A Girl Named Faithful Plum: The True Story of a Dancer from China and How She Achieved Her Dream by Richard Bernstein

"One sunny morning in the spring of 1978 in the remote, very northernmost part of China, a slight eleven-year-old girl named Li Zhongmei got on a bus for the first leg of a journey to Beijing, China's capital."

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In 1977, when Zhongmei Lei was eleven years old, she learned that the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy was having open auditions. She'd already taken dance lessons, but everyone said a poor country girl would never get into the academy, especially without any connections in the Communist Party of the 1970s. But Zhongmei, whose name means Faithful Plum, persisted, even going on a hunger strike, until her parents agreed to allow her to go. She traveled for three days and two nights to get to Beijing and eventually beat out 60,000 other girls for one of 12 coveted spots.

Alfred A. Knopf; 270 pages

Body of Water by Sarah Dooley

"I'm certain there were puddles, even before the fire trucks came."

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After their trailer home and all their belongings are burned, twelve-year-old Ember and her Wiccan family move to a lakeside campground where Ember's anguish over losing her dog, as well as her friendship with the boy she fears started the fire, stops her from making new friends and moving on.

Feiwel and Friends; 324 pages

Bluefish by Pat Schmatz

"Travis stood in front of locker number 78."

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Everything changes for thirteen-year-old Travis, a new student who is trying to hide his illiteracy, when he meets a sassy classmate with her own secrets and a remarkable teacher.

Candlewick Press; 226 pages

The Aviary by Kathleen O'Dell

"As a child, Clara Dooley had felt that the Glendoveer mansion contained the whole world."

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In late nineteenth-century Maine, isolated, eleven-year-old Clara Dooley gains a friend and uncovers a magical secret that changes her life when she learns to care for the once-feared birds in the aviary attached to the Glendoveer mansion where she lives.

Alfred A. Knopf; 339 pages

Desert Angel by Charlie Price

"The fight started after midnight, Scotty drunk, Angel's mother shrill on crystal."

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Fourteen-year-old Angel wakes up one morning at her desert trailer home to discover her mother has been murdered by a lowlife named Scotty, who has vanished. Angel has no water, no weapon, but she knows that Scotty, an expert tracker and hunter, will surface soon in order to eliminate her as a witness. She has to run, to disappear, if she is to survive and tell the world what happened. Her flight takes her through a harsh landscape to places she never expected to be, forcing her to trust others for the first time and strengthening her in ways she doesn't even anticipate . . . until it's time to take a stand.

Farrar Straus Giroux; 236 pages

True (...sort of) by Katherine Hannigan

"Delly Pattison was tiny."

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For most of her eleven years, Delly has been in trouble without knowing why, until her little brother, R.B., and a strange, silent new friend, Ferris, help her find a way to be good--and happy--again.

Greenwillow Books; 360 pages

The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson

"The old doll-maker Tatsuhiko poured boiling water into the teapot with trembling hands and inhaled deeply."

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Throughout the twentieth century, Miss Kanagawa, one of fifty-eight dolls made to serve as ambassadors from Japan to the United States, travels the country learning to love while changing the lives of those who need her.

Delacorte Press; 201 pages

Spunky Tells All by Ann Cameron

"I could tell you everything about the Bates faimly--things you'll never hear from anybody else."

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Called a troublemaker by his human family, a reflective dog defends himself and then relates the family's adoption of an aristocratic but incompetent cat, who gives him a life purpose and and new way of looking at his world.

Farrar Straus Giroux; 105 pages

A Month of Sundays by Ruth White

"Before I was born fourteen years ago, my dad, August Rose, left my mom, Betty Rose, for a carnival singer."

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In the summer of 1956 while her mother is in Florida searching for a job, fourteen-year-old April Garnet Rose, who has never met her father, stays with her terminally ill aunt in Virginia and accompanies her as she visits different churches, looking for God.

Farrar Straus Giroux; 168 pages

Pie by Sarah Weeks

"Thank you very much."

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After the death of Polly Portman, whose award-winning pies put the town of Ipswitch, Pennsylvania, on the map in the 1950s, her devoted niece Alice and Alice's friend Charlie investigate who is going to extremes to find Aunt Polly's secret pie crust recipe. Includes fourteen pie recipes.

Scholastic Press; 183 pages

Akata Witch by Nnedi OkorAfor

"I've always been fascinated by candles."

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Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

Viking; 349 pages

The Flint Heart by Katherine Paterson

"Many years ago, oh, let's say five thousand, more or less, there lived in the south of England, in what is called Darmoor, tribes of people who had never thought to make anything out of metal, much less plastic."

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A magical amulet brings power and despair to those who touch it. A robust and wildly entertaining fairy tale, freely abridged from Eden Phillpotts's 1910 fantasy.

Candlewick Press; 288 pages

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

"They took me in my nightgown."

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In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note.

Philomel Books; 344 pages

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

"The monster showed up just after midnight."

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Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.

Candlewick Press; 204 pages

Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy

"I traced the letters in the dust with my finger, spelling out my name: Zulaikha."

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Zulaikha, a thirteen-year-old girl in Afghanistan, faces a series of frightening but exhilirating changes in her life as she defies her father and secretly meets with an old woman who teaches her to read, her older sister gets married, and American troops offer her surgery to fix her disfiguring cleft lip.

Arthur A. Levine; 266 pages

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

"Something hit Ben Wilson and he opened his eyes."

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Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.

Scholastic; 637 pages

True Blue by Jane Smiley

"I had gone into the house to change my jeans, and I was only about halfway out of my boots--which were very muddy--when the phone started ringing."

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In 1960s California, eighth-grader Abby Lovitt has trouble with True Blue, the newest horse on her family's ranch, a beautiful dappled gray who is so often spooked, Abby wonders if he is haunted by the ghost of his deceased former owner.

Alfred A. Knopf; 297 pages

With a Name Like Love by Tess Hilmo

"It was the eighth of July, 1957, when Ollie's daddy slowed their rusted-out Chevy pickup near the junction of Highway 29 and Carter Road."

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Thirteen-year-old Olivene Love gets tangled up in a murder mystery when her itinerant preaching family arrives in the small town of Binder, Arkansas in 1957.

Farrar Straus Giroux; 249 pages

Ten Rules for Living with My Sister by Ann M. Martin

"Half an hour ago my sister locked me out of her room."

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Nine-year-old Pearl and her popular, thirteen-year-old sister, Lexie, do not get along very well, but when their grandfather moves in and the girls have to share a room, they must find common ground.

Feiwel and Friends; 228 pages

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

"It snowed right before Jack stopped talking to Hazel, fluffy white flakes big enough to show their crystal architecture, like perfect geometric poems."

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Hazel and Jack are best friends until an accident with a magical mirror and a run-in with a villainous queen find Hazel on her own, entering an enchanted wood in the hopes of saving Jack's life. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen".

Walden Pond Press; 312 pages