Uncoordinated Kansas 7th grader, Kirby Nickel, braves his coach's anger and becomes captain of the basketball team in order to help him prove that NBA star Brett McGrew is the father he never knew.
198 pages, Grades 3-7
related subjects:  Basketball, Fathers, Funny

In ancient Persia, Mitra and her little brother, Babak, scratch out a living by begging and stealing food, but Mitra knows they are exiled royals if they could only rejoin the rest of their family. Then they discover that Babak has a strange power, he can dream other people's dreams. They use this gift to gain money until they attract the attention of the wrong person.
304 pages, Grades 7 and up
related subjects:  Homelessness, Middle East

A talking cat, intelligent rats, and a strange boy cooperate in a Pied Piper scam until they try to con the wrong town and are confronted by a a deadly evil rat king.
256 pages, Grades 6 and up
Cats, Fairy Tales, Talking Animals

1793, Philadelphia. The largest city in North America is devastated by an incurable disease, cause unknown. This true story describes the illness and the toll it took on the city's residents.
256 pages, Grades 6 and up
related subjects:  18th Century, Disease Epidemics

Book 1 of the Bartimaeus Trilogy. Nathaniel is a young magician's apprentice, but when a hotshot wizard named Simon Lovelace ruthlessly humiliates him, Nathaniel decides to show Lovelace who's boss. With revenge on his mind, he masters one of the toughest spells of all: summoning the all-powerful djinni, Bartimaeus. But summoning Bartimaeus and controlling him are two different things!
464 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Genies (or Djinn), Magic

Part of the Royal Diaries series. A novel in diary form in which the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II describes the privileged life her family led up until the time of World War I and the tragic events that befell them.
227 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Princesses, Russia, World War I

In 1913 Russia, twelve-year-old Katya eagerly anticipates leaving her St. Petersburg home to join her mother, a lady in waiting in the household of Tsar Nicholas II, but the ensuing years bring world war, revolution, and undreamed of changes to her life.
304 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Russia, World War I

Atalanta, Andromeda, and Psyche, three female characters in Greek mythology, tell the stories of their marriages.
200 pages, Grades 6 and up
related subjects:  Ancient Greece, Mythology

A love-struck mermaid named Aquamarine supplies adventure and insights to two twelve-year-old girls, life-long friends who are spending their last summer together before one of them moves away.
105 pages, Grades 5-7
related subjects:  Best Friends, Love, Mermaids & Selkies

A legendary archer from ancient Korea travels forward in time to twelve-year-old Kevin's bedroom in New York. Now Kevin has to find a way to get him back before he changes history forever.
176 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Korea, Time Travel

Book 6 of the Alex Rider series. Shot outside the offices of MI6 and left for dead by Scorpia, Alex Rider awakens in a top-secret hospital, glad simply to be alive. But when the boy in the next room is the victim of a kidnapping attempt, it is Alex who saves him, only to be kidnapped himself.
362 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Spies

Fourteen-year-old Marina and sixteen-year-old Jed accompany their parents' religious cult, the Believers, to await the end of the world atop a remote mountain, where they try to decide what they themselves believe.
272 pages, Grades 7 and up
related subjects:  Dystopia

This wordless graphic novel powerfully captures the immigrant experience.
128 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Refugees

Book 1 of the Artemis Fowl series. When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll.
304 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Fairies, Secret Codes, Spies

Book 2 of the Artemis Fowl series. In order to free his father from the Russian Mafiya, Artemis must join forces with the fairy police and his familiar nemesis, Captain Holly Short.
288 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Fairies, Spies

Book 3 of the Artemis Fowl series. Ever the resourceful young criminal mastermind, Artemis has found a way to construct a supercomputer from stolen fairy technology. Called the "C Cube," it will render all existing human technology obsolete.
320 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Fairies, Secret Codes, Spies

Book 5 of the Artemis Fowl series.
400 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Fairies, Spies

Book 4 of the Artemis Fowl series. Artemis has no memory of the fairy people and has returned to his unlawful ways. He doesn't know that his old rival, Opal, has escaped from prison by cloning herself. She's left her double behind in jail and, now free, is exacting her revenge on all those who put her there, including Artemis.
400 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Cloning, Fairies, Spies

