care about either her or Fred.
And after that big hit, they just keep coming. The summer turns out to be one shock after another, and all of them are unpleasant and show how different some of her own family feel about events happening in and around Mississippi. When horror strikes close to home, Rose feels like her connection to Mississippi and home is slipping away.
Recommended for grades 7 and up due to authentic use of language.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
Race, in America, is a complicated and divisive subject. How can we talk about it, if we don’t exactly know how it all came about, and where so many of the ideas we still believe today actually had their origins? When we look back at the history of enslaved people in our country, how is it that so many beliefs that were started hundreds of years ago to justify this horrific economic machine are still around, over 150 years after the abolition of the official practice?
Hopefully, you’ve heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, but what about W.E.B. Du Bois and Angela Davis? And did you know that the guy who played a big part in the Salem Witch Trials, also played a huge role in shaping how people who lived in the colonies viewed people who were black and the ideas about enslaving people? My guess is you didn’t, and neither did I – at least about Cotton Mather – the Salem Witch guy. Even the movies you might have grown up with helped to reinforce many of the ideas that are centuries old, and still have tremendous power to this very day.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Skinny by Donna Cooner
You know that voice? The one that tells you you’ll never get that part in the play, or get a spot on the team, or that boyfriend you want? Well, meet Skinny. Skinny is “that voice” for Ever. Ever is overweight and she is constantly reminded of that fact by the voice she has named Skinny. The voice that tells her no one likes her because of her weight and no one ever will. The question is, is Skinny right?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Splinter By Sasha Dawn
For ten years, Sami has been haunted by the last memory she has of her mother. She said she would see Sami on Wednesday, but her mother never came back. Instead, Sami was found by herself, scared. But she doesn’t even recall that. All she knows is that her father is under suspicion for her disappearance. In all the years though, Sami has believed her father had nothing to do with any foul play against her mother – even though they were divorced.Now, however, Sami’s mother’s cold case file has taken a new turn.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Across the UniverseBy Beth Revis
Knowing that you will live your entire life on board a spaceship in route to a new planet, a planet you will never see is a strange feeling. Knowing you will be in charge of the entire spaceship soon can’t be easy either. Yet that is the position Elder finds himself in, and when the bodies of people who aren’t supposed to wake up until they land on the new planet start being unfrozen, the spaceship has never seemed so dangerous.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The Tragedy Paper By Elizabeth Laban
What makes something tragic? Is it different for everyone? Tim has never viewed his life as tragic, per se, however, as he heads out to begin the last semester of his senior year of high school at a new boarding school, he has to come face to face with the idea of tragedy. First, because it is a major school assignment to write a tragedy paper for his English class. And second, because he thinks he’s fallen in love for the first time, and the girl of his focus already has a boyfriend.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
All American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney
Allie has moved around, a lot. Her dad has been in search of the perfect professor teaching position and it looks like he has finally found it - just outside of Atlanta, GA. Allie is hopeful her family can finally put down some roots. But that might mean living in a place long enough for people to find out she's Muslim. She isn't sure how she feels about that, since she herself, doesn't really feel Muslim. After a disturbing incident involving her father that Allie witnesses, she decides to take matters into her own hands, and learn more about what it means to be Muslim, at least for her!
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
What I Carry by Jennifer Longo
Muiriel was named after the hospital she was abandoned at. To be precise, the John Muir Medical Center in California. And since she was a girl, well, they tried to keep it close. And when her social worker, Joellen, gave her a book about her namesake for her 8th birthday, it, in many ways changed the direction of her life. If she had any say in it, that was. Because John Muir was a famous naturalist, who spent most of his life outdoors and trying to protect the wilderness we have today - places like Yosemite. Still, to a little kid of 8, probably not the best gift, or so she thought at the time.
Now Muir is about to embark on her last placement in foster care, because she is 17 and will be aged out of the system when she turns 18. And then she will truly be on her own. But her rules have been carefully in-place for herself for many years, and she believes she will survive this placement as well as she has the others. Don't make any friends or connections, don't cause trouble and always be ready to leave.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Caster by Elsie Chapman
Aza is struggling - with the death of her older sister Shire, with the failing fortunes of her parents' tea shop and most of all with her own full magic abilities and how best to use them to help her family, or not use them! But now the gang lord that runs their sector of Lotusland is calling in a payment, and Aza is trying to shield her parents from it, all because of lies she's told to keep them from worrying, but life is getting to complicated and her lies are beginning to multiply. When she stumbles upon a tournament for full magic casters, like herself, she thinks it just might be the answer she's been looking for. Or is it?
Recommended for grades 8th grade and up.
The Rules for DisappearingBy Ashley Elston
After having moved six previous times, Meg decides she’s going to come up with a Plan. That “Plan” will include figuring out exactly why her family is in the Witness Protection program. She decides she has to figure out a way to make it all stop. The “Plan” also involves NOT getting involved or close with anyone in their new town. With all this on her mind, she doesn’t quite know how to react when Ethan, a cute local boy, seems to want to be friends, and maybe more, with her. When he starts to ask questions that hit a little too close to home though, she can’t decide if she can trust him with her secrets or if it will risk his life if he knows too much.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
A lot can happen on the way home from school. Just ask any of the kids that traverse the 10 blocks around their school – from the “Low Cuts” due to their hair styles to Fatima Moss – who records everything to Bryson Wills – who actually got to stay home from school the next day because of something that happened on the way home from school.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone
Have you ever been embarrassed? Like so embarrassed that you had trouble talking? Olivia has a moment like that when she's being yelled at by her principal, all because she is wearing a tank top and won't put her sweatshirt on. But she has a reason for not putting her sweatshirt on, a very good reason.
Molly witnesses Olivia's moment and she knows WHY Olivia won't put her sweatshirt on. And pretty soon, she decides to point out the inequities in the current dress code at her middle school. It is a dress code that seems to only go after the girls, and the boys don't have to deal with it. Is that fair? Nope, not in Molly's eyes. So Molly begins a podcast to expose the injustice she and others see, with their dress code.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Unbrokenby Laura Hillenbrand
**He really was a troublemaker. If there ever was a kid that was destined for juvenile hall, it was Louis Zamperini. If it wasn’t nailed down, he had no problem stealing it and even if it WAS nailed down, he’d bring a hammer and pry the nail out! His mother despaired of him ever amounting to anything. So how did he go from possible juvenile delinquent to an almost Olympic winner turned wartime captive? This is a gripping tale of what war time is really like. Not only does Louie’s plane crash in the Pacific Ocean where he undergoes extreme thirst and hunger, but he and a friend are captured by the Japanese and endure unimaginable horrors in their prisoner of war camps.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.**
Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights By Steve Sheinkin
During WWII, the navy as well as all the armed forces were segregated. Black sailors were allowed to enlist, however, they couldn’t serve on ships other than as cooks and attendants of that sort. So any who were in the Navy ended up doing menial labor jobs. However, there was another job that blacks were put to work doing at Port Chicago in California. This involved loading the ammunition aboard the naval ships. Only black sailors were given this task, with white officers supervising them. No training in how to handle these explosives was given to the sailors. It seemed an explosion was only a matter of time...and it was.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Hi Everyone,
No podcast booktalk this week, but just a quick little announcement from me.
If you would ever like me to do a podcast for a specific book, please send me an email at tasquires66@gmail.com or if you could let me know how you use and hopefully enjoy these podcasts, I would be most appreciative.
Have a wonderful spring!
Tasha Squires
Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer
Rob and Meagan both have reasons to hate going to school. Rob's is because of something his father did, and Meagan, because of something she did. Neither wants to have a partner for their math project, and as a result, they end up being stuck together. At first it is pretty rocky going, but soon they start to realize they have both misunderstood each other, and perhaps many others too. Can they find some common ground, and maybe help others in the process?
That's Not What Happened by Kody Keplinger
As the third year anniversary of her school's mass shooting comes and goes, Lee is forced to relive the horror of that day when her best friend was shot and killed in the same bathroom stall with her. But now she's hearing rumors that her friend Sarah's parents are going to be putting out a book about her death. And Lee knows the story of how Sarah died took on a life of its own after the shooting. And in that story is a lie. A lie that was repeated so often, it hurt one of the other survivors who was in the bathroom with them. Lee is faced with the dilemma. Is it sometimes just too late to speak up?
