6.1/11 After the First Death ­ Cormier, Robert. Who will be the next to die? They've taken the children. And the son of a general. But that isn't enough. More horrors must come...after the first death.

5.0/4 Afternoon of the Elves ­ Lisle, Janet Taylor. As Hillary works in the miniature village, allegedly built by elves, in Sara-Kate's backyard, she becomes more and more curious about Sara-Kate's real life inside her big, gloomy house with her mysterious, silent mother.

5.3/2 Alida's Song ­ Paulsen, Gary. The wonderful grandmother whom readers saw through the eyes of a young boy in The Cookcamp reaches out to him when he is fourteen, offering him a haven from his harsh and painful family life. She arranges a summer job for him on the farm where she is a cook for Gunnar and Olaf, bachelor brothers. Farm life offers the camaraderie and routine of hard work, good food, peaceful evenings spent making music togther, even learning to dance. Life with Alida gives the boy strength and faith in himself, drawing him away from the edge and into the center of life.

6.7/26 Amber Spyglass ­ Pullman, Philip. Lyra and Will find themselves at the center of a battle between the forces of the Authority and those gathered by Lyra's father, Lord Asriel.

4.8/5 Among the Hidden ­ Haddix, Margaret Peterson. In a future where the Population Police enforce the law limiting a family to only two children, Luke has lived all his twelve years in isolation and fear on his family's farm, until another "third" convinces him that the government is wrong.

4.5/5 At the Sound of the Beep ­ Sachs, Marilyn. Distraught at the thought of their parents divorcing, a brother and sister run away from home and take up residence in Golden Gate Park, where they encounter many homeless people and hear there is a murderer loose among them.

4.5/3 The Barn ­ Avi. To fulfill their dying father's last request, Ben and his siblings build a barn in the Oregon Territory.

6.2/11 Beauty ­ McKinley, Robin. This much-loved retelling of the classic French tale Beauty and the Beast elicits the familiar magical charm, but is more believable and complex than the traditional story.

6.1/7 Birchbark House ­ Erdrich, Louise. Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847.

5.0/3 The Borning Room ­ Fleischman, Paul. Lying at the end of her life in the room where she was born in 1851, Georgina remembers what it was like to grow up on the Ohio frontier.

4.6/5 Bridge to Terabithia ­ Paterson, Katherine. The life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm.

5.0/7 Bud, Not Buddy ­ Curtis, Christopher Paul. Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H. E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

5.3/2 Bull Run ­ Fleischman, Paul. The author creates 16 characters from all walks of life and traces their thoughts, emotions, and experiences, from their first hopes for a brave, new world through the brutal reality of war. He shows us history as lived by its makers, and lets us look through their eyes--Northern, Southern, courageous, and cowardly.

5.5/3 Call Me Frances Tucket ­ Paulsen, Gary. Having separated from the one-armed trapper who taught him how to survive in the wilderness of the Old West, fifteen-year-old Francis gets lost and continues to have adventures involving dangerous men and a friendly mule.

4.9/6 Castle in the Attic ­ Winthrop, Elizabeth. William gets a model of a castle for a gift with a finger-high knight. When William picks up the tiny knight, he comes alive. Suddenly William is off on a fantastic quest to another land and another time where a fiery dragon and an evil wizard are waiting to do battle.

6.4/8 Catherine, Called Birdy ­ Cushman, Karen. Catherine is destined to marry a rich man no matter how she feels about it. She manages to send several would-be husbands packing, but when a shaggy-bearded suitor from the north comes to call, will she lose the battle?

5.2/7 Charley Skedaddle ­ Beatty, Patricia. During the Civil War, a twelve-year-old Bowery Boy from New York City joins the Union Army as a drummer, deserts during a battle in Virginia, and encounters an old mountain woman.

