St. Luke’s School Reading List For Students Entering Grade 8

The Left Hand of Darkness Le Guin Genly Ai is an emissary from the human The Illustrated Man galaxy to Winter, a . His Bradbury mission is to bring the planet back into He is a wanderer whose entire body is a an evolving galactic civilization, but to living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's do so he must bridge the gulf between even more remarkable is that the his own culture and prejudices and illustrations are themselves magically those that he encounters. alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own tale. Black Horses for the King McCaffrey The Ropemaker In this different take on Arthurian Dickinson legendry, McCaffrey tells how Lord When the magic that protects their Artos (King Arthur) procures Libyan Valley starts to fail, Tilja and her horses for his companions to ride into companions journey into the evil battle against the Saxons. The narrator Empire to find the ancient is young Galwyn, who with his Faheel, who originally cast those spells. knowledge of horses and affinity for Printz honor. languages leaves his harsh seafaring uncle to serve Artos. Snow in August Hamill Rose Daughter In postwar working-class Brooklyn, Irish McKinley Catholic Michael Devlin, 11, is obsessed McKinley re-explores and expands on with comics, worships Captain Marvel, the tale of . This is and wonders why shouting SHAZAM! not a sequel to her earlier book Beauty, doesn't turn him into a superhero. His but a new treatment with rich naiveté is crucial, since this tale characterizations and a more mystical, transforms unexpectedly into fantasy. darker edge.

Dune (series) Sirena Herbert Napoli Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune In this re-imagining that fuses several tells how Paul Atreides becomes the parts of the story of , the mysterious Muad'Dib. He seeks to Sirena knows that if the song she sings avenge the plot against his noble family with her sisters lures a mortal man to and bring to fruition humankind's most mate with her, she will live forever. ancient and unattainable dream. This is a sweeping blend of adventure and Sabriel mysticism, environmentalism and Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr politics. Abhorsen (series) Nix Sabriel, daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead.

2 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: More Fantasy The Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers Witch World Return of the King Norton Tolkien This is the first book of a multi-volume This epic is the tale of hobbits, staid series about a realm of untamed magic folk who rise to meet the challenges of and limitless adventure, where witches a dark age, and the extraordinary make mountains dance and sorcerers characters of Middle Earth who are draw forces of good and evil from other swept up in the struggle for the Ring of universes. power. Tolkien’s vast world is richly detailed, deepening the humanity of the Sandry’s Book characters, good and evil, and the (Circle of Magic series, #1) realism of the narrative. Pierce In a fantasy set in mythical lands The Raven Ring surrounding the Pebbled Sea, four Wrede young people come to terms with the Wrede returns to the world of Lyra, pain that life has dealt them, the scene of her earlier novels. She prejudices they've inherited, and their introduces the city of Ciaron, to which unrecognized magical powers. she brings a young woman from Cilhar on comparatively routine family The Golden Compass business, only to have her dragged (His Dark Materials trilogy, #1) more forcibly than not into a tale of Pullman mayhem and magic. Lyra Belacqua is a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Briar Rose Oxford University. But hers is a Yolen different world from ours, where each Rebecca Berlin fondly recalls the odd person has a daemon, the manifestation version of Sleeping Beauty told by her of the soul in animal form, and where grandmother Gemma. Everyone thought science, theology, and magic are closely it was just a bedtime story, but when a allied. box of clippings and photos turns up after Gemma’s , Becca begins The King Must Die tracing her real story. This book is a Renault provocative retelling of the story of Set in Minoan Crete, this is a vividly Sleeping Beauty as a Holocaust memoir. imagined story of Theseus, mythical king of Athens, who saves the city from Mists of Avalon its ritual tribute of young men and Zimmer women for sacrifice to the Minotaur. Even readers who don’t normally enjoy Arthurian legends will like this retelling The Scent of Magic from the point of view of the women Seaborg behind the throne. Morgaine (Morgan le In this tale of magic and intrigue, a Fay) and Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere) young boy discovers his special gift. struggle for power, using their arts to Forced from his home, he embarks on promote their respective worldviews. an adventure with a powerful magician and a girl with powers of her own.

