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A Wizard of Earthsea
Ruth Robbins, Ursula K. Le Guin
Synopsis: Often compared to Tolkien's Middle-earth or Lewis's Narnia, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea is a stunning fantasy world that grabs quickly at our hearts, pulling us deeply into its imaginary realms. Four books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu) tell the whole Earthsea cycle--a tale about a reckless, awkward boy named Sparrowhawk who becomes a wizard's apprentice after the wizard reveals Sparrowhawk's true name. The boy comes to realize that his fate may be far more important than he ever dreamed possible. Le Guin challenges her readers to think about the power of language, how in the act of naming the world around us we actually create that world. Teens, especially, will be inspired by the way Le Guin allows her characters to evolve and grow into their own powers.

In this first book, A Wizard of Earthsea readers will witness Sparrowhawk's moving rite of passage--when he discovers his true name and becomes a young man. Great challenges await Sparrowhawk, including an almost deadly battle with a sinister creature, a monster that may be his own shadow.

Publication Date: 05/01/84
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Onion John
Symeon Shimin, Joseph Krumgold
Synopsis:

The story of a friendship between a 12-year-old boy and an immigrant handyman, almost wrecked by the good intentions of the townspeople.

Publication Date: 04/04/84
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Flowers For Algeron
Daniel Keyes
Synopsis: Flowers For Algernon made its  first appearance as a short story which was  rapidly and widely anthologized, and translated  internationally. It received further acclaim as a  moderated television drama, and as a motional picture  production. Now, full bodied and richly-peopled,  Flowers For Algernon is the daring  novel of a starling human experiment!  
Publication Date: 04/01/84
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Fiction
Exodus
Leon Uris
Synopsis: “Passionate summary of the inhuman treatment of the Jewish people in Europe, of the exodus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to Palestine, and of the triumphant founding of the new Israel.”—The New York Times

Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon—the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event.  Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies—the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power.  Here is the tale that swept the world with its fury: the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorious, heartbreaking, triumphant era. Here is Exodus—one of the great bestselling novels of all time.
Publication Date: 11/01/83
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Historical Fiction
The Pigman
Paul Zindel
Synopsis: Meet Mr. Pignati, a lonely old man with a beer belly and an awful secret. He's the Pigman, and he's got a great big twinkling smile. When John and Lorraine, two high school sophomores, meet Mr. Pignati, they learn his whole sad, zany story. They tell it right here in this book -- the truth, and nothing but the truth -- no matter how many people it shocks or hurts.
Publication Date: 03/01/83
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Ratha's Creature
Clare Bell
Synopsis: Twenty-five million years ago, Ratha and her kind, the Named--a band of intelligent cats--are being pushed toward extinction by the UnNamed, until Ratha discovers, and masters, the terrifying power of fire
Publication Date: 02/01/83
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Environment
Inherit The Wind
Robert E. Lee, Jerome Lawrence
Synopsis: The accused was a slight, frightened man who had  deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman  circus. The chief gladiators were two great legal  giants of the century. Like two bull elephants  locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared  imprecations and abuse. The spectators sat uneasily  in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts,  barely able to restrain themselves. At stake was  the freedom of every American. One of the most  moving and meaningful plays of our generation. "a  tidal wave of a drama." -- New York  World-Telegram And Sun
Publication Date: 07/01/82
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
Synopsis: Acclaimed by Henry James as Robert Louis Stevenson's best novel, Kidnapped achieves what Stevenson called, "the particular crown and triumph of the artist...not simply to convince, but to enchant."