4.4/5 Charlotte's Web ­ White, E. B. Wilbur was lovingly raised by a girl named Fern. But now he's a barn pig. He's bored and lonely--until he meets Charlotte, the beautiful grey spider who also lives in the barn. Charlotte thinks of a wonderful way to save Wilbur from a pig's unhappy fate. Her cleaver plan will delight you, in this famous story.

4.7/8 Come Sing Jimmy Jo ­ Paterson, Katherine. Young James is a singing star on stage, but his offstage world is coming apart.

4.2/6 Daphne's Book ­ Hahn, Mary Downing. While she denies it to her friends, Jessica comes to like the outcast Daphne as they work on their class project.

5.5/16 Ender's Game- Card, Orson Scott. Intense is the word for Ender's Game. Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has taken to breeding military geniuses -- and then training them in the arts of war... The early training, not surprisingly, takes the form of 'games'... Ender Wiggin is a genius among geniuses; he wins all the games... He is smart enough to know that time is running out. But is he smart enough to save the planet?

5.2/2 Everywhere ­ Brooks, Bruce. Afraid that his beloved grandfather will die after suffering a heart attack, a nine-year-old boy agrees to join ten-year-old Dooley in performing a mysterious ritual called soul switching.

4.8/6 Face on the Milk Carton ­ Cooney, Caroline. No one ever really paid close attention to the faces of the missing children on the milk cartons. But as Janie Johnson glanced at the face of the ordinary little girl with her hair in tight pigtails, wearing a dess with a narrow white collar - a three-year-old who had been kidnapped twelve years before from a shopping mall in New Jersey - she felt overcome with shock. She recognized that little girl - it was she. How could it possibly be true? Janie can't believe that her loving parents kidnapped her, but as she begins to piece things together, nothing makes sense. Something is terribly wrong. Are Mr. and Mrs. Johnson really Janie's parents? And if not, who is Janie Johnson, and what really happened?

4.2/11 Fallen Angels ­ Myers, Walter Dean. Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

4.3/2 A Fine White Dust ­ Rylant, Cynthia. Pete is a boy who needs to know where he stands with God, his parents, and his best friend, a confirmed atheist.

4.9/3 The Foxman ­ Paulsen, Gary. A town boy sent to live on a remote wilderness farm forms a friendship with an elderly, disfigured man who teaches him many things.

5.5/5 Freak the Mighty ­ Philbrick, Rodman. 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.

5.8/6 The Ghost Belonged to Me ­ Peck, Richard. In 1913 in the Midwest, a quartet of characters share adventures from exploding steamboats to "exorcising" a ghost.

5.7/7 The Giver ­ Lowry, Lois. Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

7.5/22 Golden Compass ­ Pulllman, Philip. 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.

5.7/7 Hatchet ­ Paulsen, Gary. After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.

5.4/6 The Haymeadow ­ Paulsen, Gary. Fourteen-year-old John comes of age and gains self-reliance during the summer he spends up in the Wyoming mountains tending his father's herd of sheep.

4.4/16 Homecoming ­ Voight, Cynthia. Young Dicey fights to keep her brothers and sister together and out of foster homes.

4.4/8 I Am Regina ­ Keehn, Sally M. 10-year-old Regina is kidnapped by Allegheny Indians, who kill her father and brother. She begins to agjust ot her new life as an Indian, but she can never forget her mother, and wonders if they will ever meet again.

5.2/7 I Am the Cheese ­ Cormier, Robert. A young boy desperately tries to unlock his past yet knows he must hide those memories if he is to remain alive.

4.8/4 Ida Early Comes Over the Mountain ­ Burch, Robert. Tough times in rural Georgia during the Depression take a lively turn when spirited Ida Early arrives to keep house for the Suttons.

5.7/8 Jacob Have I Loved ­ Paterson, Katherine. Sara Louise Bradshaw is sick and tired of her beautiful twin Caroline. Ever since they were born, Caroline has been the pretty one, the talented one, the better sister. Even now, Caroline seems to take everything: Louise's friends, their parents' love, her dreams for the future.For once in her life, Louise wants to be the special one. But in order to do that, she must first figure out who she is . . . and find a way to make a place for herself outside her sister's shadow.

