2007 Family Book Night Titles
FAMILY BOOK NIGHT 2007
“From Double Fudge to Gossip Girls: Youth Books about Class”
Sponsored by the LREI Literary Committee and presented by the LREI Librarians:
Stacy Dillon, Jennifer Hubert Swan, Jesse Karp and Karyn Silverman
(books listed in order of presentation)
RURAL/SMALL TOWN
Berekley, Laura and Alison Dexter, illustrator. The Seeds of Peace.
A tale of an unhappy merchant’s search for peace of mind. Despite his wealth, he turns to an old hermit to seek wisdom, self-knowledge and to help him sow the seeds of peace in his troubled heart. (CIP) (all ages)
Sturm, James and Tommaso, Rich. Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow.
An African American sharecropper in the 1940’s learns what he’s really made of from an American legend. (CIP) (4th grade +)
Wells, Rosemary and Eleanor Hubbard, illustrator. The Fisherman and His Wife.
The fisherman’s greedy wife is never satisfied with the wishes granted her by an enchanted fish. (CIP) (all ages)
Stauffacher, Sue. Harry Sue.
Although tough-talking Harry Sue would like to start a life of crime in order to be “sent up” and find her incarcerated mother, she must first protect the children at her neglectful grandmother’s home day care center and befriend a paralyzed boy. (CIP) (6th grade +)
Hesse, Karen. Just Juice.
Realizing that her father’s lack of work has endangered her family, nine-year-old Juice decides that she must return to school and learn to read in order to help their chances of surviving and keeping their house. (CIP) (grades 3-5)
Vollmar, Rob and Callejo, Pablo. Castaways.
A young man meets a hobo mentor and finds a society of the disenfranchised during the great depression, learning that there is honor in the “lowest” places, and that nothing is more important than home. (CIP) (4th grade +)
Patron, Susan. The Higher Power of Lucky.
Fearing that her legal guardian plans to abandon her to return to France, ten-year-old aspiring scientist Lucky Trimble determines to run away while also continuing to seek the Higher Power that will bring stability to her life. (CIP) (grades 4-6)
Rylant, Cynthia. Ludie’s Life.
A collection of poems that tell the story of Ludie, a poor woman in a coal-mining town in West Virginia, from her childhood to her adolescent years, and then through her married life into her old age. (CIP) (7th grade +)
Williams-Garcia, Rita. Like Sisters on the Homefront.
Troubled fourteen-year-old Gayle is sent down South to live with her uncle and aunt, where her life begins to change as she experiences the healing power of the family. (CIP) (8th grade +)
Rees, Celia. The Wish House.
An invitation to an art exhibit sets off memories in a now grown-up Richard of the pivotal summer of 1976 when, as a lonely and naive fifteen-year-old vacationing in South Wales, he comes under the enthralling influence of the artistic, uninhibited, sometimes cruel, and ultimately tragic Dalton family. (CIP) (9th grade +)
SUBURBAN
Clements, Andrew. The Jacket.
Sixth-grader Phil comes to an awareness of his own racial prejudice after he sees Daniel, an African-American boy, wearing his brother’s one-of-a-kind jacket and leaps to the conclusion that Daniel has stolen the coat. (CIP) (4th grade+)
Vogel Frederick, Heather. The Mother-Daughter Book Club.
When the mothers of four sixth-grade girls with very different personalities pressure them into forming a book club, they find, as they read and discuss “Little Women,” that they have much more in common than they could have imagined. (CIP) (grades 4 – 7)
Sones, Sonya. One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies.
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother’s grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born. (CIP) (7th grade +)
Vaughn, Brian K. and Alphona, Adrian. Runaways.
After they discover that their parents are secret super-criminals, six teens must leave a life of privilege and learn to live a life on the street in this fast paced read with high appeal for girls as well as boys. (7th grade +)
Whitney, Kim Albon. See You Down the Road.
Sixteen-year-old Bridget, member of an Irish Traveler community in the U.S., questions the traditions of her family’s nomadic, criminal way of life and begins to consider breaking free. (CIP) (7th grade +)
URBAN
Blume, Judy. Double Fudge.
His younger brother’s obsession with money and the discovery of long-lost cousins Flora and Fauna provide many embarrassing moments for twelve-year-old Peter. (CIP) (grades 3–5)
Potter, Ellen. Pish Posh.