Recommended for 8th grades and up due to content.
P.S. Notice anything interesting about the date of this release? Honestly, it just worked out that way! You'll have to read the book to get it! :)
K-Pop Confidential by Stephan Lee
Candace can sing - like really sing! But the only people who know that are her two best friends because Candace's parents (mostly her mom) don't seem to approve of her singing. They would rather she be in orchestra playing a string instrument, like the viola. So when a large South Korean company decides to hold tryouts for a new K-Pop Idol girl group, she lets her two friends convince her to try out. After all, what are the chances she'll get picked? Pretty good, it turns out! But at that point, Candace has no idea what kind of sacrifices she'll have to make if she wants to be an Idol!
Recommended for grades 7 and up and all K- Pop fans!
Time Bomb by Joelle Charbonneau
Six students all walk into a high school, over a week before school is going to start for the year. Each one brings with them a backpack filled with important pieces that make up who they are. Or who they think they are.
Yet just after noon, the school is rocked by an explosion that shatters parts of the school. Diana, Frankie, Tad, Cas, Z and Rashid are all trapped in different parts of the school as explosion after explosion rips through their high school. Now, for some of them, their bags mean everything, and for others it will expose exactly who they are. As the students begin to pair up to help each other, it becomes known that one of them might be responsible for all the death and destruction. The question is who, and will the others be able to escape with their lives?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The Girl in the White Van by April Henry
Savannah is pretty sure she and her mom are going to be moving again. Because, once AGAIN, the man of her mom's dreams hasn't turned out to be the man of her dreams. And for Savannah, this move is going to be hard, because she likes it here. She is taking Kung Fu classes and loves it. So one night when she gets into a fight with her mom's boyfriend, Tim, she worries it is all about to come crashing down. Little does she know, her problems are just beginning.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Invisible Emmie by Terri Libenson
Emmie feels like now one sees her and no one hears her. Mostly because, she doesn't like to talk to really anyone outside of her family and her best friend Brianna. Being in 7th grade can be super hard for someone who is invisible. Or at least feels invisible. But one day at lunch Emmie drops something that gets found by someone who then proceeds to tell the whole school! Suddenly, Emmie isn't invisible anymore and she's not sure how to take it!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Suggested Reading by Dave Connis
Clara is excited for the start of the school year – her last year – at Lupton Academy or LA as everyone calls it. She thinks it will be a great year and is excited for it to get started. But one quick glance at a computer screen changes everything when she reads an email meant only for the staff. Clara reads a confidential email listing 50 books that are not to be used in the curriculum of any classes and will not be allowed on the shelves of the school library. A library that Clara volunteers in and loves. When she sees the list of books, she is shocked that she has read many of the books. What could possibly be wrong with the books?
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Big Bad IroncladBy Nathan Hale
Many of us know a lot about the Civil War, or at least some of the battles that were fought, some of the main players, and what it was about. But how many of us know names like Will Cushing, John Ericsson, Gideon Welles (A.K.A. Father Neptune) or Gustavus Fox? If you are like me, I didn't... until I read this book. The war was also on the seas!
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Devils Within By S. F. Henson
He killed his father. There is no disputing that as a fact. However, being 14 at the time his lawyer was able to get him tried as a juvenile, even though there were others who wanted him tried as an adult. After all, his father was an upstanding member of the community. Or was he? And just what kind of community was it? Turns out, Nate’s dad was the leader of a white supremacy compound called The Fort in a small town in Kentucky. The people from the town and The Fort revered Nate’s dad and they didn’t take too kindly that he was killed – murdered in their eyes. Even if he was possibly about to kill Nate. Now Nate has to try to move on with his life, knowing that if the people from The Fort ever find him, they will kill him.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Goodbye, Rebel Blue By Shelley Coriell
It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary - since Rebel got detention ALL THE TIME. However, to see Kennedy there, now that was a shock. Kennedy, the perfect high school girl, who everyone loved. So when their assignment is to come up with a bucket list of all the things they want to do before they die, Rebel thinks it is a silly, dumb requirement, just to pass the time. But Kennedy takes it seriously, and so does Rebel, when Kennedy dies in a car crash that same night.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in SalemBy Rosalyn Schanzer
So what really happened in Salem, MA during the witch trials in 1692? Were there just tons of witches running around Salem and they were all found out? Did any innocent people get falsely accused? How were they found guilty? Get the answers to these questions and more in this book.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Revenge of the WhaleBy Nathaniel Philbrick
Amazing true story of a whaling ship that was attacked in 1820 by a whale after the sailors killed some other whales. The crew of 21 men went into three smaller boats and were adrift for over three months. 8 sailors survived the ordeal, when they were found off the coast of South America.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Lincoln’s Grave Robbersby Steve Sheinkin
Who would have thought counterfeiters would want Lincoln’s body? His dead body that is. What would they stand to gain by robbing Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, IL in 1876? Turns out, a lot. A lot of money, real and fake. Did you know that during the Civil War, half of all money in circulation was fake? Some people were really good at making counterfeit money, and others not so good. So the government, realizing if people couldn’t trust the money in their pockets, there would be no economy, created the Secret Service. Yes, the Secret Service was first created to root out counterfeiters, or coney men, as they were known.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully FamousBy Georgia Bragg
So, seriously, you read this book and you’ll never wish to go back in time again. Or at least go back into a time where there were no antibiotics, or how about just plain doctors who washed their hands! This book looks at nineteen deaths of famous folks and really more gory details about their ends than you probably ever wanted to know.
Within ReachBy Mark Pfetzer
So at what age would you climb Mt. Everest? How about fifteen years old? This is exactly what Mark Pfetzer did. He attempted to climb Everest during one of the deadliest seasons to date on the giant mountain. Learn how he struggled to stay alive at the top of the world.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World By Mary Losure
It was just to stop their parents from teasing them, really. Frances who was 9 and Elsie, who was 15 were cousins, living in the same house while Frances’ father was off fighting in World War I. Frances saw fairies and little men out behind the cottage, and Elsie said she saw them too. And so one day, Elsie asked to borrow her father’s camera to try to take some pictures of the fairies. Thus began a hoax that lasted for decades.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Wild BoyBy Mary Losure
What would it be like to be completely by yourself. Surviving by your wits alone, in the cold, rain, snow, heat? No one to talk to, no one to help you? For one boy in the late 1700s, this was his reality. In a small village in France, in 1798, a boy was captured, a wild boy. He appeared to be around the age of 9 or 10, and he seemed totally wild. This is his story.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H.L.HunleyBy Sally M. Walker
**Did you know that there were submarines used in the Civil War? In 1864 the Hunley was the first submarine to ever sink an enemy ship. However, it also didn’t return to port after this feat. The fate of the Hunley was a mystery until 1995. This is the incredible story of that submarine and the stories it told over a hundred years later.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
Cruel BeautyBy Rosamund Hodge
She was raised to be the hope for her kingdom and the revenge of her mother. All that was required would be her death. Nyx has known since she was nine her life was not her own. Her kingdom of Arcadia has been cursed for over nine hundred years and it is up to her to be the one to break that curse. To do so, she only has to marry a monster and then find a way to kill him.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg By Tanya Anderson
Tillie Pierce was a teen when the Battle of Gettysburg began to erupt in her small town. Tillie’s family thought she would be safer outside of town, at the farm of a neighbor’s parents, away from where they thought the fighting would happen. Instead, Tillie and the neighbor’s family found their farm in the midst of horrific shelling and bullets whizzing close by. At one point, Tillie and the others found themselves running through a field as shells exploded around them! What Tillie probably remembered the most was the aftermath of the battle. The sheer amount of dead was almost beyond comprehension.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
A Soldier’s Heart By Gary Paulsen
Charley Goddard was in the First Minnesota Volunteers in 1861. War sounded like a good thing to him, after all, everyone was joining up, so why not. He joins, even though his is too young and goes on to fight in major battles during the Civil War.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
Riot By Walter Dean Myers
When the street erupt in violence targeting the rich as well as blacks, Claire, a biracial girl living in New York with her parents, suddenly finds her world turned upside down. After all, what do you do when people who were your friend one day, turn on you the next, simply because of the color of your skin. Set against the turbulent times of the Civil War, Claire must find a way to keep her values intact in a quickly changing world.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Horrors of Andersonville: Life and Death Inside a Civil War PrisonBy Catherine Gourley
With the Confederacy barely able to feed their own soldiers, it was little wonder the captured Union soldiers didn’t fare well. Thousands of soldiers starved to death or died of disease in the miserable conditions that were the large Confederate prison Andersonville.
