 | Title: Firegirl Author: Tony Abbott Summary: A middle school boy's life is changed when Jessica, a girl disfigured by burns, starts attending his Catholic school while receiving treatment at a local hospital. |
 | Title: Down the rabbit hole Author: Peter Abrahams Summary: Like her idol Sherlock Holmes, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill uses her intellect to solve a murder case in her home town of Echo Falls. |
 | Title: The book of three Author: Lloyd Alexander Summary: Taran, The Assistant Pig-Keeper, longs to be a hero. He begins his journey with a strange assortment of companions on a dangerous mission to save his beloved land, Prydain. Packed with action, humor, romance, and gallantry, Taran's adventures chronicle his beloved Prydain and his battle with the forces of evil. |
 | Title: Gilda Joyce, psychic investigator Author: Jennifer Allison Summary: During the summer before ninth grade, intrepid Gilda Joyce invites herself to the San Francisco mansion of distant cousin Lester Splinter and his thirteen-year-old daughter, where she uses her purported psychic abilities and detective skills to solve the mystery of the mansion's boarded-up tower. |
 | Title: Crispin : the cross of lead Author: Avi Summary: Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret. |
 | Title: Lupita Manana Author: Patricia Beatty Summary: To help her poverty-stricken family, 13-year-old Lupita enters California as an illegal alien and starts to work while constantly on the watch for la migra. |
 | Title: Parent swap Author: Terence Blacker Summary: Because his life is a bit of a mess, thirteen-year-old Danny Bell agrees to let ParentSwap(tm) try to match him with his ideal parents, but he soon realizes that the company is about more than giving adolescents a new start. |
 | Title: The Shakespeare stealer Author: Gary Blackwood Summary: A young orphan boy is ordered by his master to infiltrate Shakespeare's acting troupe in order to steal the script of Hamlet, but he discovers instead the meaning of friendship and loyalty. |
 | Title: Gideon the cutpurse Author: Linda Buckley-Archer Summary: Ignored by his father and sent to Derbyshire for the weekend, twelve-year-old Peter and his new friend, Kate, are accidentally transported back in time to 1763 England where they are befriended by a reformed cutpurse. |
 | Title: Year of impossible goodbyes Author: Sook Nyul Choi Summary: A young Korean girl survives the oppressive Japanese and Russian occupation of North Korea during the 1940s, to later escape to freedom in South Korea. |
 | Title: Al Capone does my shirts Author: Gennifer Choldenko Summary: A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister. |
 | Title: The White Mountains Author: John Christopher Summary: Young Will Parker and his companions make a perilous journey toward an outpost of freedom where they hope to escape from the ruling Tripods, who capture mature human beings and make them docile, obedient servants. |
 | Title: Things not seen Author: Andrew Clements Summary: When fifteen-year-old Bobby wakes up and finds himself invisible, he and his parents and his new blind friend Alicia try to find out what caused his condition and how to reverse it. |
 | Title: The Supernaturalist Author: Eoin Colfer Summary: In futuristic Satellite City, fourteen-year-old Cosmo Hill escapes from his abusive orphanage and teams up with three other people who share his unusual ability to see supernatural creatures, and together they determine the nature and purpose of the swarming blue Parasites that are invisible to most humans. |
 | Title: Crazy lady! Author: Jane Leslie Conly Summary: As he tries to come to terms with his mother's death, Vernon finds solace in his growing relationship with the neighborhood outcasts, an alcoholic and her retarded son. |
 | Title: Prairie songs Author: Pam Conrad Summary: Louisa's life in a loving pioneer family on the Nebraska prairie is altered by the arrival of a new doctor and his beautiful, tragically frail wife. |
 | Title: Flipped Author: Wendelin Van Draanen Summary: In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years. |
 | Title: Homecoming Author: Cynthia Voigt Summary: Abandoned by their mother, four children begin a search for a home and an identity. |
 | Title: So B. It Author: Sarah Weeks Summary: After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is. |
 | Title: Adam Canfield of the Slash Author: Michael Winerip Summary: While serving as co-editors of their school newspaper, middle-schoolers Adam and Jennifer uncover fraud and corruption in their school and in the city's government. |
 | Title: What I call life Author: Jill Wolfson Summary: Placed in a group foster home, eleven-year-old Cal Lavender learns how to cope with life from the four other girls who live there and from their storytelling guardian, the Knitting Lady. |
 | Title: Searching for dragons Author: Patricia C. Wrede Summary: With the aid of King Mandanbar, Princess Cimorene rescues the dragon Kazul and saves the Enchanted Forest from a band of wicked wizards. |