Book 1 in the Water trilogy. Nia, a young mermyd of the Bluefin clan, has had one wish all her life -- to be an Avatar in her beloved home of Atlantis. The ten Avatars rule the undersea city alongside the ancient Farworlders, whose magic keeps their world alive. Now, at sixteen, Nia has a chance to see her dream come true. Atlantis is choosing its next Avatar, and Nia knows she is supremely qualified.But there is something Nia doesn't know -- if she gets her heart's desire, it could mean the end of her treasured world of Atlantis forever.
235 pages, Grades 6-8
related subjects:  Mermaids & Selkies

With their ability to travel through time using vintage baseball cards, Joe and his father have the opportunity to find out whether Babe Ruth really did call his shot when he hit that homerun in the third game of the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs.
176 pages, Grades 4-6
related subjects:  Baseball

A piglet destined for eventual butchering arrives at the farmyard, is adopted by an old sheep dog, and discovers a special secret to success.
128 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Talking Animals

In 1849, twelve-year-old California Morning Whipple, who renames herself Lucy, is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a rough California mining town.
352 pages, Grades 4-6
related subjects:  19th Century, Wild West Pioneers

True stories of boneheaded plays, major league mess-ups, and other baseball bloopers.
176 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Baseball

A collection of illustrated Japanese folktales.
32 pages, Grades 3-5
related subjects:  Japan

Kind Beauty grows to love the Beast at whose castle she is compelled to stay, and through her love, releases him from the spell which had turned him from a handsome prince into an ugly beast.
256 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Fairy Tales, Love

Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.
184 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Dogs

Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw's life with Gram and her little brother, Owen, is happy & peaceful until their mother reappears after 7 years of being gone, stirring up questions, and challenging Naomi to discover who she really is.
246 pages, Grades 4-6
related subjects:  Mexico, Mothers

Book 2 of the Echo Falls series. Things are amiss in Echo Falls. True to her hero, Sherlock Holmes, eighth-grader Ingrid begins fishing around to find out who's really pulling the strings in Echo Falls. But one morning, while en route to the dreaded MathFest, Ingrid is kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car.
352 pages, Grades 6-8
related subjects:  Detectives

Book 7 of the Redwall series. Worried about his daughter Mariel, Joseph the Bellmaker is led by a dream from Redwall Abbey to Southsward, where he is caught up in the battle between Squirrelking Gael and the vicious Foxwolf Nagru.
416 pages, Grades 4 and up
related subjects:  Talking Animals

A brave warrior Beowulf must defeat the monster Grendel in this epic battle based on the Scandinavian tale.
96 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Dragons

Someone is turning the students at Emerson Hickey Elementary into zombies, and it's up to fourth-grade private eye Chet Gecko to find out who.
132 pages, Grades 3-5
related subjects:  Detectives, Funny

The story of a Japanese boy who must face life after escaping the tidal wave that destroyed his family and village.
64 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Tsunamis

Meet Billy Hooten, AKA Owlboy, a quickthinking, goggle-and-feather-wearing superhero who protects the bizarre and monstrous citizens of Monstros City, a city that exists under Billy's hometown.
256 pages, Grades 3-5
related subjects:  Monsters, Parallel Universe, Funny

Retells the story of the Trojan War, from the quarrel for the golden apple, and the flight of Helen with Paris, to the destruction of Troy.
151 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Ancient Greece, Mythology

Presents a history, based on personal accounts and newspaper articles, of the massive snow storm that hit the Northeast in 1888, focusing on the events in New York City.
136 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Blizzards, 19th Century

Liesel is a foster girl living outside of Munich during World War II. With the help of her foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
560 pages, Grades 8 and up
related subjects:  Jewish Holocaust, World War II

The fate of a small California town rests on the outcome of one baseball game, and Tom Gallagher hopes to lead his team to victory with the secrets of the now disgraced player, Dante Del Gato.
224 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Baseball

Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan, impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest.
170 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Middle East

Elaborates on the tale of "The Pied Piper," told from the point of view of a boy who is too ill to keep up when a piper spirits away the healthy children of a plague-ridden town after being cheated out of full payment for ridding Hameln of rats.
272 pages, Grades 8 and up
related subjects:  Fairy Tales, 14th-15th Century, Witches