Chasing Lincoln’s Killer By James Swanson
**What made John Wilkes Booth want to kill President Abraham Lincoln? Was he acting alone, or did he have accomplices? Follow this incredible true account of the hunt for Lincoln’s killer as well as finding out more about the larger plot to disrupt the entire government in this fascinating, page turning book.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
BonechillerBy Graham McNamee
Danny thinks that he and his father will never stop running, running from the memories of his dead mother. Both of them miss her horribly, and Danny’s dad has taken them far away into the frozen land of Canada, almost to the end of the wilderness. Just as Danny is beginning to feel he has a place in this land of misfits, something begins to stalk them in the dark. Can he find a way out before he too disappears...forever?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Very Bad Things By Susan McBride
Things were certainly looking up for Katie her senior year at the private boarding school, Whitney. Her boyfriend is gorgeous, sweet and a star hockey player for the school. She has a wonderful best friend, Tessa, and other than the creepy nightmares that started a few months ago, things are coming up roses! At least until her boyfriend looks like he has cheated on her with a girl who ends up dead.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Blood Wounds By Susan Beth Pfeffer
Willa knows she should feel lucky. She has a mother and step-father who love her – two step-sisters who she gets along with, and well, a pretty normal life. Except that her step-sisters’ mother has a ton of money and her daughters get the benefit of that, while Willa doesn’t seem to see any of it. Still, things are good right? One afternoon when she gets home from school there are four messages from her mom’s best friend, Faye, looking for Willa’s mom. The messages mention a missing twin and a person named Budge. At first, Willa isn’t too concerned but when police show up at her door she begins to think she should be.
For a more detailed review click here.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
RevolverBy Marcus Sedgwick
**Alone with his dead father’s body, Sig is struggling to comprehend how his life has suddenly changed and what it can mean. He isn’t expecting the bear of a man who appears at his cabin door demanding information from him regarding gold that he says is owed to him from 10 years before. In the frozen wilderness, Sig must make decisions that will impact the rest of his life and perhaps the lives of others.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.**
No Such PersonBy Caroline B. Cooney
Miranda both loves and admires her older sister, Lander. However, they have never been close. Miranda is 7 years younger than Lander, and Lander seems to operate in her own little world. However, one day at their summer cottage, both girls witness something. Miranda thinks she has witnessed an attempted murder, whereas Lander tells her to stop exaggerating. But it turns out Miranda isn’t, and Lander realizes too late her mistake in not believing her sister.
If you would like a more detailed review click here.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
23 MinutesBy Vivian Vande Velde
It all started because she wanted to get out of the rain. Who could have predicted that the bank she ducked into would be the scene of a robbery and that the only person in it that was nice to her would be shot and killed in front of her eyes. Just bad luck right? But she might be the only person in the world who can change the past, or at least try.
Recommended for mature 6th graders and up.
My Life Before Me By Norah McClintock
All she had to go on was a newspaper clipping of a photograph taken over fifteen years before. Katie is an orphan and the only thing that she has in her life that might lead her to a good story, is this one old clipping. What she doesn’t realize is that she might be stirring up more than a good story. She might be uncovering a long ago murder.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The Special Ones By E.M. Bailey
It is almost time for another renewal, and Esther is apprehensive. She knows that Harry will do a good job, but it can be so stressful when a new “special one” comes to the farm. If only she could help Harry, with well, anything! But she can’t. As Esther, she isn’t even allowed to leave the farm house. She must pretend that everything is fine. Because if she doesn’t, he won’t be happy. And if he isn’t happy with everything she says and does, she might find herself being renewed.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
House Arrest By K. A. Holt
He was only trying to help his brother. But it all went wrong, really fast. Timothy’s younger brother Levi was born with a bad trachea. As a result, he needs a LOT of medical help. In an attempt to make things better, Timothy steals a wallet and uses one of the credit cards to purchase medical supplies for his brother. He is caught. His sentence is to be on house arrest for one full year.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe by Ally Condie
Poe has vengeance in her heart and at times it seems her very blood. The person she loved most in the world was killed, murdered, by the raiders. Ever since that moment two years ago, Poe has worked hard to make it impossible for the raiders to ever board another Outpost dredge. She has designed armor for the outside of the last dredge that moves and makes it impossible for any of the raiders to make it onboard the ship, alive. She is responsible for a lot of deaths.
But now the leader of the Outpost, the Admiral, has just told Poe she will be going on the next voyage. He doesn’t say why she will be going this time, only that she must go. Poe knows something must be up, but she has no idea what.
Throat By R.A. Nelson
A curse, that is what is was…her epilepsy. Emma is tormented by the fact she can’t do things others can do, like drive a car, because she has epilepsy. What she doesn’t realize though, is that there are creatures out in the world who prey on unsuspecting people. And Emma is about to become one of those people.
24 Hours in Nowhere by Dusti Bowling
Gus is about to get a mouthful of cholla, a horrible spiny cactus that will hook into you and you need pliers to pull it out! Yeah, because of Bo, the resident bully and his lackeys. Gus’ face is getting closer and closer to the nasty stuff when Rossi comes to Gus’ rescue – sort of. Bo is mad because Rossi, a girl, beat him AGAIN in the motor cross bike race. And the next day is the big race, the one that the winner will get a new motorbike and go to camp to learn more about racing bikes. So, Rossi showing up doesn’t really help Gus that much. Until Bo demands Rossi’s bike to let Gus go free, which means that Bo will for sure win the race and the prize. When Rossi agrees to it, Gus can’t believe it. Bo doesn’t deserve to win after all, and he’s such a jerk.
Now Gus is determined to get the bike back for Rossi in the next 24 hours.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
Guest by Mary Downing Hahn
Growing up in Mirkwood with the perfect babby brother can be a pain. At least that is what Mollie thinks. Yeah, he never cries, and he’s sweet and cute as a button, but sometimes a girl just gets tired of all the attention given to the little one. One day when she is out weeding the garden, watching her little brother Thomas, she just wishes that he hadn’t even been born. After all, there is always so much work, and he certainly can’t help with any of it. Still, at least he is a good babby. No one can ever say he is a good and charming child though, because if they do, the Kinde Folke might come and take him and give them a horrible changeling in his place. Mollie makes a terrible mistake and the Kinde Folke put a changling in her brother's place. It seems the only one who can fix this horrible situation is Mollie herself.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Z for ZachariahBy Robert O’Brien
After a year she had given up hope; hope of ever seeing another person again. Till the day she noticed smoke far out on the dead plain and watched it get closer and closer. At first it seemed wonderful, but then again, maybe she was just too anxious to know she wasn’t the only person left alive on earth.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
This Side of Home by Renee Watson
Maya and Nicki are named after two of their mother's favorite poets. And their father is a community activist, always helping somewhere and someone, many of them Maya and Nicki's friends. Maya has always loved her neighborhood, but over the last four or so years, there have been changes. Many that Nicki seems to embrace, but ones that have Maya concerned. After all, how does one feel when the white people who once fled an area, now decide it is okay to start putting up speciality shops and landlords who decide they don't want to rent anymore, but would rather sell a home that Maya's best friend Essence has lived in her whole life - just across the street?