3.8/2 Journey ­ MacLachlan, Patricia. When their mother goes off, leaving her two children with their grandparents, they feel as if their past has been erased until Grandfather finds a way to restore it to them.

5.8/6 Julie of the Wolves ­ George, Jean Craighead. Julie is accepted by a pack of wolves. She gains an appreciation of her Eskimo heritage which is in conflict with her desire to forsacke it.

4.0/3 Keeper of the Doves ­ Byars, Betsy. In the late 1800s in Kentucky, Amie McBee and her four sisters both fear and torment the reclusive and seemingly sinister Mr. Tominski, but their father continues to provide for his needs.

5.3/6 Kokopelli's Flute ­ Hobbs, Will. The magic had always been there...Tepary Jones had always felt it. Fascinated by the magic of the ancient cliff dwelling called Picture House, he knew it was the perfect place to view his first total eclipse of the moon. Perhaps it would help him understand the secrets of the Ancient Ones. Tep and his dog Dusty waited for the lunar show. What Tep witnessed, to his horror, were robbers with shovels chipping into the red sandstone, destroying the ancient pictures, and stealing the priceless treasures! Left behind in their haste was a small polished bone flute. Something told Tep he shouldn't put the flute to his lips, but he just couldn't resist. And then the magic began...

5.5/5 The Light in the Forest ­ Richter, Conrad. A four-year-old white boy is adopted into an Indian warrior tribe.

6.0/11 The Little Princess ­ Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Sara Crewe, a pupil at Miss Minchin's London school, is left in poverty when her father dies but is later rescued by a mysterious benefactor.

5.0/5 A Long Way from Chicago ­ Peck, Richard. A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

5.6/9 Lyddie ­ Paterson, Katherine. Impoverished Vermont farm girl Lyddie Worthen is determined to gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Mass., in the 1840's.

5.0/5 Make Lemonade ­ Wolff, Virginia. In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.

4.7/5 Maniac Magee ­ Spinelli, Jerry. Maniac Magee was a legend. Kids were always talking about how fast he could run; how high he could jump; how no knot would stay knotted once he began to untie it. But the thing Maniac Magee was best known for is what he did for the kids from the black East End and those from the white West end of town.

4.5/2 Mick Harte Was Here ­ Park, Barbara. Thirteen-year-old Phoebe recalls her younger brother Mick and his death in a bicycle accident.

5.2/9 Midnight Hour Encores ­ Brooks, Bruce A sixteen-year-old cellist and musical prodigy travels cross-country with her father to meet her mother, a product of the 1960s, who abandoned her as a baby.

6.0/3 Midwife's Apprentice ­ Cushman, Karen. In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.

5.0/5 Monkey Island ­ Fox, Paula. Eleven-year-old Clay Garrity is on his own. His father lost his job and left the family. Now Clay's mother is gone from their welfare hotel. Clay is homeless and out on the streets of New York. In the park he meets two homeless men. Buddy and Calvin become Clay's new family during those harsh winter weeks. But the streets are filled with danger and despair. If Clay leaves the streets he may never find his parents again. But if he stays on the streets he may not survive at all.

5.1/5 Monster ­ Myers, Walter Dean. While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

4.9/3 The Monument ­ Paulsen, Gary. Thirteen-year-old Rocky has her life changed by the remarkable artist who comes to her small Kansas town to design a war memorial.

4.9/2 Morning Girl ­ Dorris, Michael. In alternating chapters, Morning Girl, a twelve-year-old Taino, an her younger brother, Star Boy, vividly recreate life on a Bahamian island in 1492--a life that is rich, complex, and soon to be threatened.

5.4/11 The Moves Make the Man ­ Brooks, Bruce. A black boy and an emotionally troubled white boy in North Carolina form a precarious friendship.