3 Timeline Crichton Imagine stepping into a time machine, I, Robot faxing yourself through a "quantum Asimov foam wormhole," and stepping out in Stories of robots gone mad, mind- feudal France circa 1357. The heroes reading robots, robots with a sense of are historians, and the story is a humor, robot politicians, and robots swashbuckling adventure with a dash of who secretly run the world are all told science and time paradox to spice the with Asimov's dramatic blend of science mix. fact and science fiction. 2001: A Space The Voyage Clarke Asimov An enigmatic monolith is found buried Five people, reduced to microscopic on the moon that emits a powerful size, travel through the body of a dying signal aimed at Saturn. A manned man in an effort to dissolve a blood clot spacecraft is sent to investigate, in his brain, but even more is at stake assisted by a self-aware computer, HAL than one man’s life. 9000. The harrowing conflict between HAL and the crew, and its mind-bending Fahrenheit 451 aftermath, have become the stuff of Bradbury legend. In this dark vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires; they start Fade them in order to burn books. Bradbury's Cormier vividly painted society holds up the Paul Moreaux, the 13-year-old son of appearance of happiness as the highest French Canadian immigrants, inherits goal—where trivial information is good, the ability to become invisible, but his and knowledge and ideas are bad. power eventually leads to death and destruction. Ender’s Game (series) Card Time and Again To make sure humans win the next Finney encounter with aliens, the world Simon Morley is selected by a secret government has taken to breeding government agency to test Einstein’s military geniuses and training them in theory of the past co-existing with the the arts of war. The early training takes present—and is transported back to a the form of “games.” Ender Wiggin vividly depicted New York of the 1880s. wins all the games, but is he smart enough to save the planet? Have Spacesuit Will Travel Heinlein Jurassic Park One minute Kip Russell was in his Lost World backyard, testing an old space suit. The (series) next he was out cold, the captive of a Crichton space pirate. The whole thing seems A modern-day scientist brings to life a like a bad dream until Kip discovers horde of prehistoric animals. there are other prisoners on board, and they’re all on their way to the Moon.

4 More Science Fiction Realistic Fiction

1984 How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Orwell Accents 1984 has come and gone, but George Alvarez Orwell's prophetic, nightmare vision of It's a long way from Santo Domingo to the world we were becoming is still the Bronx. Four Latinas, plunged from a compelling. Totalitarian England under pampered life on an island compound the eye of Big Brother, and the struggle into the big-city chaos of New York, of two individuals with the system that rebel against Mami and Papi's old-world traps them, remains convincing and discipline and embrace all that America haunting. has to offer.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Speak Verne Anderson A sea monster is sinking ships. Three A traumatic event near the end of the men—a French scientist, his sidekick, summer has a devastating effect on and a Canadian harpoonist—are thrown Melinda's freshman year in high school. from the deck of their American warship. A door opens on the side of Am I Blue? the monster, and they enter the top- Bauer secret submarine Nautilus, commanded This collection of 16 original short by a madman who carries them into the stories by as many young adult authors depths. won the 1995 ALA Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Task Force (GLBTF) book award The Time Machine for literature. The diverse settings, Wells characters, and styles will entertain a A scientist invents a machine that wide range of readers. transports him far into the future, where he discovers a changed world Joy School inhabited by two unusual races, the Eloi Berg and the Morlocks. Katie has relocated to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father, and The War of the Worlds she feels very much alone: her beloved Wells mother is dead, and her only friends The Martian attack begins with a series fall far short of ideal companions. When of flashes in the night sky, which at she falls through the ice while skating, first cause little concern. Then the she meets Jimmy. He is far older than destruction erupts, and mankind finds she and married, but she is entranced. itself on the brink of extinction. Wells raises questions of mortality, man's place in nature, and evil lurking in the technological future.

5 Athletic Shorts More Realistic Fiction Crutcher These are short stories about athletes, The Perks of Being a Wallflower but they are not just about sports. In Chbosky straightforward style, they address love Caught between trying to live his life and death, bigotry and heroism, and the and trying to run from it, Charlie is imperfect efforts of real people to do navigating through the strange worlds their best. of love, drugs, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and dealing with the loss Eight Seconds of a good friend and his favorite aunt. Ferris Eighteen-year-old John must confront The House on Mango Street his own sexuality when he goes to Cisneros rodeo school and finds himself Esperanza Cordero, whose Latino attracted to an older boy who is smart, Chicago is one of harsh realities and tough, complicated, and gay. harsh beauty, doesn't want to belong— not to her run-down neighborhood, and Money-Hungry not to the low expectations the world Flake has for her. This is the story of a young All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can girl inventing herself. think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry Taking the Ferry Home about living on the streets again. 2002 Conrad Coretta Scott King honor. Two 16-year-olds are drawn together for the summer on a resort island Annie on My Mind despite their different backgrounds, as Garden they deal with substance-abusing Garden's tale concerns two teenage girls parents. who fall in love with each other. Liza puts aside her feelings for Annie after a disaster at school, but eventually she Cormier allows love to triumph over ignorance. A high school freshman discovers the Margaret Edwards Award. devastating consequences of arousing the wrath of bullying classmates by Ellen Foster refusing to join in the school's annual Gibbons fundraising drive. This is powerful story is told by an 11- year-old orphan whose violent father is Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes responsible for her mother's suicide. Crutcher Ellen is eventually placed in a series of An obese boy and a disfigured girl temporary homes—first with her suffer the emotional scars of years of grandmother, then with a neglectful mockery by their peers. They share a aunt and her spoiled daughter, Dora. hard-boiled view of the world until Told as a dual narrative, Ellen Foster events in their senior year hurl them in follows the heroine's ordeals both very different directions. chronologically and in reflection, ending with her wish of a "new mama" fulfilled.