And how is Maya supposed to feel when Nicki befriends the new white family that moves into Essences' old home? But when Maya begins talking with Tony, a senior in her class is is part of that white family across the street, her conflicted feelings only grow as she realizes she really likes him.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
The DogsBy Allan Stratton
A new house, a new town, a new school. Cameron has done it all before, multiple times. In fact, he’s getting so tired of the same old story, that he’s beginning to question whether his mom is making things up. Maybe his dad wasn’t quite as bad as she remembers. Maybe if Cameron did contact him, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. After all, he hasn’t talked to him or seen him in years. The latest move has put Cameron and his mom in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. And not only that, but the house they move into is strange. When Cameron starts seeing a boy, he wonders if something is going on with him.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
BruiserBy Neal Shusterman
What if you didn't have to feel pain, any pain? No physical, no emotional pain, ever. The only problem is that you don't just get rid of it; you transfer it to another person. Would you still do it, or would you own your pain? Brewster, or Bruiser as most of his classmates know him, has tried to remain aloof from everyone except his younger brother, Cody. However, when a brother and sister enter his life, all that he knows and tries not to know changes.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Among the Hidden By Margaret Peterson Haddix
**For years, Luke always thought that when he got a little bit older, he would be able to do everything that his older brothers could. But then the day arrives when Luke is six, and he thinks old enough to go to school. After all that is when his brothers’ went. Only he learns that he is special, so special that he can never be seen outside of the family; because there is a law against Luke.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
**Have you ever heard of the expression, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished? Well, Justyce is thinking something along those lines while he sits on the ground in handcuffs after trying to prevent his ex- girlfriend from driving home drunk. Even when parents get involved, the police STILL don't want to let him go. Finally, one of his friend's mom's who is a lawyer comes down and is able to get him out of it. All Justyce keeps thinking is what could have happened. What if the officer had gotten a little trigger happy with his gun and killed him? What then?
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
This podcast contains the word "ass."*
Shark GirlBy Kelly Bingham
When Jane goes to the beach with her brother and mother one day before the new school year begins, she never in her wildest imagination thought she’d be losing her right arm to a shark. However, now faced with the painful realization of all she dreamed disappearing, Jane must decide how she wants to go on.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Running Dream By Wendelin Van Draanen
Jessica runs. That is who she is, how she thinks, what she does. On her way back from setting a league record for the 400-meter dash the team’s school bus gets into a crash. Jessica loses part of her right leg. Now Jessica has to decide if she will ever have her dream of running again.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Kissing DoorknobsBy Terry Spencer Hesser
At first it just seemed like she worried a lot. Really a lot. But then she hears that old saying “step on a crack, and break your mother’s back.” And her life changes. She can’t step on a crack, because what if her mother died because of it? And other things happen. She can’t stop praying for people who swear, and needs to count cracks in order, and then she starts to kiss doorknobs.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Waiting to Forget By Sheila Kelly Welch
Waiting can be the hardest part, especially if you are waiting to find out if your younger sister will come out of her coma. T.J. can’t believe that his life has brought him to just such a place, after all the times he and Angela survived living with their mother, and all her crazy boyfriends. To have Angela struggling to survive because of something he did, it is almost too much.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
For a more detailed review please click here.
Struck By Deb Loughead
Claire has a lot to think about. She wants one of the lead roles in the play at school, she wants her mom and dad to officially call it quits, and she would love to finally understand Math! Plus, there is this guy at school, Eric, who she thinks is pretty awesome...if only he'd stop looking at Lucy, another girl at school, long enough to see her! On her way home from the store one day she finds an umbrella, but then she gets struck by lightning! Or so she thinks. Something strange is going on because all of the things she wants seem to be coming true! But does she really want them after all?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Blood Guard by Carter Roy
How would you react to finding out your mom is part of a secret ancient sword wielding society called the Blood Guard sworn to protect a group of “pure” souls around the world, and she conveniently tells you this while you are running for your lives.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Ella EnchantedBy Gail Carson Levine
**What happens when a gift becomes a curse? That is the life Ella leads after a fairy gives her the “gift” of obedience. The only problem is, this means Ella must obey a direct command. And if anyone finds out about this, they can make her life miserable...and they do.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Forgive My FinsBy Tera Lynn Childs
Since deciding to live on land, Lily has been obsessed with Brody, a fantastic swimmer at her high school. Lily is a mermaid, so her obsession with someone who can swim well is understandable. Not only is Lily a mermaid, she is a princess and knows her time is limited before she must go back to the sea. Her plan to win Brody over keeps hitting snags though, as her neighbor Quince thwarts her at every turn.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Dark Side of Nowhere **By Neal Shusterman
Boring....borriiinnnngggg. That is the only way Jason can describe his hometown of Billington. Borning. Nothing ever happened. Then one of his close friends’ diess of a burst appendix, and the school janitor hands him a very cool glove that shoots BBs. And well, aliens are planning on invading earth.**
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
The Size of the Truth by Andrew Smith
**When Sam Abernathy was four years old, James Jenkins threw a ball up in the air so high that everyone playing the neighborhood game of SPUD ran really far – so far that Sam took that one extra step before the ball was caught…and fell down a well. A well that put his little Texas town on the map, and led to T-shirts being sold that all said “Pray for Sam,” and resulted in Sam not speaking for quite some time after the whole incident. So he started school a bit later than usual, but he must have been absorbing a lot, because now that he’s supposed to be in sixth grade, he’s just been skipped ahead to 8th grade.Now, starting middle school is a pretty big deal, but to be starting middle school as an 8th grader is crazy, at least that is how Sam feels.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Jungle of BonesBy Ben Mikaelsen
**After his father died two years ago covering the conflict in Darfur as a photojournalist, Dylan can’t seem to connect with anyone or anything. He is hostile, angry, and just plain unpleasant to be around. One night he lands in jail after joyriding through a field in a stolen car. Enter his dad’s brother, Uncle Todd. Uncle Todd has some crazy idea to go find the Bomber plane Dylan’s grandfather flew in during World War II. For some reason, Uncle Todd thinks he can find the plane in the jungle after over 60 years, and that Dylan will become enlightened by the journey through bug infested foliage!
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
KnuckleheadBy Jon Scieszka (Nonfiction Memoir)
Growing up one of 6 boys was plenty of fun for Jon. But he didn’t realize all those years ago what those fun days would mean when he was older. For example, lots of ideas for stories for children. This book is laugh out loud fun!
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
Three DaysBy Donna Jo Napoli
Jackie loves going on trips with her father around the world on business. When she goes with him on a trip to Italy her fun trip turns into a nightmare when her father dies and Jackie is abducted by people she thought were going to help her.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Between Shades of Gray By Ruta Sepetys
It was a knock at the door and everything changed for Lina’s family. The Soviet secret police came and took Lina, her younger brother Jonas and her mother on an epic journey from the country of Lithuania across the vast area of the Soviet Union. Lina’s life becomes about cold and hunger and danger every step of the way.
Recommended for grade 8 and up.
