R My Name Is Rachel by Patricia Reilly Giff

"I know my neighborhood by heart, so it wouldn't be hard to walk from our apartment to the stores blindfolded."

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Rachel, Cassie, and Joey live in the city with their Pop, until Pop's search for work lands the family on a run down farm. Dreamy Rachel loves to read, and doesn't know much about the country. Times are hard there, too-the school and library are closed. When Pop gets work near Canada, he has to leave the children on the farm alone. For two months! But Rachel's the oldest, and she'll make sure they're all right. Somehow.

Random House Children's Books; 160 pages

Lexie by Audrey Couloumbis

"I should have been on my way to the shore."

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When ten-year-old Lexie goes with her father to the beach for a week, she is surprised to find that he has invited his girlfriend and her two sons to join them for the entire week.

Random House; 199 pages

Storyteller by Patricia Reilly Giff

"School's over; the weekend's here."

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Summary: Forced to spend months at an aunt's house, Elizabeth feel a connection to her ancestor Zee, whose picture hangs on the wall, and who reveals her story of hardships during the Revolutionary War as Elizabeth comes to terms with her own troubles.

Random House; 164 pages

The Wonder of Charlie Anne by Kimberly Newton Fusco

"Go do this, the new mama tells me, and I do it, just because."

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Summary: In a 1930s Massachusetts farm town torn by the Depression, racial tension, and other hardships, Charlie Anne and her black next-door neighbor Phoebe form a friendship that begins to transform their community.

Publisher: Random House; 264 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

Northward to the Moon by Polly Horvath

"Our family lasted almost one year in Saskatchewan."

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Summary: When her stepfather loses his job in Saskatchewan, Jane and the rest of the family set off on a car trip, ending up in Nevada after improbably being given a bag full of possibly stolen money.

Publisher: Random House Children's Books; 244 pages

War Games by Audrey Couloumbis & Akila Couloumbis

"I can hit the next three birds we see," Zola said.

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Summary: What were once just boys' games become matters of life and death as Petros and his older brother Zola each wonder if, like their resistance fighter cousin, they too can make a difference in a Nazi-occupied Greece.

Publisher: Random House; 232 pages

Road to Tater Hill by Edith M. Hemingway

"For months I had wished and wished the baby would be a girl, a little sister."

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Abstract: At her grandparents' North Carolina mountain home during the summer of 1963, eleven-year-old Annie Winters, grief-stricken by the death of her newborn sister and isolated by her mother's deepening depression, finds comfort in holding an oblong stone "rock baby" and in the friendship of a neighbor boy and a reclusive mountain woman with a devastating secret.

Publisher: Random House; 213 pages

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

"Grandpa frowns when he plays chess, like he does when he prays."

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Ignatius "Brother" Alderman, nearly twelve, promises to help his grandparents keep the family's Oregon ranch the same while his brothers are away and his father is deployed to Iraq, but as he comes to accept the inevitability of change, he also sees the man he is meant to be.

Publisher: Random House; 161 pages

Heck - Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Basye

In Generica, Kansas, Christmas wasn't something you felt in the chill of the winter air or the warmth of a generous smile.

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Abstract: When timid Milton and his older, scofflaw sister Marlo die in a marshmallow bear explosion at Grizzly Mall, they are sent to Heck, an otherworldly reform school from which they are determined to escape.

Random House; 288 pages

Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look (Pictures by LeUyen Pham)

"The first thing you should know about me is that my name is Alvin Ho."

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Summary: A young boy in Concord, Massachusetts, who loves superheroes and comes from a long line of brave Chinese farmer-warriors, wants to make friends, but first he must overcome his fear of everything.

Publisher: Random House Children's Books; 172 pages

Love Me Tender by Audrey Couloumbis

"Early Friday afternoon, daddy left mad."

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CIP Summary: Thirteen-year-old Elvira worries about her future when, after a fight, her father heads to Las Vegas for an Elvis impersonator competition and her pregnant mother takes her and her younger sister to Memphis to visit a grandmother the girls have never met.

Publisher: Random House; 209 pages