Book Choices

Because of Winn-Dixie 610 LexileIndia Opal Buloni has just moved to the small town of Naomi, Florida, with her

father, a preacher. Her mother abandoned them years before, and Opal feels alone

and abandoned in her new town.

At the supermarket she rescues a stray dog who looks "like a big piece of old

brown carpet that had been left out in the rain," and names him Winn-Dixie, after

the market. She soon discovers that he is great at making friends, and because of

Winn-Dixie, Opal is learning to see beyond people's surfaces.

The ex-con who runs the pet shop plays music that mesmerizes animals. An

woman rumored to be a witch is just an old lady who is half-blind, but can see with

her heart. A pinched-faced girl harbors a tragic secret. And all are soon her friends.

Bridge to Terabithia 810 LexileThere's only one thing Jess Aarons is looking forward to in fifth grade, and

that's being the fastest kid in school. He's been practicing all summer. He

hasn't had much else to do, since his mom spends all her time with his four

sisters and his dad is always working.

But when Jess arrives at the school playground to show off his speed, his

new neighbor, Leslie Burke, beats him to it. She's way faster than Jess. But

instead of being jealous, Jess admires Leslie's skill, confidence, and wild

imagination. The two become instant friends, spending hours in the woods by

their houses creating a magical kingdom. Then tragedy strikes, and Jess is

left alone. How can he ever go on?

Bud, Not Buddy 950 LexileBud has run away from his abusive foster family. He's sleeping outside and can't find

enough to eat. There's nothing left to do but go find Herman E. Calloway, the man

whose picture used to make Momma upset. That man has got to be Bud's father!

Orphaned Bud, not Buddy, Caldwell carries a ratty suitcase full of all his possessions

wherever he goes. There's the picture of his Momma as a little girl. There's Momma's

old pouch, full of smooth rocks with strange coded messages written on them. But the

most important thing is a flyer advertising "Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky

Devastators of the Depression."

Sure that this Herman E. Calloway is his father, Bud sets out to find him. But when

Calloway turns out to be a grumpy old man, Miss Thomas, the Dusky Devastator's kind

"vocal stylist," convinces him to give the ten-year-old a place to stay. Bud moves into

the big house known as Grand Calloway Station and, with the help of Momma's rocks,

soon discovers that Herman E. Calloway isn't his father at all--he's Bud's grandfather!

Dear Mr. Henshaw 910 LexileLeigh Botts adores a book about dog training by author Mr. Boyd Henshaw. To fulfill a

school assignment, Leigh painstakingly writes to Mr. Henshaw and tells him how much he

"licked" his book. And he keeps writing to him.

At first, Leigh resents the flippant replies he gets from his idol, but gradually he answers

Mr. Henshaw's questions, which are really only to encourage Leigh to put pencil to paper.

Four years later, Leigh is in the sixth grade and is still writing to Mr. Henshaw, and he

never imagines that he'd reveal so much of himself and his life to the author:

"Dear Mr. Henshaw, I am sorry I was rude in my last letter... Maybe I was mad about other

things, like Dad forgetting to send his child-support payment..."

Gradually not only his spelling and writing improve, but also his feelings about life, as Mr.

Henshaw inspires Leigh to keep a journal.

Esperanza Rising 750 Lexile

Esperanza, the daughter of a wealthy grape grower in Mexico, leads a charmed life

-- until bandits kill her father. One of his brothers pressures her mother to marry

him, but after he burns down the ranch, Esperanza, her mother, and a family of

former servants escape to California to become farm workers. There, Esperanza

must learn to work hard, which proves difficult for a girl who doesn't even know how

to use a broom. After her mother is hospitalized with Valley Fever, she joins the field

workers through the various crop seasons. But there is more trouble: Some

Mexican farmworkers are striking, and other migrants are arriving from other areas,

threatening to drive down wages. Esperanza struggles to keep her family together

-- and her hope alive.