Dust of Eden By Mariko Nagai
**After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Mina and her family are shocked when they, along with all other people of Japanese ancestry on the West coast, are rounded up, transported in cattle cars and sent to places far away from their homes. They lost everything. Their homes, their businesses, their property. For years, people were forced to live in harsh conditions while the war raged. Mina’s family struggles to stay together, even after her father is taken away as a prisoner.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Soldier X by Don Wulffson
**He never imagined he would be forced to fight at the age of 16. After all, he barely knows how to hold his gun, let alone shoot it. Yet Erik finds himself on the frontlines fighting for his country of Germany at a time when Germany isn’t doing well. He finds out quickly, in order to survive you will do just about anything.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
Bomb: The Race to Build - and steal - the World’s most Dangerous Weapon By Steve Sheinkin
**This all started when it was discovered by a German physicist that a uranium atom could be split. It wasn’t thought possible at the time. That any atom could be split. And when it split, it gave off energy. So what if a bunch of uranium was put in a situation where it was splitting all over the place – that could produce a lot of energy. Energy could equal a bomb. Soon it was a race. The Germans and the rest of the world were engaged in a massive world war. One that if either side got a serious bomb, could change the course of humanity.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
Nazi Hunters By Neal Bascomb
After World War II and the Nuremberg Trials, not ALL the major Nazis were captured and tried. Some escaped justice for a time and some for all time. One major person of interest was Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who was in charge of removing Jews from Germany and ultimately, all of German occupied Europe. This meant he was the one responsible for rounding up the Jews, and transporting them to concentration camps all over Europe where they faced unimaginable horrors trying to survive. Many had no chance of survival, as they were killed immediately.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Left for Deadby Pete Nelson
One night watching the movie Jaws, Hunter asked his dad about the shark attacks mentioned on the men of the Indianapolis and finds out it did happen. Hunter begins researching what happened the night so many men went into the water and why so few came out alive.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Hunt for the Bamboo Rat By Graham Salisbury
Growing up in Honolulu in the late 1930s is a good life for Zenji. The only dark spot on his life is the fact his father was killed in an accident at Pearl Harbor before he was 10. It was hard growing up without a father, but his older brother Henry is always there for him. Zenji has just finished high school and is trying to decide what to do with his life when he gets an unexpected visit from his high school JROTC officer. Colonel Blake says he has a proposition for Zenji. Basically, he will become a spy for the army.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World by Ashely Herring Blake
Ivy has felt like she’s been out of control for some time now. Ever since going into middle school, she feels like she isn’t sure what is up and what is down. All her friends want to talk about are boys, boys, and more boys. The only place she feels like herself is when she’s drawing in her notebook. Ivy is an artist and she pours all her thoughts and feelings into her work. Including the feelings she isn’t sure what to do with, like who she might like. But then the worst happens, a tornado destroys their home and in the chaos, Ivy’s journal is misplaced. Along with all her secrets.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Dragon’s Bait By Vivian Vande Velde
Accused of witchcraft by a jealous neighbor, Alys is left on a hillside as bait for the local “small” dragon causing havoc in nearby towns. Alys has just watched everyone she knew and loved be talked into believing she is a witch. So when the dragon comes, she feels she has nothing to lose.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Eddie’s WarBy Carol Fisher Saller
Eddie is a young boy when talk of a possible war begins. He sees his older brother, Thomas, think about what the coming war means to him and Eddie begins to realize all the fan fair hides some really serious issues. Eddie struggles to understand some complex relationships he didn’t have a grasp of before he got older, and when faced with a potential life altering situation for his friends, it is up to Eddie to decide what he believes and what he is willing to put on the line for those beliefs.
Double IdentityBy Margaret Peterson Haddix
**Lots of kids have overprotective parents, but Bethany’s parents take it to the extreme. As she gets closer and closer to her 13th birthday, her parents get more erratic in their behavior and finally end up leaving her with a woman she’s never met. It seems her parents have been keeping a huge secret...about Bethany herself.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
Out of the DustBy Karen Hesse
Billie Jo’s dad wanted a boy, so he named her after one. But even though Billie Jo tries hard to gain her father’s love and approval, life during the Great Depression keeps getting worse. Living on a farm in the Great Dust Bowl doesn’t make Billie Jo’s life any easier.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
Strong DeafBy Lynn McElfresh
Sometimes what the outside world views as different is the norm for you, yet you can feel like an outsider in your own home. Such is the case for Jade. Jade can hear. Her sister, Marla, can’t. But Marla resents that Jade can hear, not BECAUSE she can hear, but because Marla feels that Jade is less in some ways because she doesn’t understand how strong Marla is when she is surrounded by all deaf people. Marla feels Jade makes the family weak, by not BEING deaf. Both of the girls’ parents are deaf and have been their whole lives, so the outsider in this home is Jade, who is the only person with hearing. The sisters have such different perspectives on the world, can they ever see anything in the same way?
For a more detailed review click here.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
PODBy Stephen Wallenfels
It seemed like a regular day, until the loud piercing noise and then all the lights zapping anyone outside, and cars everywhere. Josh can’t believe it when he sees the papergirl disappear before his very eyes. Meg knows she can’t leave the parking garage where her mom left her, but she is running out of food and water. What will happen if the strange alien PODs never leave?
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
The Way the Light Bends By Cordelia Jensen
**When Linc and Holly were little, it seemed nothing could pull them apart. But, now that they are in high school, it feels like nothing can bring them back together. Linc struggles with school, while Holly excels. Holly has many friends, while Linc has one. Being in the same grade doesn’t help matters out since it is easy to compare the two of them and their mother does that all the time. Holly is adopted, Linc is not. And yet, Linc feels she doesn’t fit with the family. She sees the world in a very different light than her mother does, and it seems no matter what she does, her mother never believes it is enough.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.**
The EnemyBy Charlie Higson
Something horrible has happened. A disease or virus has infected all adults over the age of 16 and turned them into creatures that eat anything, including children. Kids all over England have banned together to survive. However, one group knows they can’t last much longer since the adults are getting more and more forceful. They decide to venture out into the city in the hopes of a better tomorrow.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Coldest Girl in ColdTownBy Holly Black
Waking up after a sundown party in the tub in the bathroom, Tana struggles to recall what happened the night before. But when she opens up the door, she encounters a horrible scene. Vampires have clearly gotten into the party and killed all her friends, except for one, her ex boyfriend, Aidan. But he’s been infected.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.
It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime By Trevor Noah
Growing up in South Africa, Trevor didn’t realize it until he was older, but he was born a crime. His mother was black and his father was white, which made him, illegal. If his mother had been caught, Trevor could have ended up in an orphanage, just for mixed race children. Growing up in this inbetween world was difficult for Trevor and it made it hard for him to find his place in the world.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Wild BirdBy Wendelin Van Draanen
Wren hates her name. Hates that her family moved to a new house, new town, new state. Hates her new school. Hates to make friends. Do you see a pattern here? Then, one morning in the middle of 9th grade, Wren gets a rude awakening. She is taken from her home, driven to the airport and put on a plane with a bodyguard. Then she is dropped in the middle of nowhere (after being blindfolded) to be in what feels like an outdoor prison! Wren can’t believe it when she learns her parents have sent her to this horrible place.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
GlowBy Amy Kathleen Ryan
Imagine being out in space, with no way of rescue. Kieran and Waverly are both teens on board the Emprean, a ship that left earth with the idea of colonizing another planet. A sister ship, the New Horizon, left a year before their ship. However, now for reasons that aren’t being shared with the crew or passengers, that sister ship, appears in the darkness of space and wants to make contact. Quickly, Waverly, a fifteen year old girl and her boyfriend, sixteen year old Kieran realize all they thought about the crew and those in charge are not what they seem.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Other Words for Home by Jasmine WargaJude loves where she lives – by the coast with her mother, father and older brother Issa. The only thing she doesn’t love is the smell of fish some days! She loves looking at the fancy hotels that the tourists come and stay at and dreams of someday staying in one herself, once she’s a famous actress. However, change in their country’s political system is coming, or so other hope, including her older brother Issa. But how can all the things that Jude loves stay the same, with so much unrest in her country? What will happen to all of her dreams?
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
For a more detailed review, please click here.
Three Rivers RisingBy Jame Richards
How can so many lives revolve around a man made dam? Such is the case for Peter and Celestia. They meet at the Fishing and Hunting Club, from different social circles and while they want to be together, it seems they never will be. But something happens to the man made dam that changes their lives as well as many others.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
HiddenBy Helen Frost
When Wren is just eight years old, she is kidnapped when a robber steals her mom’s car and doesn’t know she is in the back seat. As soon as the robber takes the car to his house and goes inside, Wren hides in a boat in the garage. She is able to escape, but not before she meets a little girl her age, named Darra.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Game Changer By Tommy Greenwald
It’s been all over the news - the dangers of football, but some people and kids think the risk is worth the reward. Yet as Teddy Youngblood lies in a coma, friends and family try to piece together what happened on the field that day that lead to Teddy being in such critical condition.
This book almost reads like a novel in verse with its sparse language and multiple perspectives, text messages and website posts. I'll let you decide if you think it is one or not.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Up from the SeaBy Leza Lowtiz
Kai has always struggled with his dual heritage - not all white and not all Japanese. Growing up in Japan with his mother, and grandparents, Kai doesn’t get why his father left when he was younger and went back to America. Now, at 17, he still feels lost. But on March 11, 2011, his entire world is shaken, again.
Recommended for grades 7th and up.
