Vivian Alcock

A Kind of Thief

When her father is suddenly arrested and put into prison, 

thirteen-year-old Elinor finds that she has to face 

many unpleasant truths about him and their way of life.

6th Grade and up



Banks

Broken Bridge

 The murder of fourteen-year-old Glen Shelby, soon after 

his arrival in Israel to visit his father's family, has a dramatic 

effect on the lives of his relatives, the other members of their 

kibbutz, and the Arabs responsible for his death. 

7th Grade and up

 

Bauer

Squashed

As a sixteen-year-old pursues her two goals--growing the 

biggest pumpkin in Iowa and losing twenty pounds 

herself--she strengthens her relationship with her 

father and meets a young man with interests similar to her own.

6th Grade and up

Thwonk

 A cupid doll comes to life and offers romantic assistance to 

A.J., a teenage photographer suffering from unrequited love.

7th Grade and up 

 

Bennett

Life in the Fat Lane

Sixteen-year-old Lara, winner of beauty pageants and 

Homecoming Queen, is distressed and bewildered when she 

starts gaining weight and becomes a fat girl.

8th Grade and up



Block

Baby Be-bop

 Dirk MacDonald, a sixteen-year-old boy living in Los Angeles, 

comes to terms with being gay after he receives surreal 

storytelling visitations from his dead father and great-grandmother.

10th Grade and up 

 

Cadnum

Edge

 Zachary, living with his divorced mother in California, finds 

violence gradually invading his life and making significant changes 

in his day-to-day existence. 

9th Grade and up

 Heat

 A teenaged diving champion must deal with the aftermath 

of a diving accident and her attorney father's remarriage and 

subsequent arrest for fraud. 

5th Grade and up

Zero at the Bone

When eighteen-year-old Anita fails to return home from work, her 

parents and younger brother try to understand and cope with 

her disappearance. 

7th Grade and up



Cole 

The Goats

Stripped and marooned on a small island by their fellow 

campers, a boy and a girl form an uneasy bond that grows 

into a deep friendship when they decide to run away and 

disappear without a trace.

8th Grade and up



Cooney

Driver's Ed

 Three teenagers' lives are changed forever when they 

thoughtlessly steal a stop sign from a dangerous intersection 

and a young mother is killed in an automobile accident there.

7th Grade and up 

 The Face on the Milk Carton

A photograph of a missing girl on a milk carton leads 

Janie on a search for her real identity.

7th Grade and up

The Voice on the Radio

 Companion novel to The face on the milk carton and 

Whatever happened to Janie? Fifteen-year-old Janie feels 

devastated when she discovers that her boyfriend has betrayed 

her and her family through his college radio program. 

6th Grade and up

 Whatever Happened to Janie

 The members of two families have their lives disrupted 

when a teenage girl who had been kidnapped twelve years earlier 

discovers that the people who raised her are not her biological 

parents. Sequel to The Face on the Milk Carton.

7th Grade and up

 

Cormier

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

 Sixteen-year-old Barney has only fleeting memories about his 

past but, as a voluntary patient at the institute for experimental 

medicine, he knows he is different from the terminally ill 

patients surrounding him. His involvement with the bitter, 

slowly dying, Mazzo brings Barney hope, pain, and a moment of 

heroic glory. 

7th Grade and up

 The Chocolate War

 Jerry Renault is forced into a psychological showdown with 

Trinity School's gang leader, Archie Costello, for refusing 

to be bullied into selling chocolates for the annual fund raising. 

7th Grade and up

Tunes for Bears to Dance to

 Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family's problems by 

watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust 

survivor, but when Henry is manipulated into betraying 

his friend he comes to know true evil. 

6th Grade and up

 We All Fall Down

As The Avenger searches for the teenage boys who trashed a 

house in his neighborhood, Buddy, one of the trashers, 

increases his drinking in order to cope with his parents' 

separation and his obsession with the daughter of the owner 

of the vandalized house. 

8th Grade and up



Creech

Walk Two Moons

 After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old 

Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her 

mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend 

Phoebe, whose mother also left. 