6 A Separate Peace Even More Realistic Knowles Fiction The classic story of two friends at boarding school during World War II is Everything on a Waffle a starkly moving parable about the dark Polly Horvath forces that brood over the world of Primrose Squarp simply knows her adolescence. parents did not perish at sea during a terrible storm, but try convincing the The Arizona Kid (series) other residents of Coal Harbour. True Koertge sanctuary can always be found, though, Sixteen-year-old Billy spends the at a restaurant called The Girl on the summer with his gay uncle in Tucson Red Swing, where everything, including and works at a racetrack where he falls lasagna, is served on a waffle, and in love with an outspoken horse where the proprietor, Miss Bowzer, exerciser named Cara Mae. offers a willing ear and sage advice. Newbery honor. Finding My Voice Lee Deliver Us from Evie Even as she's enjoying her senior year Kerr and her newfound romance with the Sixteen-year-old Parr Burrman and his popular Tomper, Ellen Sung—the only family face difficult times when word Korean-American student in her small spreads through their rural Missouri school—must deal with prejudice from town that his older sister is a lesbian, some of her classmates and pressure and she leaves the family farm to live from her strict parents to follow her with the daughter of the town's banker. scholarly older sister to Harvard.

I Stay Near You Necessary Roughness Kerr Lee Three generations suffer the Sixteen-year-old Korean American Chan consequences of an ill-fated romance moves from Los Angeles to a small between a young girl from the wrong town in Minnesota where he must cope side of the tracks and the son of the not only with racism on the football richest family in a small upstate New team but also with tensions in his York town. relationship with his strict father.

Flowers for Algernon The Small Rain Keyes L'Engle When we first meet Charlie he is about This book is an exploration of the inner to embark on a dangerous journey from life of a sensitive young girl who is retardation to genius. He has only a devoted to the piano. vague understanding of what will happen, but he doesn't hesitate to cooperate in a radical experiment designed to increase his intelligence, the key—he hopes—to being valued and loved.

7 Shizuko's Daughter Even More Realistic Mori Fiction Yuki is 12 when her mother, Shizuko, commits suicide, leaving Yuki to a Freewill distant father and a self-serving Lynch stepmother. Forbidden by custom from Part thriller, part mystery, this book is a seeing her mother's family, Yuki is left rollercoaster ride through a passionate to fend for herself—and she does, young man's psyche—and an falling back on the artistic talent she unforgettable emotional journey inherited from her mother. through grief, guilt, and hope from a writer at the height of his powers. The Bluest Eye Printz honor. Morrison The heroine, a black girl from the Parrot in the Oven author's home-town of Loraine, Ohio, Martinez wishes her eyes would turn blue. Toni Manny relates his coming-of-age Morrison’s first novel is a work of experiences as a member of a poor profound insight into the nature of Mexican-American family in which the desire and the hunger we harbor to alcoholic father complicates everyone's escape our own histories. struggle. Slam! The Member of the Wedding Myers McCullers Sixteen-year-old "Slam" Harris is Frankie Addams is a bored 12-year-old counting on his noteworthy basketball jealous of her brother's impending talents to get him out of the inner city marriage. Afraid of the dark and and give him a chance to succeed in life, envious of the older girls, Frankie is but his coach sees things differently. transformed when she becomes F. Jasmine. She accepts a date with a red- Monster haired soldier, buys a sophisticated Myers gown for the wedding, and steps out. “Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can One Bird make my own movie. The film will be Mori the story of my life. I'll call it what the Megumi Shimizu is a 15-year-old girl in lady who is the prosecutor called me.” Japan whose mother leaves home to escape her unhappy marriage. Left in the care of a strict, critical grandmother and an absent father who spends more time with his mistress than his family, Megumi suffers a crisis of faith. The emotional support of a new friend bolsters her courage to stand up for herself.

8 The Starlite Drive-In Even More Realistic Reynolds Fiction When human remains are found at a long-abandoned theater site, Callie Letters From a Nut Anne Benton, now 49, must look back at Nancy the summer of her thirteenth year. She Who is Ted L. Nancy? He sends patently was the daughter of the Starlite Drive-in ridiculous letters and queries to manager, living at the edge of the corporate honchos, entertainment grounds and following dialogue and conglomerates, national publications, action—both on the screen and off— politicians, celebrities and heads of from her own painful vantage point. state. Letters From a Nut is an insanely inspired, truly madcap collection of Joy in the Morning Nancy correspondence, a laugh-out- Smith loud-in-public places aggregation of In Brooklyn in 1927, Carl Brown and official - and officially certifiable - Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. requests, complaints, fan mail and Though only eighteen, Annie travels questions that could not possibly have alone to the Midwestern university been taken seriously...but, amazingly, where Carl is studying law to marry were! him. Carl and Annie come to realize that the struggles of poverty and The Chosen hardship can be overcome by the Potok strength of their relationship. This is the story of the odyssey from boyhood to manhood of two Jewish Taking Sides boys amidst conflict between Soto generations and religious traditions. Fourteen-year-old Lincoln Mendoza, an aspiring basketball player, must come The Only Alien on the Planet to terms with his divided loyalties when Randle he moves from the Hispanic inner city After moving to the East Coast, Ginny to a white suburban neighborhood. enters her senior year of high school and uncovers the secret behind a new Stargirl friend's refusal to speak. Spinelli In this tale of the perils of popularity, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal the courage of nonconformity, and the Snogging: Confessions of Georgia thrill of first love, an eccentric student Nicolson (series) named Stargirl changes Mica High School forever. Rennison

British author Louise Rennison has The Joy Luck Club perfectly captured the soaring joys and Tan bottomless angst of being a teenager in Chapters in this novel alternate between this is the wildly funny journal of a year the lives of four Chinese women in pre- in the life of Georgia Nicolson. This 1949 China and the stories of their bookwill leave you laughing out loud. American-born daughters in California.