Eleven-year-old Clara Frankofile sits in her parents’ elegant New York City restaurant, Pish Posh, and passes judgment on each customer as a Somebody or a Nobody, but her all-seeing eyes fail to observe the mysterious events occurring right under her nose. (CIP) (grades 4-6)
Flake, Sharon G. Money Hungry.
All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry about living on the streets again. (CIP) (6th grade+)
Updale, Eleanor. Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?
In Victorian London, after his life is saved by a young physician, a thief utilizes the knowledge he gains in prison and from the scientific lectures he attends as the physician’s case study exhibit to create a new, highly successful, double life for himself. (CIP) (6th grade +)
Booth, Coe. Tyrell.
Fifteen-year-old Tyrell, who is living in a Bronx homeless shelter with his spaced-out mother and his younger brother, tries to avoid temptation so he does not end up in jail like his father. (CIP) (9th grade +)
Soto, Gary. Buried Onions.
When nineteen-year-old Eddie drops out of college, he struggles to find a place for himself as a Mexican American living in a violence-infested neighborhood of Fresno, California. (CIP) (8th grade +)
Silady, Mark. The Homeless Channel.
A young producer launches a 24 our cable channel devoted to the homeless, but is it a sincere effort or crass exploitation? (10th grade +)
Buckhanon, Kalisha. Upstate.
Seventeen-year-old Antonio and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Natasha, find their love tested when Antonio is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. (CIP) (9th grade +)
BOARDING SCHOOL/PRIVATE SCHOOL
Canales, Viola. Tequila Worm.
Sofia grows up in the close-knit community of the barrio in McAllen, Texas, then finds that her experiences as a scholarship student at an Episcopal boarding school in Austin only strengthen her ties to family and her “comadres.” (CIP) (grades 5-7)
Jones, Traci L. Standing Against the Wind.
After her mother is sent to jail, eighth-grader Patrice Williams moves to Chicago to live with her aunt Mae where she attends a school filled with gangs and drug runners, applies for a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, and learns there is hope for her future. (CIP) (8th grade +)
Choldenko, Gennifer. If A Tree Falls At Lunch Period.
Kirsten and Walk, seventh-graders at an elite private school, alternate telling how race, wealth, weight, and other issues shape their relationships as they and other misfits stand up to a mean but influential classmate, even as they are uncovering a long-kept secret about themselves.(CIP) (grades 5–7)
Houston, Julian. New Boy.
As a new sophomore at an exclusive boarding school in the 1950s, Rob Garrett, a young black man, is witness to the persecution of other students and wonders about the growing civil rights movement back home in Virginia. (CIP) (8th grade +)
Southgate, Martha. The Fall of Rome.
Latin instructor Jerome Washington, the only African-American teacher at an all-boys boarding school in Connecticut, finds his ideals about race challenged by a promising young African-American student who responds to Jerome in an unexpected way. (CIP) (9th grade +)
OTHER WORLDS
Tan, Shaun. The Arrival.
With simple story and complex art, this stunning, unforgettable story of an immigrant encountering a new world is the best graphic novel of the year, if not the best graphic novel of all time. (1st grade +)
Bechard, Margaret. Spacer and Rat.
Jack’s predictable existence on Freedom space station is transformed when Kit, the Earthie rat, enters his life and enlists him and a sensitive robot in an effort to outwit the Company. (CIP) (6TH grade +)
Carman, Patrick. Atherton: The House of Power.
Edgar, an eleven-year-old orphan, finds a book that reveals significant secrets about Atherton, the strictly divided world on which he lives, even as geological changes threaten to shift the power structure that allows an elite few to live off the labor of others. (6th grade +)
Stroud, Jonathan. The Amulet of Samarkand.
Nathaniel, a young magician’s apprentice, becomes caught in a web of magical espionage, murder, and rebellion, after he summons the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Loveland.
Adlington, L.J. The Diary of Pelly D.
Toni V, a construction worker on a futuristic colony, finds the diary of a teenage girl whose life has been turned upside-down by holocaust-like events, and he begins to question his own beliefs. (CIP) (7th grade +)
Knox, Elizabeth. Dreamhunter.
In a world where select people can enter “The Place” and find dreams of every kind to share with others for a fee, a fifteen-year-old girl is training to be a dreamhunter when her father disappears, leaving her to carry on his mysterious mission. (CIP) (9th grade +)
“CIP” stands for “Cataloging in Publication,” which is the summary that appears on the back of the title page of every book published for children or young adults. The librarians at the Library of Congress write this summary.