6th Grade and up

 

Danziger

P.S. Longer Letter Later

Twelve-year-old best friends Elizabeth and Tara-Starr continue 

their friendship through letter-writing after Tara-Starr's 

family moves to another state.

5th Grade and up



Fine

Tulip Touch

 Natalie, who lives in the large hotel managed by her father, 

has a dangerous friendship with Tulip, the wildly uncontrollable 

girl on a neighboring farm. 

6th Grade and up

 

Grant

Mary Wolf

 Sixteen-year-old Mary tries to keep her family together 

as they aimlessly travel the country after her father's business 

fails and he starts to change. 

6th Grade and up

Uncle Vampire

 Sixteen-year-old Caroline and her twin sister Honey 

know for sure that their Uncle Toddy is a vampire who 

comes at night to drink their blood but fear of the consequences 

makes them keep their terrible secret.

7th Grade and up 

 

Griffin

The Sons of Liberty

 When thirteen-year-old Rock helps his friend Liza run 

away from home, he wonders whether escaping from his 

own troubled family would be an act of patriotism or of treason.

6th Grade and up 

 

Haddix

Leaving Fishers

After joining her new friends in the religious group called 

Fishers of Men, Dorry finds herself immersed in a cult 

from which she must struggle to extricate herself.

7th Grade and up



Hamilton

Plain City

 Twelve-year-old Buhlaire, a mixed child who feels out of place 

in her community, struggles to unearth her past and 

her family history as she gradually discovers more and more 

about her long-missing father. 

6th Grade and up



Hesse

Phoenix Rising

Thirteen-year-old Nyle learns about relationships and death 

when fifteen-year-old Ezra, who was exposed to radiation 

leaked from a nearby nuclear plant, comes to stay at her grandmother's 

Vermont farmhouse.

6th Grade and up



Howe

The Watcher

 As she sits watching a seemingly perfect family and a handsome 

lifeguard on the beach, a lonely, troubled girl projects herself 

into the fantasy lives she has created for them. 

7th Grade and up



Kindl

The Woman in the Wall

Because she suffers from extreme shyness, Anna retreats 

into herself and her secret rooms where she attempts to 

remain hidden from the outside world.

5th Grade and up

 

Konigsburg

The View from Saturday

Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a 

special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a 

paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade 

class in the Academic Bowl competition.

4th Grade and up



Krisher

Kinship

In 1961 fifteen-year-old Pert, who lives with her mother 

in Kinship, Georgia, meets her long-absent father and discovers 

the true meaning of home.

6th Grade and up 



Levitin

The Singing Mountain

 While traveling in Israel for the summer, seventeen-year-old 

Mitch decides to stay and pursue a life of Jewish orthodoxy, 

forcing him to make some important decisions about the family 

and life he is leaving in southern California. 

8th Grade and up

 

Mahy

Memory

On the fifth anniversary of his older sister's death, nineteen-year-old 

Jonny Dart, troubled by feelings of guilt and an imperfect memory 

of the event, goes in search of the only other witness to the fatal 

accident and, through a chance meeting with a senile old woman, 

finds a way to free himself of the past. 

7th Grade and up

The Other Side of Silence

As a member of a gifted, idiosyncratic, and argumentative family, 

twelve-year-old Hero chooses mutism until she reconciles the 

true with the real in her life.

6th Grade and up



Mazer, Harry

City Light

A teenage boy makes an exploration of his identity after losing 

his childhood sweetheart and beginning a new relationship with 

the aid of a computer.

7th Grade and up

The Island Keeper

 Longing to disappear after the death of her beloved younger sister, 

16-year-old Cleo runs away from her overprotective and oppressive 

family and goes to a remote island where she is the only human inhabitant.

7th Grade and up

When the Phone Rang

When their parents are killed in an airplane crash, three siblings 

try to keep the family together in the face of overwhelming 

personal and financial problems.

7th Grade and up

Who is Eddie Leonard?

 A fourteen-year-old boy who was raised by an abusive old 

woman and who has always had questions about his parents 

sees a picture of a missing child and sets out to discover if he is that child.

7th Grade and up 

 

Mazer, Norma F.