Garvey’s ChoiceBy Nikki Grimes
Garvey is struggling to connect with his father who only seems to want Garvey to do something athletic. But that is his older sister’s area of expertise. Garvey is more into music and reading than running around! It hurts him to hear his dad complain to his mom about him not being the kind of kid he wanted. Garvey finds himself slipping further away from his dad and he isn’t sure how anything he likes will ever find favor with his dad.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
For a more detailed review, click here.
Liv, ForeverBy Amy Talkington
Amazing things are on the horizon for Liv! She’s been accepted to an exclusive boarding school to pursue her passion for art and even though she knows she’ll be an outsider with this elite group of students, she doesn’t care - she’ll make her own way. What she doesn’t expect is to attract the attention of Malcolm Aster, one of the rich popular boys at the school. That attention leads to disastrous consequences.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Anna Dressed in BloodBy Kendare Blake
His job is to kill ghosts, even though they are already dead. Cas and his mother travel all over tracking down spirits that don’t want to go quietly into the night. With the knife his father used to send spirits packing, Cas goes after ghosts that harm humans. And he’s heard about Anna Dressed in Blood and realizes she might be a match for him.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
Acceleration By Graham McNamee
After Duncan isn’t able to save a drowning girl, his life begins to take a tailspin he isn’t sure how to pull out of. When his dead end summer job in the subways Lost and Found center becomes more than he bargained for after finding a psychopath’s journal, all bets are off as to whether he can save anyone, himself included.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.
For a more complete review, click here.
We Were LiarsBy E. Lockhart
**What happened? That is what circles around and around in Cadence’s mind. What happened the summer when she was 15, along with all the other liars? Something that left Cadence in the water, almost drown, and no one will talk about it. What could have possibly happened on the family island that everyone feels the need to hide from her?
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.**
Since You’ve Been Gone By Morgan Matson
What do you do when your best friend disappears…right before what was supposed to be the best summer of your life? Emily goes on a quick vacation with her family and upon her return sends message after message to her friend, Sloane. Only to realize Sloane isn’t answering. Right before she is going to tell her parents that her best has disappeared, Emily receives a letter in the mail from Sloane. It is much like other lists that Sloane has sent her over the last two years they’ve been friends. Emily becomes convinced if she does the things on the list, she’ll figure out what has happened to her friend.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
Jeffery, or Maniac, as the people of Two Mills begin to call him, is an orphan who ran away from his aunt and uncle one day after a school concert. He is looking for a home and seems destined to come close, but not always get there. In Two Mills he discovers some wonderful people, but some very strange rules - at least he thinks so. When Maniac begins to push back on one rule in particular, the whole town begins to sit up and take notice.
Code Name VerityBy Elizabeth Wein
**It was a stupid, rookie mistake. Looking the wrong way for cars before crossing the street. That is how Queenie is taken prisoner by the Gestapo in France during WWII. She must write her story for the SS commander in charge of her interrogation. Give all the information she has a British spy before she is killed. What can she say that will keep her alive a little longer?
*This podcast contains the word "damned."
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.**
AfterBy Amy Efaw
Devon had everything going for her. She was an awesome soccer player, great student, a good friend, more responsible than her own mother. So where did things go wrong? How could she be accused of attempted murder?
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
POPBy Gordon Korman
Moving to a new town is always hard, but it’s even harder when you are a quarterback trying to make a new team that was undefeated the season before. Add to that the current quarterback isn’t happy to see you and his ex-girlfriend keeps hitting on you. But craziest of all, is the older man who show up in the park each day to help Marcus become the best football player he ever imagined he could be. And that is when things get really strange.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Orbiting JupiterBy Gary Schmidt
When Jack sat down with his parents and Mrs. Stroud, from the State of Maine * Department of Health and Human Services, he knew his parents wanted to foster a teenager named Joseph. What he didn’t know was just how much Joseph would impact them all.
Recommended for mature 7th graders and up.
For a more complete review, check here.
In Case You Missed It by Sarah Littman
Sammy has the typical concerns. She's worried about the four AP exams she'll be taking in a few months, along with her driver's license test and the SAT. PLUS, the prom is coming up, and she's desperate for a promposal (the over the top prom proposals that get recorded for the world to see - although after seeing one in the cafeteria she decides she'd prefer the old fashion way of someone just asking her in private) from Jamie, the star lacrosse player at her school. She thinks he likes her, but it could be he only likes to copy her math homework. It's all so much pressure on a girl. However, when her family’s computer and cloud storage gets hacked, her life turns upside down right away since her personal journal was in the cloud.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
For a more detailed review, click here.
Dirty Little SecretsBy C. J. Omololu
Ever have a secret so great; you just can’t even begin to think about telling anyone? Lucy lives with a huge secret. Her mother is a hoarder. Nothing ever gets thrown out, and now Lucy lives among towering piles of bags and plastic bins as well as clothes everywhere. How can she ever have a normal life?
Recommended for 8th Grade and up.
The SwapBy Megan Shull
Ever just thought that someone else has it easier than you? Well, Ellie feels like her life is falling apart. Her oldest friend seems to have ditched her for someone new and she is being incredibly mean about it. Jack can’t seem to control his anger and it can lead to some tight spots. When they happen to meet up in the nurse’s office on the first day of school, each wishes they could be the other person. Or do they really?
For a more detailed review, click here.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Stones In Water By Donna Jo Napoli
Being in Italy during the war wasn’t much fun, but things get deadly one afternoon in a movie theater when Roberto, his brother and friends get taken out by the Germans to work in labor camps. Roberto, and his close friend Samuele go to many desperate lengths to prevent the other boys from learning Samuele is Jewish, because it would mean certain death.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
The Woods RunnerBy Gary Paulsen
In the woods, life in the far away cities seems so removed from Samuel and his family, living on the frontier in the colonies. However, all that changes one day when he is hunting in the woods. His parents’ cabin is burned to the ground and all the other settlers killed or taken prisoner. Samuel begins a journey across the land to rescue his parents from the British and learns more about the Revolution in the process.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
Starters By Lissa Price
Callie is considered a “starter” at the age of 16. In a time when humans can live to be two hundred years old, Callie is just starting her life. However, since the Spore Wars, there are no people in between the young and the elderly. Any children without grandparents to take care of them are considered unclaimed minors and are viewed as a nuisance by the vast majority of enders. As a result, Callie has no one to take care of herself or her younger brother who is sick. Callie learns of an opportunity to “loan” out her body for a large sum of money. Can she afford the risk though?
Recommended for 8th Grade and Up
Tabula RasaBy Kristen Lippert-Martin
Sarah is in the process of having her mind erased. It is for her own good. Something happened in her past and she doesn’t want to remember it. At least that is what everyone at the hospital tells her. She is almost done with the last treatment, but something goes wrong. The hospital comes under attack and it turns out, someone doesn’t just want to erase Sarah’s mind, but her...completely.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
For a more complete review, click here.
Death Coming Up the Hill By Chris Crowe
Ashe is used to living in a war zone. While it is clear both his parents love him to death, they don’t share the same affection for each other. Most of his life has been spent in a cold war situation. With the real war in Vietnam heating up, Ashe realizes just how far apart his parents have become. Things really begin to fall apart when Ashe’s mom does something his father just can’t, or won’t, forgive. Ashe is being asked to choose between two people he loves dearly, but who are pulling him in opposite directions.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
For a more detailed review please click here.
The Raft By S.A. Bodeen
**Robie wants to prove she is a competent teenager when her aunt has to leave her to go on a business trip. Not wanting to head back to be with her parents on Midway Atoll, Robie says she’ll be careful and a friend of her aunt’s is supposed to check in on her. When things don’t go as smoothly as Robie thought they would she decides to head back to Midway Atoll. A series of mistakes lead to Robie in a life raft in the Pacific Ocean, fighting for her very survival against the odds.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
For a more complete review, click here.**
The Skeleton Tree By Iain Lawrence
After his father died, Chris felt adrift. Not that he had been terribly close with his father. It always seemed complicated with his dad. His Uncle Jack thinks that Chris should come with him and take his boat and sail it down from Alaska to Washington. Soon Chris finds himself aboard the Puff. However, it isn't just Chris and his Uncle Jack. There is someone else on board, and his name is Frank. Chris has no idea who Frank is or why he's on the boat with them. Soon, it doesn’t matter as the boat sinks, taking his Uncle Jack down and leaving him just with the mysterious teenager, Frank.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
For a longer review click here.
