Gr 6 Up—Colt is a typical 16-year-old California dude when his world is rocked by the sudden and mysterious death of his parents in a car accident...
Gr 5—8—Utilizing information from journals, newspaper articles, and government documents, Ann Malaspina's book (Rosen, 2005) spans Connecticut's earliest history...
Gr 6—9—In Jordan Sonnenblick's Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie (2004), eighth-grader Steven deals with his younger brother Jeffrey's diagnosis of leukemia...
Gr 7—10—Sophie Fitzosborne and the rest of her small royal family return in Michelle Cooper's sequel (2011) to A Brief History of Montmaray (2009, both Knopf)...
Gr 4—6—Tugs Button's family never wins anything...
Gr 8 Up—On the surface, Mal Peet's novel (Candlewick, 2005) is a book about soccer, but the heart of the story is cloaked in mystery and addresses family, poverty, environmentalism, colonialism, spiritualism, and capitalism...
K-Gr 2—In Jennifer Richard Jacobson's story (Candlewick, 2008) for beginning readers, Andy Shane is assigned to show the new student, Lark Alice Bell, around his classroom...

Gr 8 Up—This outstanding collection of short stories and poetry (Candlewick, 2011), written by celebrated authors such as Walter Dean Myers, Robert Burleigh, and Joseph Bruchac and edited by Marc Aronson and Charles R...