Bright Days, Stupid Nights

 During the summer internship on a newspaper, fourteen-year-old 

Vicki develops a love-hate relationship with Chris, the only male intern, 

and writes a sensational story about her friend Faith which the 

other interns try to get her to destroy.

7th Grade and up 

Missing Pieces

 As she watches her friends with their fathers, fourteen-year-old 

Jessie decides the family she shares with her mother and her 

great-great aunt is not enough, so she sets out to learn more 

about the father who left when she was just a baby.

6th Grade and up



Myers

Crystal

Fifteen-year-old Crystal has difficulty trying to reconcile her 

personal and school life with the sexy, sophisticated persona her 

career as a quickly advancing high-fashion model has forced upon her.

8th Grade and up

Slam

Sixteen-year-old Slam Harris is counting on his noteworthy basketball 

talents to get him out of the inner city and give him a chance to 

succeed in life, but his coach sees things differently.

7th Grade and up

Somewhere in the Darkness

A teenage boy accompanies his father, who has recently escaped 

from prison, on a trip that turns out to be an, often painful, time of 

discovery for them both. 

7th Grade and up



Napoli

For the Love of Venice

 Spending the summer in Venice with his family turns confusing for Percy 

when he meets a beautiful, politically radical Venetian girl who wants 

him to help sabotage his father's engineering project in order to drive tourists 

out of the city. 

7th Grade and up

 

Paulsen

Dancing Carl

 Two boys hero worship a man they are told to stay away from. As winter 

progresses, the strange man in the worn flight jacket dances frequently 

on the ice of the rink, expressing more with his movements than most 

people do with words. 

6th Grade and up

The Monument

 Thirteen-year-old Rocky, self-conscious about the braces on her leg, 

has her life changed by the remarkable artist who comes to her small 

Kansas town to design a war memorial.

6th Grade and up 

 The Rifle

 A priceless, handcrafted rifle, fired throughout the American Revolution, 

is passed down through the years until it fires on a fateful Christmas Eve 

of 1994. 

5th Grade and up

 

Peck

The Last Safe Place on Earth

 Fifteen-year-old Todd sees his perfect suburban world start to unravel 

when his little sister has her mind poisoned by a member of a 

fundamentalist sect and he begins to notice signs of censorship 

in his community. 

6th Grade and up



Peck, Robert N.

A Day No Pigs Would Die

To a thirteen-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a 

living, maturity comes early as he learns "doing what's got to be 

done," especially regarding his pet pig who cannot produce a litter.

4th Grade and up



Ruby

Miriam's Well

When Miriam develops bone cancer, she finds herself the focus of 

a battle between the medical and legal establishments and the small 

Christian sect to which she and her family belong.

7th Grade and up

Skin Deep

Laurel's boyfriend Dan becomes a neo-Nazi skinhead and gets the attention 

and respect he has been denied all his life, especially when he becomes 

involved in a First Amendment battle.

8th Grade and up



Spinelli

Wringer

As Palmer comes of age, he must either accept the violence of being a 

wringer at his town's annual Pigeon Day or find the courage to oppose it.

4th Grade and up



Tamar

Fair Game

High school senior Laura Jean is shocked when the school jocks 

are accused of gang-raping a retarded girl and her boyfriend Scott 

appears to be involved.

9th Grade and up



Thesman

The Storyteller's Daughter

Fifteen-year-old Quinn, the middle child in a Depression-era working 

class family, learns some secrets about her beloved father, who has 

always been a source of strength and optimism for his family, friends, 

and neighbors.

6th Grade and up



Voigt

Bad, Badder, Baddest

When fifth graders Mikey and Margalo devise a plan to prevent 

Mikey's parents from getting a divorce, the two friends find their scheme 

foiled by a new girl at school. 

4th Grade and up



Zindel

The Pigman

 A teenage boy and girl, high school sophomores from unhappy homes, 

tell of their bizarre relationship with an old man. 

7th Grade and up

 The Pigman's Legacy

 Haunted by the memory of a dead friend, two teenagers join 

an old man in a series of misadventures. 

7th Grade and up