9 Blue Tights Even More Realistic Williams-Garcia Fiction Fifteen-year-old Joyce Collins wants to win the attention of Andre Miller and to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole dance ballet as well as her mother did. (series) But ballet is not her talent, and it is not Townsend until she meets a handsome Muslim Adrian Mole faces the same agonies as drummer and becomes interested in most adolescents: troubles with girls, African dance that she awakens to her school, parents, and an uncaring world. heritage as well as her own worth. The difference is that this British lad keeps a diary—an earnest chronicle of Make Lemonade longing and disaster, and a deadly Wolff satire. This daring novel written in blank verse is an eloquent and realistic portrait of a Homecoming (series) teenage mother struggling to keep Voigt ahead and a fourteen-year-old Five children, abandoned after their babysitter who tries to help her through mother's death, make their way, mostly love and understanding. on foot, from New England to the eastern shore of Maryland in search of a True Believer grandmother they have never seen. Wolff Living in the inner city amidst guns and Dicey's Song (series) poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn Voigt learns from old and new friends, and Now that the four abandoned Tillerman inspiring mentors, that life is what you children are settled with their make it—an occasion to rise to. grandmother, Dicey finds that their new National Book Award and Printz honor. life requires love, trust, humor, and courage. If You Come Softly Woodson Izzy, Willy-Nilly After meeting at their private school in Voigt New York, 15-year-old Jeremiah, who is At 15, Isabel Lingaid is popular, pretty, black and whose parents are separated, and a cheerleader. A date's drunk- and Ellie, who is white and whose driving accident changes all of that, mother has twice abandoned her, fall in forcing Izzy to recreate her life in the love—and then try to cope with people's face of lasting trauma. reactions.

Striking Out (series) Miracle’s Boys Weaver Woodson Since the death of his older brother, 13- Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close year-old Billy Baggs has had a distant relationship with his older brother relationship with his father, but life on Charlie changes after Charlie is released their farm in northern Minnesota begins from a detention home and blames to change when Billy starts to play Lafayette for the death of their mother. baseball.

10 Broken Days Historical Fiction Rinaldi Thankful's dying wish was for her Hiroshima daughter, Walking Breeze, to leave the Hersey tribe and move to Salem to live with her This book is the gripping story of six kin, the Chelmsford family. But Walking people who live through the explosion Breeze's cousin Ebie Chelmsford is of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima in determined to prevent the reunion. 1945. The Last Silk Dress Not A Swan Rinaldi Magorian Fourteen-year-old Susan Chilmark A 17-year-old girl in 1940s England wants to do something to support the spends a summer unchaperoned at a Confederacy during the Civil War. She cottage in a seaside village, where a decides to collect silk dresses to create series of diaries by the cottage's most a huge hot-air balloon to spy on the recent inhabitant, together with some enemy. In the process, Susan discovers intense personal experiences, lead her unsettling family secrets, deals with the to discover her true wants and death of her father, and falls in love priorities. with a Yankee.

Fallen The Human Comedy Myers Saroyan Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out In California's San Joaquin Valley of his Harlem high school, enlists in the during World War II, the struggles and Army in the summer of 1967 and dreams of the Macauley family reflect spends a devastating year on active those of America's second-generation duty in Vietnam. immigrants. Fourteen-year-old , determined to become one of the A Step from Heaven fastest telegraph messengers in the An Na West, finds himself caught between In a stunning novel debut honored with reality and illusion as he delivers the Michael J. Printz Award for messages of death, money, and love. excellence in literature for young adults, writer An Na tells the story of a The Land Korean family that immigrates to Mildred D. Taylor California in search of a better life, only After the Civil War Paul, the son of a to find that the American Dream is white father and a black mother, finds harder to achieve than they thought. himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he A Single Shard pursues his dream of owning land of Park his own. & A broken piece of pottery sets events in Scott O’Dell award. motion as an orphan struggles to pay off his debt to a master potter. This finely crafted novel brings 12th-century Korea and these indelible characters to life. Newbery award.

