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

Maggie & Oliver or A Bone of One's Own by Valerie Hobbs

"With his long, wet tongue, Oliver licked and licked Bertie's cheek."

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Maggie is always full of questions. But a young maid in a fine lady's house isn't supposed to wonder so much, so one day Maggie is thrown out into the street with only a tiny heart-shaped locket for a keepsake. A little dog named Oliver is pushing his nose along an icy sidewalk searching for his lost mistress, or at least something to eat. No matter how hard he looks he can't find either one, but he does see a girl with round blue eyes and a golden locket around her neck. The girl calls him "Lucky." And perhaps Lucky is the right name after all, for the little dog soon helps Maggie find a warm, wonderful home of her own--and one for him, too.

Henry Holt; 181 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

Circle of Secrets by Kimberley Griffiths Little

"Soon as my birthday presents are unwrapped and the chocolate raspberry cake gulped down, Daddy packs my stuff in the Chevy and slams the trunk."

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A year after her mother has deserted the family, eleven-year-old Shelby goes to stay with her, deep in the Louisiana bayou, where they both confront old hurts and regrets.

Scholastic Press; 326 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

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

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

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

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

Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri

"We drivin' into the sunset, the car burning up from the heat."

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Summary: Twelve-year-old Cole's behavior causes his mother to drive him from Detroit to Philadelphia to live with a father he has never known, but who soon has Cole involved with a group of African-American "cowboys" who rescue horses and use them to steer youths away from drugs and gangs.

Publisher: Candlewick Press; 218 pages

Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

"My dad is a hero and a Communist and, more than anything, I want to be like him."

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In the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, a devoted Communist, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his own perceptions, values, and beliefs.

Henry Holt and Company; 140 pages

Alvin Ho: Allergic to Dead Bodies, Funerals, and Other Fatal Circumstances by Lenore Look

"Call me Alvin Ho."

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A fearful second grader in Concord, Massachusetts, learns about death when his grandfather's best friend passes away and he offers to accompany his grandfather to the funeral.

Schwartz & Wade; 197 pages

Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading by Tommy Greenwald

"My name is Charlie Joe Jackson, and I hate reading."

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Middle schooler Charlie Joe is proud of his success at avoiding reading, but eventually his schemes go too far.

Roaring Brook Press; 220 pages

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

"School was finally out and I was standing on a picnic table in our backyard getting ready for a great summer vacation when my mother walked up to me and ruined it."

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In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

Farrar Straus Giroux; 341 pages