Sequel to Hatchet. Two years after having survived a plane crash into the Canadian wilderness, a sixteen-year-old returns to the wild to befriend a wounded dog and hunt a rogue bear.
112 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Survival

Sequel to Hatchet. After his experiences surviving alone in the Canadian wilderness several years earlier, sixteen-year-old Brian finds that he can't seem to fit into "civilization" but must return to the place where he feels he really belongs.
128 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Survival

Book 3 of the High Seas Trilogy. Sixteen-year-old John sails from England in his schooner, the Dragon, to the Caribbean, where he and the crew encounter pirates, storms, fever, and a strange man who may be cursed.
256 pages, Grades 5-8
related subjects:  18th Century, Pirates, Sea Adventures

Northerners, Southerners, generals, couriers, boys, and worried sisters describe the glory, the horror, the thrill, and the disillusionment of the first battle of the Civil War.
128 pages, Grades 6 and up
related subjects:  Civil War

Lottie Raccoon is tired of being bullied by Grant and so is everyone else, so she gathers everyone together and they form a club, The Bully Blockers Club. Now when Grant tries to bully someone, the other kids speak up. That gets an adult's attention, and Grant stops his bullying!
32 pages, Grade 3
related subjects:  Boy Bullies

On August 24, A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius began to erupt. Within twenty-four hours, the entire city of Pompeii had been utterly annihilated. It was not until hundreds of years later that archaeological excavations began to unearth what had been buried under layers of volcanic rubble.
48 pages, Grades 4-8
related subjects:  Ancient Rome, Volcanoes

In Leningrad in 1941, when Russia and Germany are at war, fourteen-year-old Georgi vows to help his family and his city during the terrible siege.
224 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Russia, World War II

When Calder Pillay travels with his father to England, he finds a mix of mazes and mystery, including an unexpected Alexander Calder sculpture in the town square. Both the boy and the sculpture seem out of place, and then they dissapear!
379 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Burglaries & Heists, Museum Mysteries

Sequel to The Convicts. As Tom Tin sails through islands of headhunters and cannibals to Australia, where he's to serve a lengthy sentence for a murder he didn't commit, he and his fellow convict, Midgely, plot their escape.
240 pages, Grades 6-8
related subjects:  Sea Adventures, 19th Century, Boy Bullies

Bullied and unhappy at school, thirteen-year-old Mike, who has always thought that he might be an alien, sends a distress call into space asking to be rescued from the ignorance and cruelty of his life on Earth.
160 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Aliens, Funny

Two tramp cats searching for a place of their own discover the members of the Cat Club but are not easily induced to join them.
176 pages, Grades 3-4
related subjects:  Cats

The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life, particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.
224 pages, Grades 5-7
related subjects:  9th-13th Century

Part of the Royal Diaries series. Fourteen-year-old Sophia is engaged to the nephew of the Russian empress Elizabeth. She must travel to Russia where she is renamed Catherine and married, but she watches helplessly as her family is torn from her, her own mother is involved in a spying ring against the empress, and all that is familiar to her disappears.
176 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  18th Century, Princesses, Russia

When hired by a fellow fourth-grader to find her missing brother, Chet Gecko uncovers a plot involving a Gila monster's revenge upon the school football team.
120 pages, Grades 3-5
related subjects:  Detectives, Funny

Wilbur, the pig, is desolate when he discovers that he is destined to be the farmer's Christmas dinner until his spider friend, Charlotte decides to help him.
192 pages, Grades 3-4
related subjects:  Talking Animals, Best Friends

When strange events start to happen and a precious Vermeer painting disappears, eleven-year-olds Petra and Calder combine their talents to solve an international art scandal.
272 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Burglaries & Heists, Museum Mysteries

Tolly comes to live with his great-grandmother at the ancient house of Green Knowe and becomes friends with three children who lived there in the seventeenth century.
192 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Ghosts, Grandparents

Having fled Cambodia four years earlier to escape the Khmer Rouge army, seventeen-year-old Sundara is torn between remaining faithful to her own people and enjoying life in her Oregon high school as a "regular" American.
224 pages, Grades 7 and up
related subjects:  Cambodia, High School, Love