11 David Copperfield Classics Dickens In this vivid saga with unforgettable Pride and Prejudice characters, drawn in part from the Austen author’s own experience, David With incomparable wit and style, this encounters friends and villains, from novel of English manners and morals Mr. Micawber (one of Dickens’ great dissects the adventures of a family of comic creations), to his aunt Betsey marriageable young women and their Trotwood and her protege Mr. Dick, to suitors. the treacherous Steerforth and the despicable Uriah Heep. Go Tell It on the Mountain Baldwin Ragtime A breakthrough in American literature, Doctorow in both language and theme, in this first This chronicle of three families in the novel, Baldwin chronicles a 14-year-old early 20th century—wealthy aristocrats, boy's discovery, one Saturday in March blacks from Harlem, and immigrant 1935, of the terms of his identity as the Jews—examines the shattering forces stepson of the minister of a storefront that converged in an age when Pentecostal church in Harlem. everything seemed possible.

Jane Eyre The Three Musketeers Bronte Dumas In early 19th-century England, an Dramatic, stirring, and romantic, the orphaned young woman accepts story of D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, employment as a governess at and Aramis—and their famous code of Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned "one for all and all for one"—remains an by the mysterious Mr. Rochester. unsurpassed tale of 17th-century adventure and heroism. The Good Earth Buck The Old Man and the Sea Wang Lung, rising from humble Chinese Hemingway farmer to wealthy landowner, endures In this deceptively simple, thematically flood and drought, pestilence and rich tale, an old Cuban fisherman revolution. Through one Chinese triumphs over a marlin--only to peasant and his children, this Nobel have his prized catch literally eaten Prize-winner traces the cycle of life, away by circling sharks. with all its terrors, passions, and rewards. To Kill a Mockingbird Lee A Christmas Carol A black man charged with the rape of a Dickens white girl is defended by small-town The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge hates the lawyer Atticus Finch. Through the eyes humbug of Christmas until three of his children, Scout and Jem Finch, take him on a journey through the past, Lee explores with humor and present and future. As Scrooge enters unswerving honesty the irrationality of the lives of Tiny Tim and others, he adult attitudes toward race and class— comes to know the meaning of charity and the capacity to transcend them—in and goodwill. the Deep South of the 1930s.

12 More Classics Adventure

Gone with the Wind The Great Train Robbery Mitchell Crichton This classic, considered by many to be In teeming Victorian London, where one of the most dramatic love stories lavish wealth and appalling poverty live ever written, is also a great Civil War side by side, Edward Pierce charms the saga. most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the Animal Farm century. Orwell In this famous satire, Orwell depicts The Perfect Storm Soviet communism as a revolutionized Junger barnyard in which “some animals are In this gripping story of the six-man more equal than others.” crew of the Andrea Gail, the commercial fishing boat lost in a hurricane in Catcher in the Rye October 1991, the destructive forces of Salinger nature are vividly seen through the eyes This coming-of-age story is the one of survivors, families, and Coast Guard against all others are judged: Holden rescue crews. Caulfield’s painful experiences, pointed reflections, and poignant search for The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat authenticity. Captain’s Jorney Greenlaw The Grapes of Wrath In The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger Steinbeck describes Linda Greenlaw as "one of the In this epic story, the Joads, a family of best sea captains, period, on the East Oklahoma farmers, flee from their farm Coast." Now Greenlaw tells her own to California during the dustbowl years riveting story of a thirty-day of the 1930s. swordfishing voyage.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition Hyde Kimmel Stevenson The author describes the 1914 Antarctic A secret formula turns a distinguished expedition, when the ship The doctor into a demonic madman stalking Endurance was crushed in a frozen sea London's streets in this spine-tingling and its men made the perilous journey short novel that uses a strange case of across ice and stormy seas to reach intrigue and murder in 19th-century inhabited land. London to explore the nature of man.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Twain The author’s first novel introduces us to Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly. Tales of pranks, playing hooky, and summertime adventure are all told with Twain’s trademark wit.

13 More Adventure Biography &

Into Thin Air Autobiography Krakauer What started as a childhood dream of The Air Down Here: True Tales From climbing became reality for Jon a South Bronx Boyhood Krakauer when Outside Magazine hired Alicea him to report on the increasing number The author was 16 years old when he of commercial expeditions to the top of wrote these 115 short autobiographical Mt. Everest. Krakauer, his guide, and a essays about his life in a South Bronx group of experienced climbers set out neighborhood. to tackle Mt. Everest, with disastrous results. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (series) Tomorrow When the War Began Angelou (series) This autobiography is the poet’s classic Marsden coming-of-age novel of her black When Ellie and her friends return home girlhood in Arkansas, Chicago, and from a camping trip, they find their California. families gone. Gradually they begin to comprehend that their country has been Growing Up invaded, and they are faced with life-or- Baker death decisions—to run back to the This prize-winning columnist traces his bush, to surrender, or to fight. youth in the mountains of rural Virginia during the Depression and the family’s In the Heart of the Sea move to Baltimore, where his mother is Philbrick determined to see her children succeed. Melville's epic novel Moby Dick was based on an actual event: the 1821 In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Blais Essex by an enormous sperm whale. In A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist tells the Heart of the Sea details the ill-fated the story of the championship season journey of the Essex, illuminating a of a high school girls' basketball team terrifying drama not included in Moby and their fierce, funny, sisterhood-is- Dick—that of the survivors after their powerful for excellence. ship was sunk. Gorillas in the Mist Fossey This is a fascinating account of Fossey's thirteen years in Africa studying endangered mountain gorillas. Fossey treats the apes with a dignity and a respect that makes her book a classic of its kind.

