Pick me up and look at my cover. Read a bit of me. What am I? An historical fiction? An adventure? A mystery? All wrong! I am something that none of the other books are: a history. That’s right, I belong up there on the shelf among all the other great history textbooks. I am the best kind of textbook: very epic, awesome, courageous, cool, fun-loving, and modest. You can’t forget modest. (So, pick me?)

– mb, 6th grade

To whomever may read this, I reveal the cruelty of The Battle Commander in putting me in this war…who will most likely read these words. But please, God, let Maddie somehow find this. I have three weeks to complete my story to the most minute detail and win the Battle of the Kids Books. My work will end up being beautifully poetic yet very direct, and utterly engrossing. It will contain shades of horror and love, so wonderfully intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish your emotion, hard to know a thing at all.

– rgn, 8th grade

I am a grim reflection of human and animal mortality, survival, and love. Relating the dangers of poverty and war in developing countries, I enlighten readers about the horrors of life and survival more emotionally than most non-fiction books. In doing so, I tell a beautiful, personal story of Sophie and her family, which includes, of all things, cute, endangered bonobos!  Don’t let me become Endangered! (Or even Extinct!)