Keeper by Kathi Appelt

"Keeper leaned over the edge of the boat."

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Summary: On the night of the blue moon when mermaids are said to gather on a sandbar in the Gulf of Mexico, ten-year-old Keeper sets out in a small boat, with her dog BD and a seagull named Captain, determined to find her mother, a mermaid, as Keeper has always believed, who left long ago to return to the sea.

Publisher: Atheneum; 399 pages

House of Dolls by Francesca Lia Block

"Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene lived in a house from another time, a white house with a red roof and red shutters and a red front door."

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Summary: Madison Blackberry's dolls--Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene--have lives that she envies, with their beautiful clothes and warm, cozy house, while she's lonely most of the time.

Harper Collins; 61 pages

The Firefly Letters by Margarita Engle

"I remember a wide river

and gray parrots with patches of red feathers
flashing across the African sky
like traveling stars
or Cuban Fireflies."

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Summary: Draws on little-known Cuban history to tell a stirring story in poetry. Based on the diaries and letters of Swedish suffragist Fredrika Bremer, who spent three months in Cuba in 1851, the story focuses on oppressed women, the privileged as well as the enslaved, in three alternating free-verse narratives.

Publisher: Henry Holt; 151 pages

The Fast and the Furriest by Andy Behrens

"Twelve-year-old Kevin Pugh stood on the pitcher's mound."

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Summary: The overweight and unathletic son of a famous former football star discovers that his equally fat and lazy dog is unexpectedly--and obsessively--interested in competing in dog agility contests.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 247 pages

Best Friends Forever - A World War II Scrapbook by Beverly Patt

April 24, 1942

This is me, Louise Margaret Krueger, age 14.

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Summary: Fourteen-year-old Louise keeps a scrapbook detailing the events in her life after her best friend, a Japanese-American girl, and her family are sent to a relocation camp during World War II.

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish; 92 pages. Illustrations by Shula Klinger.

Word After Word After Word by Patricia MacLachlan

"Some things happen in fours."

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Summary: A visiting author teaches five friends about the power of words and writing.

Harper Collins; 125 pages

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

"Everyone thinks children are sweet as Necco Wafers, but I've lived long enough to know the truth: kids are rotten."

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Summary: In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

Random House; 177 pages