14 Undaunted Courage More Biography & Lewis Autobiography High adventure and authentic history fill this account of the two-and-a-half- The Autobiography of Miss Jane year voyage up the Missouri, over the Pittman Rockies, down the Columbia, to the Gaines Pacific Ocean--and back--that Lewis and This novel is in the guise of the tape- Clark undertook at the request of recorded recollections of a 110-year-old Thomas Jefferson. black woman who has been both a slave and a witness to the militancy of the The Color of Water 1960s. McBride McBride’s memoir tells the story of his Farewell to Manzanar mother, a rabbi's daughter, born in Houston Poland and raised in the South, who Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven in 1942 fled to Harlem, married a black man, when her family was sent to live at founded a church, and put twelve Manzanar internment camp with 10,000 children through college. This tribute is other Japanese Americans. Along with an eloquent exploration of what family searchlight towers and armed guards, really means. Manzanar features Boy Scouts, sock hops, and a dance band called the Jive Angela’s Ashes Bombers. This true tale describes one McCourt spirited family's attempt to survive the This is a dark tale of growing up poor in indignities of wartime detention. Ireland, told with sharp humor as well as poignant reflection on family, Hoop Dreams religion, and a society still seemingly in Joravsky the Dark Ages. The basketball journey of Arthur Agee and William Gates from playgrounds to Sigmund Freud: Pioneer of the Mind high school competition to college Reef recruitment became an award-winning At a time when many ailments of the film, which the author here turns into mind were treated with soothing baths an intimate look at aspirations, families, or dangerous electroshock therapy, and relationships. Freud initiated a novel practice: he simply listened to his patients. He The Other Side of the River called his method of treatment Kotlowitz psychoanalysis, or “the talking cure.” The author explores the death of a Though the validity of Freud’s theories black teenager who was found drowned is still widely debated, there is little in a narrow river in southern Michigan doubt that his contributions to the separating two small communities, one study of the mind were invaluable. white and rich, the other black and Taylor Book Award for Older Readers. poor.

15 Firebringer More Biography & Clement-Davies Autobiography In a Scotland beset by Norse invaders, the deer—the Herla—are fighting their When I Was Puerto Rican own war. This grand fantasy, with its Santiago echoes of , legend, and gospel, is a From a rippled zinc shack in rural classic tale set in a society that is Puerto Rico to "the better life" in a at once convincingly animal and a sharp decaying Brooklyn tenement, Esmerelda reflection of our own. Santiago's Puerto Rican childhood is one of sorcery, smoldering war between All Creatures Great and Small (series) the sexes, and high comedy. Herriot Dr. James Herriot, a country Night veterinarian of courage, warmth, and Wiesel natural storytelling ability, delightfully In this terrifying account of the Nazi recounts and reflects on his death camp Wiesel writes of the experiences. transformation of a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of The Call of the Wild his family, his innocence, and his God. London In this story, filled with the excitement Rite of Passage of raw Alaska during the Gold Rush, Wright real men in a bigger-than-real world Johnny, a gifted 15-year-old student, answer “the call of the wild.” runs away from his loving Harlem home when he discovers that he's really a foster child and that the faceless city Mystery bureaucracy is moving him to a new family. Suddenly alone on the streets, Mousetrap hungry, and lost, he tries to survive by Christie joining a gang. In this mystery, a homicidal maniac terrorizes a group of snowbound guests to the refrain of "Three Blind Mice." Animal Stories The Hound of the Baskervilles Doyle Adams When a second member of the Driven by their dream of creating a Baskerville family dies, Sherlock Holmes perfect society in a mysterious investigates and finds murderous greed promised land known to them as behind the supposed curse. Watership Down, a band of flees the intrusion of man and the destruction of their ancestral home. If you liked or Alice in Wonderland, read this!

16 Companions of the Night More Mystery VanVelde Kerry Nowicki finds herself, at 16, in a Rebecca life-and-death chase after helping an Du Maurier injured young man escape from people When a new bride accompanies her who claim that he is a , but that seemingly loyal husband to his isolated is exactly what he is. Can Kerry trust home on the Cornish coast, she meets him as they search for her kidnapped the sinister housekeeper who is devoted father and brother? to her employer’s first wife--and soon must face a lingering evil that threatens to destroy them all from beyond the Mythology grave. Legends of Charlemagne: The King Illustrated Bulfinch’s Mythology Long retired, Sherlock Holmes never Bullfinch imagines he will encounter anyone This handsome volume draws the whose intellect matches his own, much reader into fantastic tales and less an audacious teenage girl with a incredible adventures—from the brave, penchant for detection. Miss Mary lonely death of Charlemagne’s nephew, Russell becomes Holmes' pupil and Roland, to the magic potions that turn quickly hones her talent, but when an knights into lovers, and the story of elusive villain enters the picture, their how Rinado saves Agelika from the . partnership is put to a real test. Mythology The Silver Kiss Hamilton Klause A keystone of our culture is the body of Startling handsome and strangely myth and legend of the ancient Western compelling, Simon meets 17-year-old world—stories of gods and heroes that Zoe at a vulnerable moment in her life. have long inspired human creativity. As their friendship deepens, Simon Hamilton's renowned classic brings this reveals his true identity as a vampire legacy to life anew, with accurate and with a terrible mission. accessible retellings of timeless tales.

