5.8/7 Ballad of Lucy Whipple ­ Cushman, Karen. In 1849, twelve-year-old California Morning Whipple, who renames herself Lucy, is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a rough California mining town.

6.2/11 Beauty ­ McKinley, Robin. A daughter gives her life to save her father and is doomed to live in a monster's castle. 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.

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.

6.8/4 (92) Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt ­ Fritz, Jean. Follows the life of the dynamic twenty-sixth president, discussing his conservation work, hunting expeditions, family life, and political career.

5.0/3 Chuck and Danielle ­ Dickinson, Peter. Danielle's pet whippet, Chuck, is terrified of absolutely everything, but Danielle is sure that Chuck is going to save the universe one day.

5.5/8 Dealing With Dragons ­ Wrede, Patricia. Bored with traditional palace life, a princess goes off to live with a group of dragons and soon becomes involved with fighting against some disreputable wizards who want to steal away the dragons' kingdom.

5.3/6 The Folk Keeper - Billingsley, Franny. Orphan Corinna disguises herself as a boy to pose as a Folk Keeper, one who keeps the Evil Folk at bay, and discovers her heritage as a seal maiden when she is taken to live with a wealthy family in their manor by the sea.

4.9/2 Gift of the Girl Who Couldn't Hear ­ Shreve, Susan. Two friends, one of whom is deaf, help each other when tryouts are held for a seventh-grade production of "Annie".

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.

5.2/7 The Great Brain ­ Fitgerald, John. The exploits of the Great Brain of Adenville, Utah are described by his younger brother, frequently the victim of the Great Brain's schemes for gaining prestige or money.

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.

6.6/16 The Hobbit ­ Tolkien, J. R. R. The first of Tolkien's tales set in his fantasy realm of Middle Earth and featuring the adventures of a hobbit hero.

4.6/7 Holes - Sachar, Louis. As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

7.2/9 Incident at Hawk's Hill ­ Eckert, Allan W. Ben was too small for his six years, and he seemed to get along much better with animals than people. One day in June, 1870, Ben wandered away from his home and disappeared without a trace. How he survived most of a summer in the wilds by forging a bond with a female badger is a poignant story of human courage and change.

4.2/4 Letters from Rifka ­ Hesse, Karen. In letters to her cousin, a young Jewish girl chronicles her family's flight from Russia in 1919 and her own experiences when she must be left in Belgium for a while when the others emigrate to America.

5.4/7 Master Puppeteer ­ Paterson, Katherine. Feudal Japan is the setting for this story of an apprentice puppeteer and his search for a Robin Hood-like bandit.

4.2/1 The Midnight Horse ­ Fleischman, Sid. Touch enlists the help of The Great Chaffalo, a ghostly magician, to thwart his great-uncle's plans to put Touch into the orphan house and swindle The Red Raven Inn away from Miss Sally.

5.2/6 My Side of the Mountain ­ George, Jean C. Sam Gribley is tired of living in a crowded New York City apartment, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountain wilderness to forge a life of his own. No one takes his plans seriously--except Sam himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he must rely on his own ingenuity and on the resources of the land to survive. And survive he does. Alone in the mountains, Sam learns about courage, danger, and the true meaning of companionship, and captures it all in his journal.

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.

4.4/4 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.

4.7/7 Stonewords: A Ghost Story - Conrad, Pam. Zoe discovers that her house is occupied by the ghost of an eleven-year-old girl, who carries her back to the day of her death in 1870 to try to alter that tragic event.

4.8/3 Strider ­ Cleary, Beverly. In a series of diary entries, Leigh tells how he comes to terms with his parents' divorce, acquires joint custody of an abandoned dog, and joins the track team at school.

3.5/5 There's a Girl in My Hammerlock ­ Spinelli, Jerry. Thirteen-year-old Maisie joins her school's formerly all-male wrestling team and tries to last through the season, despite opposition from other students, her best friend, and her own teammates.

4.6/4 Thunder Rolling in the Mountains ­ Odell, Scott. In the late nineteenth century, a young Nez Perce girl relates how her people were driven off their land by the U. S. Army and forced to retreat north until their eventual surrender.

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.

5.9/7 View from Saturday ­ Konigsburg, E. L. Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition.

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...

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.