 | Title: Pay the piper Author: Jane Yolen Summary: When Callie interviews the band, Brass Rat, for her school newspaper, her feelings are ambivalent, but when all the children of Northampton begin to disappear on Halloween, she knows where the dangerous search must begin. |
 | Title: Strays like us Author: Richard Peck Summary: When her drug-addict mother can no longer care for her, twelve-year-old Molly comes to stay with her great-aunt and slowly begins to realize that others in the small town also feel as if they don't belong. |
 | Title: The teacher's funeral : a comedy in three parts Author: Richard Peck Summary: In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dreams of quitting school and joining a wheat threshing crew are disrupted when his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean old Myrt Arbuckle hauls off and dies. |
 | Title: Criss cross Author: Lynne Rae Perkins Summary: Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the meaning of life and love. |
 | Title: Freak the Mighty Author: Rodman Philbrick Summary: At the beginning of eighth grade, learning disabled Max and his new friend Freak, whose birth defect has affected his body but not his brilliant mind, find that when they combine forces they make a powerful team. |
 | Title: The golden compass Author: Philip Pullman Summary: Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. |
 | Title: The lightning thief Author: Rick Riordan Summary: Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson learns he is a demigod, the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea. His mother sends him to a summer camp for demigods where he and his new friends set out on a quest to prevent a war between the gods. |
 | Title: After the dancing days Author: Margaret I. Rostkowski Summary: A forbidden friendship with a badly disfigured soldier in the aftermath of World War I forces thirteen-year-old Annie to redefine the word hero and to question conventional ideas of patriotism. |
 | Title: Yellow star Author: Jennifer Roy Summary: From 1939, when Syvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland's Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation. |
 | Title: The Schwa was here Author: Neal Shusterman Summary: A Brooklyn eighth-grader nicknamed Antsy befriends the Schwa, an invisible-ish boy who is tired of blending into his surroundings and going unnoticed by nearly everyone. |
 | Title: The virtual war Author: Gloria Skurzynski Summary: In a future world where global contamination has necessitated limited human contact, three young people with unique genetically engineered abilities are teamed up to wage a war in virtual reality. |
 | Title: Drums, girls, & dangerous pie Author: Jordan Sonnenblick Summary: When his younger brother is diagnosed with leukemia, thirteen-year-old Steven tries to deal with his complicated emotions, his school life, and his desire to support his family. |
 | Title: The Witch of Blackbird Pond Author: Elizabeth George Speare Summary: Uprooted from her birthplace in Barbados, Kit Tyler is treated with suspicion on the unfamiliar shores of colonial Connecticut in 1687. A Newbery Award winner. Full-color illustrations. |
 | Title: Bella at midnight Author: Diane Stanley Summary: Raised by peasants, Bella discovers that she is actually the daughter of a knight and finds herself caught up in a terrible plot that will change her life and the kingdom forever. |
 | Title: Roll of thunder, hear my cry Author: Mildred D. Taylor Summary: A black family living in Mississippi during the Depression of the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which its children do not understand. |
 | Title: In the house of the Queen's beasts Author: Jean Thesman Summary: Fourteen-year-old Emily finds refuge in a tree house in the yard of her new home in Seattle and develops a friendship with a troubled girl. |
 | Title: HIT THE ROAD Author: Caroline B. Cooney Summary: Sixteen-year-old Brittany acts as chauffeur for her grandmother and three other eighty-plus-year-old women going to what is supposedly their college reunion, on a long drive that involves lies, theft, and kidnappings. |
 | Title: Lionboy Author: Zizou Corder Summary: After saving the lions from evil Maccomo, Charlie, a boy with the ability to speak the language of cats, goes to Venice to search for his parents and solve the mystery of their kidnapping with help from Bulgarian King Boris. |
 | Title: Framed Author: Frank Cottrell Boyce Summary: Dylan and his sisters have some ideas about how to make Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel into a more profitable business, but it is not until some strange men arrive in their small town of Manod, Wales with valuable paintings, and their father disappears, that they consider turning to crime. |
 | Title: The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963 Author: Christopher Paul Curtis Summary: The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963. |