Blood Chocolate Klause Poetry & Plays Having fallen for a human boy, a beautiful teenage must battle Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on both her packmates and the fear of Growing up Latino in the United States townspeople to decide where she Carlson belongs. Here are the sights, sounds, and smells of Latino culture in a collection of 36 The Tell-Tale Heart & Other Writings vibrant, moving, angry, beautiful, and Poe varied poems. Presented in both Suspense, fear, and the supernatural English and Spanish, each poem helps provide the center for these mysterious us to discover how it was and is to grow tales by the master prose writer. up Hispanic in America.

17 Beat Voices More Poetry and Plays Kherdian This collection of American poetry by The Norton Anthology of Poetry and about the beat generation includes Ferguson such poets as Gregory Corso, Jack This collection is a wide and deep Kerouac, Diane di Prima, and Allen quarry of poems from the medieval Ginsberg. period to the present. Carver: A Life in Poems Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired Marilyn Nelson by Twentieth-Century Art (Abrams), This collection of poems provides a edited by Jan Greenberg compelling, lyrical account of the life of A compilation of poems by Americans revered African-American botanist and writing about American art in the inventor George Washington Carver. twentieth century, including such Through 44 poems, told from the point writers as Nancy Willard, Jane Yolen, of view of Carver and the people who and X.J. Kennedy. Printz honor. knew him, Nelson celebrates his character and accomplishments. She The Block includes prose summaries of events and Hughes archival photographs. Coretta Scott For Langston Hughes and Romare King honor and Newbery honor. Bearden, Harlem was a source of inspiration. Its sights and sounds are I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You: reflected in 13 of Hughes's most Paired Poems by Men and Women beloved poems, paired with Bearden's Nye painting, "The Block, " in a dazzling This collection of 190 modern poems celebration of city life. celebrates women and men's varying points of view on a variety of topics. Stone Bench in an Empty Park Janeczko The Space Between Our Footsteps: Janeczko expands Hiaku’s traditional Poems and Paintings from the Middle subjects and themes beyond nature and East and North Africa the seasons to encompass the city and Nye its own wonderful scenes. As a result, In this collection of poetry and full- this well-designed book looks carefully color artwork from nineteen Middle at city streets, people, and activities to Eastern and North African countries, produce enormously appealing Nye brings together the work of over selections. 120 poets and artists. This rich anthology opens the door to the Middle Quiet Storm East and beckons readers to explore our Okutoro common ground. Okutoro, a native Nigerian, was sent out on an international call for submissions by young poets with African roots. This compilation of passionate voices is the result, from poets in America, Canada, Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, and Uganda.

18 Romeo & Juliet Even More Poetry and Shakespeare Plays This tragedy is one of the most famous celebrations of romantic love in The Tree is Older than You Are: A Western literature. Bilingual Gathering of Poems & Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists Awards for Nye This gathering of poems and stories, Children's told in both the original Spanish and English translation, transcends borders Literature as it invites readers into a shared world of ideas, visions, and dreams. Sixty-four announced January 27, 2003 great Mexican writers and painters are collected here. Newbery Award For the most distinguished contribution to American West Side Story literature for Bernstein children Set among immigrant families of New 2003 winner: York's West Side, this play dramatizes a Crispin: The Cross clash of cultures and the plight of of Lead by Avi young, “star-crossed” lovers in a (Hyperion) modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s This is an action- Romeo and Juliet. filled -turner set in 14th-century A Raisin in the Sun England. “Asa’s Hansberry son” is a 13-year- This drama of a black family moving old who is into a white neighborhood brought this suddenly playwright overnight fame and success. orphaned and It is a groundbreaking portrayal of the stripped of home and possessions. truth of black people's lives that made Accused of murder and wanted dead or American theatrical history. alive, Crispin flees his village and falls in with a juggler, Bear, who becomes his The Crucible protector and teacher. Relentlessly Miller pursued by Crispin’s enemies, the pair When a young girl accuses Elizabeth flees to solve the mystery of his identity Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous and fight the injustices of feudalism. church leaders and townspeople insist that she be brought to trial. Based on historical people and real events, this is a searing portrait of the Puritan community of Salem and the recurring human tragedy of witch-hunts, in whatever guise.