4.7/5 My Daniel ­ Conrad, Pam. A grandmother tells stories of her brother's historical quest for dinosaur bones on their Nebraska farm.

5.3/5 Night Journey ­ Lasky, Kathryn. A young girl ignores her parents' wishes and persuades her great-grandmother to relate the story of her escape from Czarist Russia.

3.6/4 Nothing But the Truth ­ Avi. A ninth-grader's suspension for singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during homeroom becomes a national news story.

4.5/4 Number the Stars ­ Lowry, Lois. Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think about life before the war. But it's now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching in their town. The Nazis won't stop. The Jews of Denmark are being "relocated," so Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be part of the family. Then Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission. Somehow she must find the strength and courage to save her best friend's life. There's no turning back now.

.7/2 On My Honor ­ Bauer, Marion. A twelve-year-old boy must learn to live with his fear and grief when his swimming partner drowns.

4.5/6 On the Far Side of the Mountain ­ George, Jean Craighead. Sam's peaceful existence in his wilderness home is disrupted when his sister runs away and his pet falcon is confiscated by a conservation officer.

4.7/7 Outsiders ­ Hinton, S. E. Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders."

5.5/6 Place of Lions ­ Campbell, Eric. When the plane flying Chris and his father crashes on the Serengeti Plain, Chris sets out to find help and finds that his journey is paralleled by that of an aging lion.

5.1/4 Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights ­ Paulsen, Gary. Carley recalls the extraordinary summer when, as a troubled fourteen-year-old, he first came to northern Minnesota to stay with his blacksmith Uncle David and gained not only new skills but also a new sense of himself.

5.3/5 Prairie Songs ­ Conrad, Pam. Louisa's life on the Nebraska prairie is altered by the arrival of a new doctor and his beautiful, tragically frail wife.

5.3/7 Rabble Starkey ­ Lowry, Lois. Many things change for twelve-year-old Rabble Starkey, her mother, and her best friend Veronica Bigelow, when Veronica's mother becomes incapacitated and the Starkeys move in with the Bigelows.

6.8/17 Redwall ­ Jacques, Brian. Matthias, a young mouse, determines to find a legendary sword with which to fight the evil rat Cluny.

5.2/10 The Root Cellar ­ Lunn, Janet. For twelve-year-old Rose, the root cellar was a passage through which she could escape the present and travel back in time to the 1860s and the Civil War.

5.2/8 Rufus M. ­ Estes, Eleanor. This book relates the adventures of Rufus Moffat, living with his widowed mother and older siblings in early twentieth century Connecticut, including his encounter with an invisible piano player and his attempts at ventriloquism.

5.3/6 Shades of Gray ­ Reeder, Carolyn. At the end of the Civil War, Will reluctantly leaves his city home to live in Virginia with his aunt and the uncle he considers a "traitor" because he wouldn't fight in the war.

4.4/4 Shiloh ­ Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Marty finds a dog that he is sure is being abused. Even though he knows who owns the dog, he makes the decision to keep and care for it.

4.9/5 Sign of the Beaver ­ Speare, Elizabeth George. Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.

6.6/6 A Single Shard ­ Park, Linda Sue. Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potter's village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.

4.2/7 Small Steps ­ Sachar, Louis. Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is home in Austin, Texas, trying to turn his life around. But it's hard when you have a record, and everyone expects the worst from you. The only person who believes in him is Ginny, his 10-year old disabled neighbor. Together, they are learning to take small steps. And he seems to be on the right path, until X-Ray, a buddy from Camp Green Lake, comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme. This leads to a chance encounter with teen pop sensation, Kaira DeLeon, and suddenly his life spins out of control, with only one thing for certain. He'll never be the same again.

4.2/6 Stargirl ­ Spinelli, Jerry. In this story about the perils of popularity, the courage of nonconformity, and the thrill of first love, an eccentric student named Stargirl changes Mica High School forever.