The Giver 760 Lexile

In the perfect future world in which Jonas lives, 12-year-old children are given their life

assignments at the Ceremony of Twelve. Jonas is shocked when he is chosen to be

the new Receiver of Memories, a mysterious position of honor held by only one

person at a time. He's trained by the previous Receiver, now called the Giver. The

training consists of transferring to him memories of a past -- before the imposition of

Sameness -- that the others in the community can't even imagine, in which there was

war, hunger, and disease, but also color, weather, and strong emotions. Gradually

Jonas comes to understand, and resent, the choices that had to be made to create his

world, and the terrible secrets behind its perfection. Together he and the Giver concoct

a plan to change the way his world works, but before they can carry it out Jonas is

forced to make a decision that may destroy them all.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone 880 Lexile

Harry's magical parents were killed by the evil wizard Voldemort when he was just

a baby. Miraculously, he survives with only a lightning-bolt scar as a mysterious

reminder. Harry is taken to live with his nasty relatives -- muggles, or non-wizards

-- who hide the truth about his parents. Ten miserable years later, he gets a visit

from a genial half-giant named Hagrid with an invitation to study at Hogwarts

School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At the school, Harry makes friends, fights trolls,

learns how to play the fantastic aerial school sport, Quidditch, and uncovers a

three-headed dog that guards a secret. Meanwhile, he must contend with

Professor Snape, who hates him, and Draco Malfoy, a bratty student. When a

mystery arises about the Sorcerer's Stone, which is supposed to possess the

powers of immortality, Harry discovers that Voldemort is trying to steal it so he can

regain his powers.

Hatchet 1020 Lexile

Brian is on his way to Canada to visit his estranged father when the pilot of his

small prop plane suffers a heart attack. Brian is forced to crash-land the plane

in a lake, and finds himself stranded in the remote Canadian wilderness with

only his clothing and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present before his

departure. Brian had been distraught over his parents' impending divorce and

the secret he carries about his mother, but now he is truly desolate and alone.

Holes 660 Lexile

Stanley Yelnats, falsely convicted of stealing a celebrity's sneakers, is sent to

Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention center in the middle of the desert,

where the inmates are required to dig a large hole every day. Getting to know

the other inmates and getting used to the grueling routine is only part of the

story, though. There's a mystery behind this strange punishment that is related

to a treasure and the supposed curse on Stanley's family dating back to his

"dirty-rotten-pig-stealing" great grandfather. The keys to the mystery are

scattered among a boy named Zero, a warden with rattlesnake venom nail

polish, and a boat that is named after an onion-eating mule and sits in the

middle of a dry lake bed.

In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson 730 Lexile

In 1947, the Year of the Boar, Sixth Cousin, also known as Bandit, leaves China with her parents for a new

beginning in America. Proud of the American name that she chose herself, Shirley Temple Wong is

optimistic that her new home will be the land of many opportunities. But it's harder than she expected.

Though her classmates in Brooklyn come from a variety of backgrounds, Shirley is the only one who

doesn't speak English, and she worries that she will never have a friend. Then she gets in a fight with

Mabel, the tallest, scariest girl in the fifth grade. Though Shirley winds up with two black eyes, she is faithful

to the code of childhood and doesn't tell anyone what happened.

Her silence gains her the respect and friendship of Mabel, who gives her the gift that truly changes her life:

baseball. Soon Shirley is the biggest Brooklyn Dodgers fan of all, listening to the radio to hear the triumphs

and heartbreaks of the team and her hero, Jackie Robinson. Meanwhile, she takes piano lessons from her

landlord, Señora Rodriguez, and saves money by baby-sitting Mrs. O'Reilly's triplets. She begins to feel at

home, and yet deep within herself Shirley discovers that she wants to hold on to her memories of China,

and the knowledge that she is Chinese inside, as well as American. She can be both — a "double

happiness."

James and the Giant Peach 870 Lexile

When young James Henry Trotter is orphaned, he must leave his pleasant

home by the seaside and go to live with two cruel aunts, Sponge and Spiker,

who treat him like a slave. One day, an old man appears, offering James a

bag of crystals that he says will make marvelous things happen. The old

man's magic causes a dead peach tree to grow a piece of fruit the size of a

house, and that is the start of James' fantastic adventure.

Julie of the Wolves 868 LexileSince the death of her mother, Miyax, an Eskimo girl in Alaska, has been raised by her father,

Kapugen, who has been bringing her up in the ways of a traditional Inuit. It is a life based on

the rhythms of the natural world.