 | Title: The loud silence of Francine Green Author: Karen Cushman Summary: In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school in Los Angeles where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values. |
 | Title: Boy : tales of childhood Author: Roald Dahl Summary: Boy is a funny, insightful and at times macabre glimpse into the early life of Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors. We discover his experiences of the English public school system, the idyllic paradise of summer holidays in Norway, the pleasures (and pains) of the sweetshop, and how it is that he avoided being a Boazer. |
 | Title: The Last Apprentice : Revenge of the witch Author: Joseph Delaney Summary: Young Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son, starts work as an apprentice for the village spook, whose job is to protect ordinary folk from ghouls, boggarts, and all manner of wicked beasties. |
 | Title: Eva Author: Peter Dickinson Summary: After a terrible accident, a young girl wakes up to discover that she has been given the body of a chimpanzee. |
 | Title: Chicken boy Author: Frances O'Roark Dowell Summary: Since the death of his mother, Tobin's family life and school life have been in disarray, but after he starts raising chickens with his seventh-grade classmate, Henry, everything starts to fall into place. |
 | Title: The house of the scorpion Author: Nancy Farmer Summary: Matteo Alacran was not Born; He was Harvested. His DNA came from El Patron, lord of a country called Opium -- a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri dish. Then he was placed in the womb of a cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster -- except for El Patron. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patron's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacran Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect. Book jacket. |
 | Title: The oracle betrayed Author: Catherine Fisher Summary: After she is chosen to be Bearer-of-the-god, Mirany questions the established order and sets out, along with a musician and a scribe, to find the legitimate heir of the religious leader known as the Archon. |
 | Title: The ruins of Gorlan Author: John Flanagan Summary: When fifteen-year-old Will is rejected by battleschool, he becomes the reluctant apprentice to the mysterious Ranger Halt, and winds up protecting the kingdom from danger. |
 | Title: Lincoln : a photobiography Author: Russell Freedman Summary: Photographs and text trace the life of the Civil War President. |
 | Title: I, Coriander Author: Sally Gardner Summary: In 17th century London, Coriander, a girl who has inherited magic from her mother, must find a way to use this magic in order to save both herself and an inhabitant of the fairy world where her mother was born. |
 | Title: Hear the wind blow Author: Mary Downing Hahn Summary: With their mother dead and their home burned, a thirteen-year-old boy and his little sister set out across Virginia in search of relatives during the final days of the Civil War. |
 | Title: Princess Academy Author: Shannon Hale Summary: While attending a strict academy for potential princesses with the other girls from her mountain village, fourteen-year-old Miri discovers unexpected talents and connections to her homeland. |
 | Title: The house of Dies Drear Author: Virginia Hamilton Summary: A black family tries to unravel the secrets of their new home which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. |
 | Title: Airball : my life in briefs Author: L.D. Harkrader Summary: Uncoordinated Kansas seventh-grader Kirby Nickel braves his coach's ire and becomes captain of the basketball team in order to help him prove that NBA star Brett McGrew is the father he has never known. |
 | Title: Just for you to know Author: Cheryl Harness Summary: Carmen longs to be invisible from her continuously embarrassing family, but when some surprising news emerges about her mother Carmen learns about the importance of having a family. |
 | Title: Olive's ocean Author: Kevin Henkes Summary: On a summer visit to her grandmother's cottage by the ocean, twelve-year-old Martha gains perspective on the death of a classmate, on her relationship with her grandmother, on her feelings for an older boy, and on her plans to be a writer. |
 | Title: Flush Author: Carl Hiaasen Summary: With their father jailed for sinking a river boat, Noah Underwood and his younger sister, Abbey, must gather evidence that the owner of this floating casino is emptying his bilge tanks into the protected waters around their Florida Keys home. |
| Title: A murder for Her Majesty Author: Beth Hilgartner Summary: Horrified at having witnessed her father's murder and fearing that the killers are agents of Queen Elizabeth I, eleven-year-old Alice Tuckfield hides in the Yorkshire cathedral by disguising herself as one of the choirboys. |
| Title: Defiance Author: Valerie Hobbs Summary: While vacationing in the country, eleven-year-old Toby, a cancer patient, learns some important lessons about living and dying from an elderly poet and her cow. |
