Al Capone Does My Shirts
by Gennifer Choldenko
A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards’ families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.
Bucking the Sarge
by Christopher Paul Curtis
Deeply involved in this cold and manipulative mother’s shady business dealings in Flint, Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home for Men, all the while dreaming of going to college and becoming a philosopher.
Criss Cross
by Lynne Rae Perkins
Criss Cross follows the lives of four 14-year-olds in a small town, each at their own crossroads. This ensemble cast explores new thoughts and feelings in their quest to find the meaning of life and love.
Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow
by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
How could the Holocaust have happened? Bartoletti delivers a chilling answer by exploring Hitler’s rise to power through the first-hand experiences of young followers whose adolescent zeal he so successfully exploited and the more extraordinary few who risked certain death in resisting. The meticulously researched volume traces the Hitler Youth movement from the time it formally gathered strength in the early 1930s through the defeat of the Third Reich. The grace and clarity of the writing make Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow a powerful addition to Holocaust literature for children.
Hoot (Newbery Honor Book)
by Carl Hiaasen
In his first novel for a younger audience, Carl Hiaasen (Basket Case, etc.) plunges readers right into the middle of an ecological mystery, made up of endangered miniature owls, the Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House scheduled to be built over their burrows, and the owls' unlikely allies--three middle school kids determined to beat the screwed-up adult system. Hiaasen's tongue is firmly in cheek as he successfully cuts his slapstick sense of humor down to kid-size. Sure to be a hoot, er, hit with middle school mystery fans. (Ages 10 to 15)
Prom
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Eighteen-year-old Ash wants nothing to do with senior prom, but when disaster strikes and her desperate friend, Nat, needs her help to get it back on track, Ash’s involvement transforms her life.
The Fires of Merlin
by T.A. Barron
Having voyaged to the Otherworld in his quest to find himself, the young wizard Merlin must face fire in many different forms and deal with the possibility of losing his own magical power.