The Adoration of Jenna Fox By Mary E. Pearson
When Jenna awakes from a coma after an “accident” things feel off. She isn’t sure what is it, and parts of her memory are fragmented. Her parents tell her she will remember in time, but her grandmother seems to not even like her. Jenna discovers things are not what she first thought, and begins to question what it means to be human.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
UninvitedBy Sophie Jordan
**Davy is living a pretty awesome life. She comes from a wealthy family, goes to a private school, has been accepted into Juilliard in New York because of her fabulous musical ability and has the best boyfriend a girl could want. What could possibly go wrong. Turns out, quite a lot. Davy tests positive for a gene that has been linked to killers. So does this mean she will become one?
For a more complete review click here****.
Recommended for 8th graders and up due to some mature content.**
The Hunt By Andrew Fukuda
Sick of the sweet vampires in Twilight and the whole saga? Well, welcome to a world where vampires have taken over and the only humans living are called hepers and have to live in a special protected dome to keep the vampires from getting them. In The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda with so few humans alive, when a Heper Hunt is announced all the vampires are thrilled with the idea of hunting the last few remaining humans. All except Gene, who just happens to be human and has been living and passing for a vampire his whole life. When Gene is selected for the Heper Hunt, his biggest fear – that he’ll be discovered and consumed by the other vampires on the hunt – could come true if he isn’t very careful.
Recommended for 8th grade and up. Part of a completed trilogy.
For a more complete review click here.
Evil LibrarianBy Michael Knudsen
So, Cyn -short for Cynthia- realizes that not much can penetrate her laser focus when Ryan is around (the guy she’s been majorly crushing on forEVER but doesn’t know she exists), but still, something is up when her normally unflappable, positive and totally supportive best friend. Annie suddenly seems really taken with the new school librarian. Not as in, oh, he recommends such great books to me, but as in so taken that it is creepy and inappropriate. Cyn needs to find out what is going on, before it is too late for her friend.
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
- the word "hell" is read in this booktalk.
For a more complete review please click here.
The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
Holling Hoodhood (yeah that seriously is his name) is already struggling with 7th grade. The year is 1967 and he knows that his teacher, Mrs. Baker doesn't like him. In fact, there are days when he thinks she's actively trying to take him out! It all has to do with Wednesday afternoons. Or at least, that is what he thinks. What he doesn't know, is that for lots of reasons, 7th grade will be a year he never forgets.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe
Dita is fourteen and living in Family Block 31 in Auschwitz in 1944. What made this block unusal is that families were kept together in the same area. Men and women were still separated, but they could see each other each day. Many in the block are unsure why the Nazis are allowing this, since it wasn't common at all. It turns out that of course there was a very sinister reason. But Dita doesn't know this when she volunteers to be the librarian for 8 contraband books that have been smuggled into the block. Everyone knows, including Dita, if these books are found, it could mean death for everyone.
Recommended for mature 8th graders due to content and subject matter.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Growing up in the south in Mississippi during the Great Depression was not easy for anyone, but it was especially hard for Cassie's family. Her family must deal with the racism that pervades the south and for Cassie it will turn out to be a year where she comes face to face with some very harsh realities.
Recommended for mature 6th graders and up.
Esperanza Rising By Pam Munoz Ryan
Esperanza’s life it torn apart after her father is killed and she and her mother must flee from Mexico with little money. Esperanza was used to a life of plenty, but suddenly she is thrown into a new world in America and is forced to work for all she needs as a migrant worker. Esperanza begins to wonder if she can ever be happy in this new life.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Lyddie by Katherine Paterson
Lyddie is living with her younger siblings in the country in the 1840s when her father decides to leave the family and go in search of fortune elsewhere. While Lyddie and her brother hold onto the hope that their father will return someday, there mother doesn't think he'll ever will. When she basically gives Lyddie to an innkeeper to use as a servant and Lyddie's brother to a mill owner to help pay off the family's debts, Lyddie despairs of ever having the farm again. Until one day she meets a girl who works in Lowell, Massachusetts in a factory and tells Lyddie that she can make her own fortune there.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
ChainsBy Laurie Halse Anderson
**Isabel thinks her life is going to change with the death of her mistress. She believes she will finally be free and so will her younger sister Ruth. However, when the nephew of her dead mistress comes to claim all she owned, he decides to disregard the will stating Isabel and Ruth are now free. And thus begins a new saga for Isabel and her sister.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.**
The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 **By Christopher Paul Curtis
What happens when you older brother keeps getting into trouble, and your parents have relatives in Birmingham, Alabama who can straighten him out? Kenny can’t believe all the trouble his brother Byron is getting into these days, and finally their parents decided it’s time for a trip down South.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
Inside Out & Back AgainBy Thanhha Lai
**With her father missing for years, Ha’s mother must make a decision as the Vietnam War begins to end. Should she try to escape with her family, or wait in Vietnam? Ha’s life changes quickly when she flees with her family to America. However, things are not easy in the new country.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.**
My Brigadista Year by Katherine Paterson
Lora is thirteen years old when her country of Cuba undergoes a major political change. Fidel Castro comes to power after he, along with other rebels, overthrow the dictator Batista. One of the first things Castro does is to create the Cuban Literacy Campaign. The goal is for the island of Cuba to be literate in one year.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
For a more detailed review click here.
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Buck is the master of his domain, the king of his castle, and an amazing dog living an amazing life. Until one day he is kidnapped and forced north due to the Klondike gold rush sweeping the nation. There his life will never be the same as he is forced to endure brutal treatment until one kind person comes into his life.
Recommended for grades 8th and up due to vocabulary.
One Crazy Summer By Rita Williams-Garcia
They didn’t really remember their mother, since she’d left so many years ago. So when their dad sends them off to San Francisco to get to know their mom, Delphine has her reservations. After all, she doesn’t know much about her mother and her mother doesn’t seem to even want them in her house. Plus it is the summer of 1968, and lots of things are going on in the world beyond just what is happening in their family.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
As World War II is ending, Germany is losing ground to the Russians and many civilians are being caught in the crossfire. As a result, many are fleeing and find themselves at the coast along the Baltic Sea. In order to reach safety, they must find safe passage. Around 2 million civilians and German soldier made this crossing, but there were many who did not survive. This is the story of some of those seeking safety.
Recommended for grades 8 and up.
GhostBy Jason Reynolds
Ghost, or Castle as his mom calls him, feels that he’s been running for some time. It all started one night when his dad got out of control and tried to shoot him and his mother. Since then it feels like he just can’t take a breath and catch his breath. When he tries to show up a kid on a track team, he ends up getting on the team. But can he stay on it?
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
American AceBy Marilyn Nelson
**Connor understands that his father is very depressed after the death of his mom. What he doesn’t realize is that his dad is thinking about a lot of things. It turns out that when his mother died, she left him with something that shook the foundation of Connor’s father’s life. In a letter, Connor’s grandmother tells his dad that the man he thought was his father all these years wasn’t. At least not biologically. Turns out that when she was in Italy during World War II she met an American pilot and he is really Connor’s father’s dad.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
For a more complete review click here.**
Sound of Letting Go By Stasia Ward Kehoe
Daisy feels like she is strangling under the pressure from everyone to keep up the facade of being the “perfect girl.” She needs to be that, because without it, she believes her family will fall apart. Her younger brother, Steven, is severely autistic and it is getting to the point where no one can control him. What will happen then?
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
For a more detailed review, please click here.
The Day Before by Lisa Schroeder
What if you had one day? One day to do what you wanted before life as you knew it would change forever? What would you choose to do with it? Amber has one day for herself before things will never be the same. She packs a bag and heads for the beach, where she has always been able to be herself. In this one day, she meets a boy named Cade, who appears to be having a one day of his own. Can they help each other through this last day?
Recommended for 8th grade and up.