Spirited, romantic, and full of danger, Kidnapped is Robert Louis Stevenson's classic of high adventure. Beloved by generations, it is the saga of David Balfour, a young heir whose greedy uncle connives to do him out of his inherited fortune and plots to have him seized and sold into slavery. But honor, loyalty, and courage are rewarded; the orphan and castaway survives kidnapping and shipwreck, is rescued by a daredevil of a rogue, and makes a thrilling escape to freedom across the wild highlands of Scotland.
Publication Date: 01/01/82
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Intern's Tale
Colin Douglas
Synopsis: By telling his corporate bosses to shove it, seventeen-year old intern Kip Pureweather may have pushed the Incorporated Realms of America into the third Dark Ages. Kip's first assignment away from Vassalcorp headquarters in York City sends him on mechanical horseback to the farmlands of Ohio. With feisty office-maiden Abbey Fairchild in tow, the two trade barbs as often as they do stolen glances. Just as Kip and Abbey are finding common ground, Kip learns the nature of his assignment - the foreclosure of the Fairchild farm. When faced with destroying a family to secure his future as a knight-executive, Kip defies the all-powerful corporations and changes his destiny forever. Kip's insubordination makes him an instant outlaw, and the only place out of the corporations' reach is the forbidden Empty Lands north of the Realms. But the Empty Lands hold a secret the corporations have kept since the time of the Generex, a war that brought them to power and ushered in the second Dark Ages. With knowledge of an imminent threat, Kip returns for Abbey, and with the help of a slave, a mailroom clerk, a tabloid princess, and the self-proclaimed greatest-mind-of-their-time, they take a stand against the corporations and the impending destruction of their world.
Publication Date: 11/01/82
Age Level: Mature Young Adult
Genre: Series
Silas Marner
George Eliot
Synopsis: Embittered by a false accusation, disappointed in friendship and love, the weaver Silas Marner retreats into a long twilight life alone with his loom. . . and his gold. Silas hoards a treasure that kills his spirit until fate steals it from him and replaces it with a golden-haired founding child. Where she came from, who her parents were, and who really stole the gold are the secrets that permeate this moving tale of guilt and innocence. A moral allegory of the redemptive power of love, it is also a finely drawn picture of early nineteenth-century England in the days when spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses, and of a simple way of life that was soon to disappear.
Publication Date: 10/01/81
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Thomas Alva Edison
Margaret Cousins
Synopsis: Beginning with Thomas Edison’s childhood, when he set up his first laboratory in his basement as a 10-year-old, and following through his many jobs before he was able to support himself as an inventor, this is the true story of the man who brought the world the phonograph, motion pictures, and even the electric light bulb—revolutionary inventions that forever changed the way people live.
“One of the most critically acclaimed, best-selling children’s book series ever published.”—The New York Times
Margaret Cousins is also the author of the Landmark Book Ben Franklin of
Old Philadelphia.
Publication Date: 08/12/81
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Nonfiction
Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
Synopsis: THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
Publication Date: 11/01/81
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
Fat Men from Space
Daniel Manus Pinkwater
Synopsis: "While William is held captive in a spaceship, alien armies land and wipe out the earth's supply of junk foods. The boy escapes and humans learn to like what the departing scavengers have left: wholegrain bread, milk, greens, all the healthful foods. A wildly comic fantasy with a solid moral."--Publishers Weekly.
Publication Date: 07/15/80
Age Level: 8 - 12
Genre: Fiction
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
John Sturrock, John Sturrock, Victor Hugo
Synopsis: More commonly known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo's Romantic novel of dark passions and unrequited love

In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her, that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century.

John Sturrock's clear, contemporary translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing it as a passionate novel of ideas, written in defence of Gothic architecture and of a burgeoning democracy, and demonstrating that an ugly exterior can conceal moral beauty. This revised edition also includes further reading and a chronology of Hugo's life.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Publication Date: 10/26/78
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Elizabeth George Speare
Synopsis: Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives' stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is in the meadows, where she enjoys the company of the old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, and on occasion, her young sailor friend Nat. But when Kit's friendship with the "witch" is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft!
Publication Date: 05/15/78
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Historical Fiction
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil
Synopsis: When Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation.  And she would live in comfort-at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  She invited her brother Jamie to go, too, mostly because he was a miser and would have money



The two took up residence in the museum right on schedule.  But once the fun of settling in was over, Claudia had two unexpected problems: She felt just the same, and she wanted to feel different; and she found a statue at the museum so beautiful she could not go home until she had discovered its maker, a question that baffled even the experts.  The former owner of the statue was Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler And without her help Claudia might never have found a way to go home.
Publication Date: 10/15/77
Age Level: 12 and up
Genre: Fiction

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