In 1921 thirteen-year-old Luke finds himself torn between accepting his left-handedness or conforming to the belief of his preacher-father that such a condition is evil and must be overcome.
176 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Baseball, Fathers

In a society where boys are more valuable than girls, and parents are only allowed to have two children, fourteen-year-old Chu Ju decides to run away from home in order to prevent her parents from selling her baby sister. Now she has to find a way to support herself alone.
240 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  China

Book 1 of the Cirque du Freak series. Two boys who are best friends visit an illegal freak show, where an encounter with a vampire and a deadly spider forces them to make life-changing choices.
272 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Best Friends, Insects, Vampires

Trapped by the famous blizzard of 1888, a young girl and her family struggle on as even the smallest daily routines of life in the city grind to a halt; electric and telegraph lines go down, trains and buildings alike are buried in the snow, and the streets are impassable, with no way to deliver fresh food, milk, or coal for heat.
32 pages, Grades 3-4
related subjects:  19th Century, Blizzards

Third-grader, Clementine has a big heart, a creative spirit, and a talent for trouble.
144 pages, Grades 3-4
related subjects:  Best Friends, Funny

Part of the Royal Diaries series. While her father is in hiding after attempts on his life, twelve-year-old Cleopatra records in her diary how she fears for her own safety and hopes to survive to become Queen of Egypt some day.
224 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Ancient Egypt, Princesses

Details the first documented cases in American history of sharks attacking swimmers, which occured along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey in 1916.
144 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Sharks

When Mitty finds a smallpox scab in an envelope, he fears he may have contracted the disease, but when a terrorist group discovers his situation, they kidnap him to use the disease against innocent people.
208 pages, Grades 6 and up
related subjects:  Disease Epidemics, Terrorism

As a Navajo boy at American school, Ned Begay was punished for speaking Navajo, but when war broke out with Japan, the navajo language formed an unbreakbale code that saved many American lives.
240 pages, Grades 6 and up
related subjects:  World War II, Racism

Sequel to Wise Child. The healer, Juniper, and her apprentice, Wise Child, are accused of witchcraft and forced to flee their small town. Wise Child’s devoted cousin, Colman, escapes with them. This is his story of their arrival to the land of Juniper’s birth, where she is, in fact, a princess.
288 pages, Grades 4 and up
related subjects:  Princesses, Witches

In India, twelve-year-old Anand discovers his destiny as the bearer of a magical and powerful conch shell, and must journey to return it to its rightful home high in the Himalayan mountains while enemies try to steal it from him.
272 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  India, Magic

When his father lands in debtors' prison, Tom, 14, tries to survive on the rough streets of early-nineteenth-century London.
208 pages, Grades 6-8
related subjects:  19th Century, Boy Bullies

Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.
176 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Witches, Parallel Universe, Zombies

Seventh-grader John "Crash" Coogan has always been comfortable with his tough, aggressive behavior, until his relationship with an unusual Quaker boy and his grandfather's stroke make him consider the meaning of friendship and the importance of family.
176 pages, Grades 3-6
related subjects:  Football, Grandparents, Boy Bullies

In this version of "Jack and the Beanstalk," Jack trades his cow for a handful of magic beans.
144 pages, Grades 5-7
related subjects:  Fairy Tales, Fathers

High school senior, Laura Sweeney has never had a date. She needs a proven "get the guy" strategy. Luckily she knows exactly the expert to call. He's a matchmaking mastermind who actually has the bow and arrow to prove it. Let's just call him...Cupid.
288 pages, Grades 7 and up
related subjects:  High School, Funny, Love, Mythology

A mysterious stranger who can spin straw into gold promises to make Charlotte's money problems disappear, but what does he want in return?
400 pages, Grades 7 and up
related subjects:  Fairy Tales, 18th Century, Ghosts

In 1968, eleven-year-old Jaynell's life in Texas is enlivened when her eccentric Grandpap comes to live with her family.
176 pages, Grades 5 and up
related subjects:  Grandparents, Poverty

While at sea during a freak storm near his island home in the far north, a fisherman finds a baby girl, and though he and his wife love her as their own, they realize that they may not be able to keep her from returning to the sea.
115 pages, Grades 4-7
related subjects:  Mermaids & Selkies, Foundlings