For a more detailed book review click here
A Northern Light By Jennifer Donnelly
Mattie is looking for a way out, but can’t see one. All she sees is her life is hard work taking care of her father and the farm and her younger siblings. She wants to go to college, but that seems like a far off dream in 1906. Mattie works at a hotel in the summer to earn money for her family and she meets a young woman named Grace, who changes many things for Mattie.
Recommended for 8th grade and up due to mature content.
After the Death of Anna Gonzales By Terri Fields
When students arrive at school to hear on the morning announcements one of the students has committed suicide, the reactions of teachers and classmates range from despair to barely registering the tragedy. See into the minds of forty-seven individuals, and how they reflect on Anna’s death.
Recommended for 8th grade and up due to mature content.
A Long Way from Chicago By Richard Peck
When Joey and his sister Mary Alice find out they have to spend a week at their grandmother’s place, far away from Chicago, they don’t want to go. What will they do to be entertained? But they are the ones who are in for a big shock, and plenty of entertainment when they realize all the things their grandmother has in store for them.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
Leon’s StoryBy Leon Tillage
Leon was born in 1936, near Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. When he was younger, hewould curse the fact that he was black. “But in those days they didn’t call you ‘black.’ They didn’t say ‘minority.’ They called us ‘colored’ or….” worse. This is his story of growing up in the South.
Recommended for mature 6th graders and up.
Warriors Don’t Cry By Melba Pattillo Beals
As a teenager everyone wants to fit in. Melba did not stand a chance of that happening as one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High in 1957. With a guard posted to make sure Melba survived the day and armored tanks to keep back the mobs, she tried to make it through 10th grade alive. This is her story of what happened in the school that year.
Recommended for mature 8th graders and up.
The TerroristBy Caroline B. Cooney
Laura and her younger brother Billy are trying to adjust to life in London when their father is assigned there for work. However, when Billy gets killed, Laura’s life takes on a new focus and meaning; finding Billy’s killer.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Josh and Jordan are identical twins. Both take after their father, and are fantastic basketball players. However, not everything is perfect in their world. Pressure is mounting on them to step up their games, and now Josh is feeling distance from his brother since Jordan has gotten a girlfriend. He’s wondering if everything is going to change.
Recommended for grades 7th and up.
Tia never knew her father, or at least she doesn’t have memories of him. That is because he was sentenced to life in prison when she was only four years old. Her mother won’t talk about him and basically tells Tia to forget about him – that for all intent and purpose, he is dead. This works for Tia until one night at choir practice when a carjacking happens outside the church her group is singing in. For some reason, Tia can’t shake the feeling that more than a robbery happened with her father.
Recommended for mature 6th graders and up.
Click here for a more detailed review.
When Travis and his sister head to their grandmother’s Bed and Breakfast for the summer, they think it will be boring. That is until they learn the inn is listed as haunted. Their grandmother doesn’t believe it is, so Travis and Corey decide to make it haunted. Little do they know, it already is!
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
So the vacation isn’t starting off the way he, Davey, is hoping or imagining it would. Even though they are in “paradise,” Davey is stuck in a room with his parents and younger, obnoxious brother and, well, the room is getting pretty funky. So why not just slip out with his book and get some reading in while the rest of the family sleeps on? It sounds like a good idea, but even that early in the morning, there are people wandering around the resort. So Davey keeps going untill have finds a little alcove with a beautiful beach. It has a no swimming sign posted, but the water is calm and shallow, and so warm that Davey puts his things under a bush and decides to wade in a bit. He doesn’t realize that the ocean has other plans for him and he gets taken out in a rip current before he even realizes what has happened to him.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
For a more detailed review, click here.
Maud lives in an orphanage and sees no hope of being adopted, until two old sisters come asking for a clever girl. At first Maud can’t believe her good luck. However, over time, she realizes the Hawthorne sisters want her to play a part, a very important acting role and if Maud pulls it off, all their lives will be changed forever.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.
Summer is stretching out in front of Nina as one long event, with not a lot going on to break it up. Her parents are super consumed with a big trail case they are preparing for, her older brother Matt is getting ready to head off to college by pulling further away, and her best friend and neighbor Jorie seems more different than ever. So what’s a girl to do?
Recommended for grades 6th and up with appeal to grades much older.
For a more detailed review click here.
**Each Saturday like clockwork, Trell and her mother Shey head to Walpole to visit Trell’s father who is incarcerated for the murder of a young girl. He has no possibility of parole. He will live the rest of his life in prison. However, he says he didn’t do it and there were people who were with him at the time of the shooting. So why is he locked up in prison after being found guilty at a trial? Trell has grown up with the story of how her father didn’t do this horrible crime. But it seems hopeless because it can be so difficult to get a new trial. Then Trell’s father hears about a young lawyer who might be willing to take a look at his case.
Recommended for grades 7th and up.**
For a more detailed review click here.
One real reason that Wyatt Palmer was looking forward to his 8th grade field trip to Washington, D.C.? Yeah, nothing to do with Washington or the sights. It has everything to do with the girl of his dreams, Suzana. Even though she has a boyfriend, he just wants to be around her. It could have been a good trip, except for the fact that his friend, Matt, was kind of paranoid about these two men that sat behind them on the plane. He kept insisting that they were going to blow up the airplane once they got over Washington, D.C., and that is just the beginning.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.
For a more detailed review click here.
It has happened again. Someone close to him has been taken, by violence. Gun violence. Will knows what he has to do. After all, there are rules that have to be followed. For example, no matter how you are really feeling, you can’t cry. You can’t snitch and you must – MUST – get Revenge. Will’s older brother, Shawn has been killed. Gunned down in the street on his way back from getting special medical cream for their mother. And this isn’t the first important person to be lost in Will’s life to guns. Will knows who did it, who killed his brother. And now, according to the rules, he needs to seek Revenge.
Recommended for grades 7th and up.
For a more detailed review click here.
**There is a killer on the loose. Two girls that look like Stephanie have disappeared, but Stephanie still decides to walk home by herself one Saturday night in early fall. When Stephanie is kidnapped, she can’t believe it, and she must use all her skills if she wants to come out of this alive.
Recommended for grades 7th and up.**
**Emily was sick and tired of waiting around for her parents to stop playing heroes. She just wanted to go home; back to America and all the things she was missing. So when she hears her Uncle is visiting, she sees her chance to go back home. Only the ferry she takes ends up going down, and Emily begins to think she’ll never make it out of the water, let alone back to the States.
Recommended for 6th grade and up.**
**When her family moves across the country for her father’s new job, Mimi has no idea what to expect. What she finds are people that keep asking “what are you?” Not the most welcoming question to ask a person. She knows she looks different, but that doesn’t make her different on the inside. As she struggles to find her place in this new town, she also struggles to figure out what is important to her, and what she’s willing give up for it.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
For a more detailed review click here**.
When Socko (short for Socrates) is told by his mother they are moving out of the only home he can remember to take care of a great-grandfather he’s never met, he wants no part of it. Not that things are great where Socko lives. He and his best friend live in fear of the local gang, the Tarantulas. Their leader, Rapp, seems determined to take them both out. Socko doesn’t feel near as brave as his friend Damien, but he knows Damien’s mom can’t help him out at all and Socko doesn’t want to leave him behind.
Recommended for grades 6th and up.
For a more detailed review click here.
**Cheyenne was sick. So sick that she convinced her stepmother to leave the keys in the car while she ran into the pharmacy to get Cheyenne’s medicine in case she needed to warm up the car. Lying in the backseat she realizes, even as sick as she is, someone other than her stepmother has gotten into the car, and once he realizes Cheyenne is in the back, a carjacking has just turned into a kidnapping.
Recommended for grades 7th and up.**
BacklashBy Sarah Darer Littman
**It was hard to say why they had grown apart, at least Lara didn’t know why her once best friend, Bree, decided to pull away. But Lara was moving on and in fact, had gotten a spot on the high school cheer leading team, and she’s friends with a gorgeous guy, Christian, on Facebook. So when Christian starts saying awful things about her, she has no idea why and she has no idea her once best friend might have something to do with it.
Recommended for 7th grade and up.**A more detailed review can be found at here.