 | Title: Stormbreaker Author: Anthony Horowitz Summary: After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6. |
 | Title: The vacation Author: Polly Horvath Summary: When his parents go to Africa to work as missionaries, twelve-year-old Henry's eccentric aunts, Pigg and Mag, take him on a cross-country car trip, allowing him to gain insight into his family and himself. |
 | Title: The Star of Kazan Author: Eva Ibbotson Summary: After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany. |
 | Title: Redwall Author: Brian Jacques Summary: When the peaceful life of ancient Redwall Abbey is shattered by the arrival of the evil rat Cluny and his villainous hordes, Matthias, a young mouse, determines to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior which, he is convinced, will help Redwall's inhabitants destroy the enemy. |
 | Title: The phantom tollbooth Author: Norton Juster Summary: A journey through a land where Milo learns the importance of words and numbers provides a cure for his boredom. |
 | Title: The outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place Author: E. L. Konigsburg Summary: Upon leaving an oppressive summer camp, twelve-year-old Margaret Rose Kane spearheads a campaign to preserve three unique towers her grand uncles have been building in their back yard for over forty years. |
 | Title: The wreckers Author: Iain Lawrence Summary: Shipwrecked after a vicious storm, fourteen-year-old John Spencer attempts to save his father and himself while also dealing with an evil secret about the English coastal town where they are stranded. |
 | Title: A wrinkle in time Author: Madeleine L'Engle Summary: Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. |
 | Title: ELLA ENCHANTED Author: Gail Carson Levine Summary: In this novel based on the story of Cinderella, Ella struggles against the childhood curse that forces her to obey any order given to her. |
 | Title: Gathering blue Author: Lois Lowry Summary: Lame and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed from her squalid village to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians. |
 | Title: Hidden talents Author: David Lubar Summary: When thirteen-year-old Martin arrives at an alternative school for misfits and problem students, he falls in with a group of boys with psychic powers and discovers something surprising about himself. |
 | Title: Heat Author: Mike Lupica Summary: Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof. |
 | Title: MadCat Author: Kathy Mackel Summary: Fast-pitch softball catcher MadCat Campione's love for the sport--and her relationship with her best friends--is strained when her team competes on a national level. MadCat Campione is the best twelve-year-old catcher in New Hampshire.. And this year her fastpitch softball team, the Norwich Sting, is going National. They'll be shooting to make the National Fastpitch Softball World Series, playing against the best teams from around the country. |
 | Title: A corner of the universe Author: Ann M. Martin Summary: The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town. |
 | Title: Saffy's angel Author: Hilary McKay Summary: After learning that she was adopted, thirteen-year-old Saffron's relationship with her eccentric, artistic family changes, until they help her go back to Italy where she was born to find a special momento of her past. |
 | Title: Scorpions Author: Walter Dean Myers Summary: After reluctantly taking on the leadership of the Harlem gang, the Scorpions, Jamal finds that his enemies treat him with respect when he acquires a gun--until a tragedy occurs. |
 | Title: The other side of truth Author: Beverley Naidoo Summary: Smuggled out of Nigeria after their mother's murder, Sade and her younger brother are abandoned in London when their uncle fails to meet them at the airport and they are fearful of their new surroundings and of what may have happened to their journalist father back in Nigeria. |
 | Title: Island of the Blue Dolphins Author: Scott O'Dell Summary: Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life. |
 | Title: Airborn Author: Kenneth Oppel Summary: Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth's surface. |
 | Title: Eragon Author: Christopher Paolini Summary: In Aagaesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters. |
 | Title: The same stuff as stars Author: Katherine Paterson Summary: When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars. |
 | Title: Soldier's heart Author: Gary Paulsen Summary: Fictionalized account of Charley Goddard, who at age 15, joined the fight in the Civil War, and participated in many battles, including Gettysburg. |
 | Title: Wolf brother Author: Michelle Paver Summary: 6,000 years ago, twelve-year-old Torak and his guide, a wolf cub, set out on a dangerous journey to fulfill an oath the boy made to his dying father--to travel to the Mountain of the World Spirit to destroy a demon-possessed bear that threatens all the clans. |