When Miyax is nine, her aunt takes her away from her father to enroll her in an American

school. There she is around Americanized Eskimos who call her "Julie," and she starts to

believe her former life is a strange one. At 13, she not only finds herself without her family,

but unhappily living in an arranged marriage. Desperate to escape, she leaves for San

Francisco, the home of her pen pal, but soon Julie becomes lost in the vast Alaskan tundra,

with no food or direction. There alone she becomes Miyax again, reverting to the traditional

ways of her father, and gradually befriends a pack of wolves, who she names and

communicates with, just as her father taught her.

But Miyax's life is again complicated when she discovers her father's whereabouts, and finds

out that this time it is he who has tragically forsaken the old ways, which have become so

crucial to her survival.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 940 Lexile

Air-raids over London during WWII compel four siblings — Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy

— to be sent away from the city to the house of a kindly, but remote Professor "who lived in

the heart of the country." There is much to discover in the country: woods, mountains, owls,

eagles, maybe even hawks and snakes. But the children will soon discover that the

Professor's large house, staffed by three servants, holds even more mystery. It is a house

filled with unexpected places, including a room which holds nothing but a large wardrobe,

which Lucy opens one rainy day, never dreaming that the wardrobe is a passageway into

Narnia.

A once peaceful world inhabited by Fauns, Dwarves, Giants, and Talking Beasts, Narnia has

been frozen into perpetual winter by the fiendish White Witch who rules over it. Before long,

Edmund steps into the wardrobe, and, in spite of himself, into Narnia, where he has a chilling

encounter with the seductive White Witch. Soon, all of the children become embroiled in an

adventure that includes themes of betrayal, forgiveness, death, and rebirth.

Maniac Magee 820 Lexile

A homeless orphan becomes a legend in a town divided by racism in this

sometimes funny, sometimes moving, always exciting story. He wasn't born

with the name Maniac Magee. He came into this world named Jeffrey Lionel

Magee, but when his parents died and his life changed, so did his name. And

Maniac Magee became a legend. Even today kids talk about how fast he

could run; about how he hit an inside-the-park "frog" homer; how no knot, no

matter how snarled, would stay that way once he began to untie it. But the

thing Mania Magee is best known for is what he did for the kids from the East

Side and those from the West Side.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins 910 Lexile

Mr. Popper is a house painter in the 1930s in Stillwater, USA, and only works

Spring through Fall. Wintertime is when he drowns himself in National

Geographic and radio shows about world explorers. During one such show,

he learns of Admiral Drake and his Antarctic adventures. He writes to him who

surprisingly responds to Mr. Popper's letter with a live penguin. The

adventures start with one and soon enough, the penguin family grows to nine.

Mr. Popper, his wife, and their two kids take the penguins on the road as an

act to earn money. The act eventually gets old and there's a run-in with the

law only to be bailed out by Admiral Drake. Mr. Popper is then faced with a

moral dilemma that questions the penguins' future.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry 920 Lexile

The land is all-important to the Logan family. But it takes awhile for Cassie and her three

brothers to understand just how lucky they are to have it. They must learn the hard way

that having a place they can call their own in rural Mississippi permits the Logans the

luxuries of pride and courage that their poor black sharecropper neighbors can't afford.

Having land gives the Logan children an emotional foundation as they begin to notice

the difference between how white children and black children are treated in the Jim Crow

South of the Great Depression. Like how textbooks are only issued to black children —

labeled "nigra" in the book's inside cover — after they've been thoroughly used by white

children. And it takes injustices such as these, and a turbulent year of intense racial

prejudice, of night riders and burnings, to show Cassie just how important owning their

own land is.

A Single Shard 920 Lexile

Tree-ear, an orphan, lives under a bridge in Ch'ulp'o, a potters' village famed for delicate

celadon ware. He has become fascinated with the potter's craft; he wants nothing more

than to watch master potter Min at work, and he dreams of making a pot of his own

someday.

When Min takes Tree-ear on as his helper, Tree-ear is elated — until he finds obstacles

in his path: the backbreaking labor of digging and hauling clay, Min's irascible temper,

and his own ignorance. But Tree-ear is determined to prove himself — even if it means

taking a long, solitary journey on foot to present Min's work in the hope of a royal

commission . . . even if it means arriving at the royal court with nothing to show but a

single celadon shard.

