The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry

"When Princess Patricia Priscilla woke on the morning of the day that was five days before her birthday, her first thoughts were not Oh, I am almost another year older, hardly a child anymore! or I wonder what fabulous gifts will be presented to me at the Birthday Ball six nights from now!"

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Summary: When a bored Princess Patricia Priscilla makes her chambermaid switch identities with her so she can attend the village school, her attitude changes and she plans a new way to celebrate her sixteenth birthday.

Houghton Mifflin; 186 pages

A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner

"The king of Attolia was passing through his city, on his way to the port to greet ambassadors newly arrived from distant parts of the world."

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Summary: Kidnapped and sold into slavery, Sophos, an unwilling prince, tries to save his country from being destroyed by rebellion and exploited by the conniving Mede empire.

Greenwillow Books; 316 pages

The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan

"On a continent of many songs, in a country shaped like the arm of a tall guitarrista, the rain drummed down on the town of Temuco."

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Summary: A fictionalized biography of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who grew up a painfully shy child, ridiculed by his overbearing father, but who became one of the most widely-read poets in the world.

Drawings by Peter Sis.

Scholastic Press; 372 pages

Mirror Mirror - A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer

Summary: A collection of short poems which, when reversed, provide new perspectives on the fairy tale characters they feature. Illustrated by Josee Masse.

Publisher: Dutton Children's Books; unpaged

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

"Good thing the plane had seat belts and we'd been strapped in tight before takeoff."

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Summary: In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Amistad; 215 pages

Falling In by Frances O'Roark Dowell

"On the morning this story begins, Isabelle Bean was convinced she was teetering on the edge of the universe."

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Summary: Middle-schooler Isabelle Bean follows a mouse's squeak into a closet and falls into a parallel universe where the children believe she is the witch they have feared for years, finally come to devour them.

Atheneum Books; 245 pages

Leaving Gee's Bend by Irene Latham

"Mama pulled a chicken egg from behind the azalea bush in our front yard and narrowed her eyes."

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Summary: Ludelphia Bennett, a determined, ten-year-old African American girl in 1932 Gee's Bend, Alabama, leaves home in an effort to find medical help for her sick mother, and she recounts her ensuing adventures in a quilt she is making.

G. P. Putnam's Sons; 224 pages

Ashes by Kathryn Lasky

"In 1914 my story begins."

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Summary: In 1932 Berlin, thirteen-year-old Gaby Schramm witnesses the beginning of Hitler's rise to power, as soldiers become ubiquitous, her beloved literature teacher starts wearing a jewelled swastika pin, and the family's dear friend, Albert Einstein, leaves the country while Gaby's parents secretly bury his books and papers in their small yard.

Viking Press; 309 pages

Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman

"Ye toads and vipers," the girl said, as her granny often had, "ye toads and vipers," and she snuffled a great snuffle that echoed in the empty room.

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Summary: Meggy Swann is newly arrived in Elizabethan London with her only friend, a goose named Louise. Just as her alchemist father pursues his Great Work of transforming base metal into gold, Meggy finds herself pursuing her own transformation.

Publisher: Clarion Books; 166 pages

The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood

Book One in The INCORRIGIBLE CHILDREN OF ASHTON PLACE series.

"It was not Miss Penelope Lumley's first journey on a train, but it was the first one she had taken alone."

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Summary: Fifteen-year-old Penelope Lumley, a recent graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, is hired as governess to three young children who have been raised by wolves and must teach them to behave in a civilized manner quickly, in preparation for a Christmas ball.

Publisher: HarperCollins; 267 pages