The Great Migration: Journey to the North by Eloise Greenfield

"They read about it, heard about it, in letters and newspapers sent down from the North, from visiting cousins and brothers and aunts: there were jobs up there, nice houses, no Ku Klux Klan everywhere you turn, burning down schools and homes and hope."

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Describes the period of the 20th century when many African Americans left the South to make better lives for themselves in the nothern states.

Harper Collins; 32 pages

Crunch by Leslie Connor

"I saw it like this: A single worker at some faraway oil refinery with his head tilted down, peering into a pipe, waiting for one more drop that never came."

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Summary: The oldest Mariss brother, fourteen-year-old Dewey, attempts to be the "embodiment of responsibility" as he juggles the management of the family's bicycle repair business while sharing the household and farm duties with his siblings after a sudden energy crisis strands their parents far from home.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 328 pages

As Simple as It Seems by Sarah Weeks

"My Grandpa Colty died on the same day I was born."

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Summary: Eleven-year-old Verbena Polter gets through a difficult summer of turbulent emotions and the revelation of a disturbing family secret with an odd new friend who believes she is the ghost of a girl who drowned many years before.

Harper Collins; 181 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

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

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

Unfinished Angel by Sharon Creech

"Peoples are strange!"

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Abstract: In a tiny village in the Swiss Alps, an angel meets an American girl named Zola who has come with her father to open a school, and together Zola and the angel rescue a group of homeless orphans, who gradually change everything.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 164 pages

Emmaline and the Bunny by Katherine Hannigan

"Emmaline wanted a bunny."

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Abstract: Everyone and everything in the town of Neatasapin is tidy, except Emmaline who likes to dig dirt and jump in puddles, and wants to adopt an untidy bunny.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 94 pages

Reality Check by Peter Abrahams

This book was suggested for inclusion on our blog but I do not have a copy of it in hand to jot down the first sentence. If anyone has a copy and wants to let me know the first sentence, I'll be happy to jot it down here, otherwise -- be patient -- I'll put it in as soon as our Library receives the book or the ARC is returned.


Publisher: HarperCollins; 336 pages

The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice

"We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the backyard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around a picket fence."

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Abstract: After her father is sent to jail, eleven-year-old Groovy Robinson must decide if she can forgive the failings of someone she loves.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 277 pages

Bringing the Boy Home by N.A. Nelson

"My name is Tirio."

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Abstract: As two Takunami youths approach their thirteenth birthdays, Luka reaches the culmination of his mother's training for the tribe's manhood test while Tirio, raised in Miami, Florida, by his adoptive mother, feels called to begin preparations to prove himself during his upcoming visit to the Amazon rain forest where he was born.

Publisher: Harper Collins, 211 pages

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

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Abstract: Nobody Owens is a normal boy, except that he has been raised by ghosts and other denizens of the graveyard.

Harper Collins; 307 pages

Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

September 12

I hate that cat
like a dog hates a rat
I said I hate that cat
like a dog hates a rat

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Abstract: Jack is studying poetry again in school, and he continues to write poems reflecting his understanding of famous poems and how they relate to his life.

Harper Collins; 148 pages

The Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich

"Here follows the story of a most extraordinary year in the life of an Ojibwe family and of a girl named Omakakiins, or "Omakayas, "Little Frog, who lived a year of flight and adventure, pain and joy, in 1852, when the uncut forests of Minnesota still stretched, full and deep, west from the shores of Lake Superior."

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Abstract: In 1852, forced by the United States government to leave their beloved Island of the Golden Breasted Woodpecker, fourteen-year-old Omokayas and her Ojibwe family travel in search of a new home.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 193 pages

Ever by Gail Carson Levine

"I am huge in my Mati's womb, straining her wide tunic."

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Abstract: Fourteen-year-old Kezi and Olus, Akkan god of the winds, fall in love and together try to change her fate--to be sacrificed to a Hyte god because of a rash promise her father made--through a series of quests that might make her immortal.

Harper Collins; 244 pages

The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer

"If the man is lucky, in the morning on his way to work, he sees the girls."

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Abstract: In Mallory, New York, as five sisters, aged eleven to seventeen, deal with assorted problems, conflicts, fears, and yearnings, a mysterious middle-aged man watches them, fascinated, deciding which one he likes the best.

Publisher: HarperTeen; 284 pages

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas

"A thief is a lot like a wizard."

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Abstract: A young thief is drawn into a life of magic and adventure after picking the pocket of the powerful wizard Nevery Flinglas, who has returned from exile to attempt to reverse the troubling decline of magic in Wellmet City.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 426 pages

The Facttracker by Jason Carter Eaton

A fictitious friend of mine once told me, "Everyone loves a good explosion."

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Abstract : When a town whose economy is based on selling facts is taken over by the Facttracker's twin, Ersatz, quickly-spreading lies begin changing the world, and a "just small enough boy" must reach the seed of truth before the changes become permanent.

Publisher: HarperCollins; 260 pages

The Redheaded Princess by Ann Rinaldi

"One thing I have learned in this life: It is never good when you hear a horse galloping up to your home in the middle of the day or night."

Abstract: In 1542, nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near ...

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Full Abstract: In 1542, nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near London, striving to get back into the good graces of her father, King Henry VIII, and as the years pass she faces his death and those of other close relatives until she finds herself next in line to ascend the throne of England in 1558.

Publisher: HarperCollins; 214 pages

The Seer of Shadows by Avi

"IT WAS AN OCTOBER MORNING in the year 1872, and New York City's air was so befogged with white mist and dark smoke that I could barely see across the street."

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CIP Summary: In New York City in 1872, fourteen-year-old Horace, a photographer's apprentice, becomes entangled in a plot to create fraudulent spirit photographs, but when Horace accidentally frees the real ghost of a dead girl bent on revenge, his life takes a frightening turn.

Publisher: Harper Collins; 202 pages