Song of the Trees 710 Lexile

With the depression bearing down on her family and food in short supply,

Cassie Logan isn't sure where her next meal will come from. But there is one

thing that she knows will always be there — the whispering trees outside her

window. Cassie's trees are a steady source of comfort to her, but they also

happen to be worth a lot of money. When Mr. Andersen tries to force Big Ma

to sell their valuable trees, Cassie can't just sit by and let it happen. She

knows that her family needs the money, but something tells her that they

need the trees just as much.

Tuck Everlasting 770 Lexile

Time drags by for Winnie Foster, an eleven-year-old girl who lives in a house bordering the

woods owned by her family. Winnie spends her summer days under the watchful eye of her

grandmother. Most of the time it's too hot to be out in the sun, and when Winnie does actually

venture outside, she never goes beyond the fence of the yard. But one morning she sneaks

away into the woods and there she sees a young man drinking from a mysterious spring of

water he uncovers at the base of tree. The young man, Jesse Tuck, discovers Winnie

watching him. So he kidnaps her.

Actually, the entire Tuck family kidnap Winnie. They have to keep the spring that Winnie has

seen a secret, because the strange water there makes anyone who drinks from it live forever.

Long ago the Tucks unknowingly drank from the spring, and now the four of them are over

500 years old. They have come to learn that immortality is not a blessing but a curse.

Walk Two Moons 770 Lexile

The Newbery Medal-winning WALK TWO MOONS tells two stories: the one that's

happening in the "present" of the book -- Sal's road trip with her grandparents -- and the

story Sal tells Gram and Gramps in the car, about her friend Phoebe. As Sal and her

grandparents retrace the journey Sal's mom made on her way to Idaho --visiting national

landmarks and Native American points of interest -- Sal tells what happened when she

moved from her family's farm in Bybanks, Kentucky, to a little suburban house in Euclid,

Ohio. That's where Sal met Phoebe and was drawn into some mysterious events

involving anonymous notes left on Phoebe's porch and a young man who came looking

for Phoebe's mother. By trying to help Phoebe through a family crisis -- made even more

dramatic by Phoebe's outrageous theories about kidnapping and murder -- Sal gains a

deeper, more peaceful, understanding of her own feelings of loss.

The Whipping Boy 570 Lexile

Prince Brat (as his resentful subjects call him) lives a life of pampered privilege in which

his laziness and disobedience go unpunished, save for the floggings of a surrogate street

rat named Jemmy, known in the castle as the whipping boy. Ignorant of the outside world

and tired of life inside the walls of his father's palace, the prince decides to run away in

the dead of night, forcing his streetwise whipping boy to accompany him. In their quest for

freedom, they're intercepted by two notorious highwaymen, Hold-Your-Nose-Billy and

Cutwater, who develop a bumbling plan to ransom the prince for a fortune. Far from the

protection of his royal titles and armed guards, the prince must conspire with Jemmy the

rat-catcher to elude their kidnappers and succeed in their escape from the king's control.

Along the way, old prejudices are forgotten, something resembling friendship develops

between the lonely boys, and the prince returns to the castle knowing a bit more about his

kingdom and the common people in it than he ever could have learned trapped behind

high walls.

A Wrinkle in Time 740 Lexile

Everything is wrong in Meg Murray's life. In school, she's been dropped down to the lowest

section of her grade. She's teased about her five-year-old brother, Charles Wallace, who

everyone mistakenly thinks is dumb. Not to mention that Meg wears braces and glasses and

has mouse-brown hair.

Meg's father, an eminent physicist, has been missing for two years. One night a strange old

woman, Mrs. Whatsit, appears, "blown off course" while she, along with Mrs. Who and Mrs.

Which, was tessering, or taking a shortcut through time and space.

They take Meg, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their new friend Calvin, to rescue Dr.

Murry, who is a prisoner on a planet ruled by IT, a giant pulsating brain that controls the

minds of everyone on the planet. Charles Wallace also falls under IT's control, and when

Meg finds her father, she discovers that he is not the invincible protector she thought he was.

She must not only come to terms with this realization, but find a way to rescue them both.