19 2003 Newbery Honor Michael L. Printz Award Books: Recognizing excellence in literature written for

young adults. 2003 The House of the Winner: Postcards from Scorpion by Nancy No Man's Land by Farmer (Atheneum) Aidan Chambers Farmer tackles the This book alternates provocative topics of between two stories: contemporarily, cloning, the value of life, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a illegal immigration and daunting Amsterdam at the request of the drug trade in a coming-of-age novel his English grandmother and set in a desolate futuristic desert. historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui

relates her experience of British Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia soldiers's attempts to liberate Holland Reilly Giff (Random House) from its German occupation. 12-year-old Hollis unfolds her story

of foster care and a search for Printz Honors: Hole in My Life by Jack family in images from her Gantos, My Heartbeat by Garett sketchbook, which reveal both her Freymann-Wyer, The House of the memories and her artistic soul. Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf) Hiaasen’s wildly funny satire features the new kid, Roy, joining forces with tough Beatrice and the elusive Mullet Fingers to defeat a bully, thwart an avaricious corporation, and save a colony of burrowing owls. Mildred L BatchelderAward: A Corner of the Universe by Recognizing the most Ann M. Martin (Scholastic) outstanding children's With the surprising arrival of a book translated into mentally disabled uncle, 12-year- English. 2003 Winner: old Hattie Owen’s world is The Thief Lord by turned upside down. Cornelia Funke Prosper and Bo are Surviving the Applewhites by orphans on the run who Stephanie S. Tolan hide out in Venice, (HarperCollins) where they meet a mysterious character Pierced and spike-haired Jake, who calls himself the "Thief Lord." The has been expelled from every Thief Lord has secrets of his own and possible public school before his soon the boys are thrust into unwilling arrival at Wit’s End, circumstances that will lead them to a N.C. and the homeschool run by the fantastic, spellbinding conclusion. chaotic Applewhite family.

20 Coretta Scott King Award: Sibert Honor Books: Honoring African-American authors and Six Days in October by Karen illustrators of outstanding books Blumenthal and Hole In My Life by written or illustrated for children and Jack Gantos young adults. 2003 Winner: Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes When Wesley Boone writes a poem for his high school English class, some of his classmates clamor to read their poems aloud too. Soon they're having weekly poetry sessions and, one by one, Sydney Taylor Book the eighteen students are Award for Older Readers: opening up and taking on the (Sponsored by the Association of risky challenge of self- Jewish Libraries) 2003 revelation. Through the Winner: Hana’s Suitcase poetry they share and (second story) by Karen narratives in which they Levine Alternating chapters reveal their most intimate thoughts successfully tell two stories: a about themselves and one another, bleak story of a young girl's their words and lives show what lies pointless suffering and death, the other beneath the skin, behind the eyes, a hopeful one from today’s children beyond the masquerade. who vow to prevent a repeat of history.

Honors: The Red Rose Box Honors: One Candle by Eve Bunting, by Brenda Woods A Picture of Grandmother by Esther Hautzig, and Smoke and Ashes by Barbara Rogasky Robert F. Sibert Award: Recognizing excellence in non-fiction literature. 2003 Winner: The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler by James Cross Giblin In a straightforward and non-sensational manner, Giblin explores the forces that shaped Scott O’Dell Award for the man as well as the social conditions Historical Fiction: that furthered his rapid rise to power. 2003 Winner: Trouble Don’t Last He traces the arc of Hitler's life from his by Shelley Pearsall This action-packed childhood in Austria and his youthful novel presents a quest for freedom on ambition to be an artist to his final days the Underground Railroad in an embattled bunker under Berlin. that realistically blends What emerges is a portrait of a kindness and cruelty. This charismatic leader as well as a deeply is a memorable portrayal of disturbed man—a combination that has a pair of slaves’ haphazard, proved deadly time and time again serendipitous and dangerous escape to throughout history. freedom that proves gripping from beginning to end.

21 Margaret Edwards Award Annie on My Mind Recognizing lifetime contribution to High school senior Liza literature for young adults. falls deeply in love with 2003 Winner: Nancy Garden Annie, whose school is as rough as Liza's is sheltered. Not only does Liza have to come to terms with her own feelings, but she also has to deal with the reactions of her parents and her school's administration. Annie, considered a breakthrough book when it was published in 1982, is still in print. Although it was initially very well received, in 1993 it was burned in Kansas City and removed from school libraries in several districts. Finally, it was the subject of a First Amendment author of Annie on My Mind. lawsuit when a group of courageous

teens sued to have it returned to school “Now I write as close to full time as library shelves. After a trial in 1995, a possible, teach a correspondence school federal district court judge ruled in the course in writing, visit schools to talk book's favor. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; about books and writing, and make for teens. An ALA Best Book for Young speeches about writing and about Adults; ALA/YALSA Best of the Best; censorship. My books have appeared on Best; Booksellers' Choice; one many lists of "best" and recommended of ALA/YALSA 100 Best Books for YAs, books, and in 2001, I was surprised and etc.) honored to receive the Robert B. Downs

Intellectual Freedom Award for my From: work defending my novel Annie On My http://members.aol.com/nancygarden/ab Mind from an attempt to ban it from outme.html libraries in a Kansas school district, and for my anti-censorship efforts in general. I got another wonderful surprise in January 2003 when I learned that the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association had given me the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing books for teens!

For information about the First Amendment court case involving Annie on My Mind, please contact me directly at [email protected]

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