5.2/9 Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes ­ Crutcher, Chris. An obese boy and a disfigured girl suffer the emotional scars of years of mockery at the hands of their peers. They share a hard-boiled view of the world until events in their senior year hurl them in very different directions. A story about a friendship with staying power, written with pathos and pointed humor.

4.7/8 Stepping on the Cracks ­ Hahn, Mary Downing. In 1944, while her brother is overesas fighting in World War II, eleven-year-old Margaret gets a new view of the school bully Gordy when she finds him hiding his own brother, an army deserter, and decides to help him.

6.2/16 Subtle Knife ­ Pullman, Philip. Lyra and Will journey between two worlds teeming with witches, angels, and sorcery and uncover a deadly secret: an oabject of extraordinary and devastating power. But with every step, they move closer to an even greater threat - and the truth of their own destiny.

4.4/4 Thank You, Jackie Robinson ­ Cohen, Barbara. A fatherless white boy, who shares with an old black man an enthusiasm for Jackie Robinson, takes a ball autographed by Jackie to his elderly friend's death bed.

4.5/6 A Time for Andrew ­ Hanh, Mary Downing. When he goes to spend the summer with his great-aunt in the family's old house, eleven-year-old Drew is drawn eighty years into the past to trade places with his great-great-uncle who is dying of diptheria.

5.6/15 To Kill a Mockingbird ­ Lee, Harper. Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

2.8/0.5 Train to Somewhere ­ Bunting, Eve. In the late 1800s, Marianne travels westward on the orphan train in hopes of being placed with a caring family.

7.5/7 Traitor: the Case of Benedict Arnold ­ Fritz, Jean. A study of the life and character of the brilliant Revolutionary War general who deserted to the British for money.

5.0/4 Tuck Everlasting ­ Babbitt, Natalie. Winnie Foster discovers a magic spring that has given the Tuck family eternal life. She is faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to drink from it, and whether to tell all when a stranger wants to know the secret in order to sell the water.

4.7/4 Village by the Sea ­ Fox, Paula. When her father enters the hospital to have open-heart surgery, ten-year-old Emma is sent to live with her tormented aunt and finds the experience painful until she meets a special friend.

4.6/5 Wait Till Helen Comes - Hahn, Mary Downing. Molly and Michael dislike their spooky new stepsister Heather but realize that they must try to save her when she seems ready to follow a ghost child to her doom.

5.2/9 The Watsons Go to Birmingham ­ Curtis, Christopher Paul. 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.

4.9/9 Walk Two Moons ­ Creech, Sharon. Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle's mother has disappeared. While tracing her steps on a car trip from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents, Salamanca tells a story to pass the time about a friend named Phoebe Winterbottom whose mother vanished and who received secret messages after her disappearance. One of them read, "Don't judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins." Despite her father's warning that she is "fishing in the air," Salamanca hopes to bring her home. By drawing strength from her Native American ancestry, she is able to face the truth about her mother.

5.0/4 Weasel ­ DeFelice, Cynthia. Weasel is a man the government has sent to drive off the Indians. Weasel has his own ideas about removal...Now that the Shawnees are dead or have left, Weasel has turned on the settlers. He hunts by night and sleeps by day, and he kills for the sport of it. I can't wait for the law to take care of men like Weasel..

6.4/3 What Jamie Saw ­ Coman, Carolyn. Having fled to a family friend's home after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, 9-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.

47/0.5 The Widow's Broom ­ VanAllsburg, Chris. A witch's worn-out broom serves a widow well, until her neighbors decide the thing is wicked and dangerous.

5.0/3 The Winter Room ­ Paulsen, Gary. A young boy growing up on a northern Minnesota farm describes the scenes around him and recounts his old Norwegian uncle's tales of an almost mythological logging past.

5.6/5 Woodsong ­ Paulsen, Gary. For a rugged outdoor man and his family, life in northern Minnesota is a wild experience involving wolves, deer, and the sled dogs that make their way of life possible. Includes an account of the author's first Iditarod, a dogsled race across Alaska.