8 - 12

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel
Greg Heffley is not willing to be the odd man out.A dance at Greg's middle school has everyone scrambling to find a partner, and Greg is determined not to be left by the wayside. So he concocts a desperate plan to find someone—anyone!—to go with on the big night.But Greg's schemes go hilariously awry, and his only option is to attend the dance with his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, and a female classmate as a "group of friends." But the night is long, and anything can happen along the way. Who will arrive at the dance triumphantly, and who will end up being the third wheel?
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Susannah begins to learn about slavery in the South and the Abolitionist movement in the North, but the issues soon become more than idle gossip. Her father hires Jacob, an escaped slave, to work as a farmhand and live in the Allen's spare room. When tensions explode in her town, Susannah must face how to stand up to prejudice when it's a matter of life or death. The Spare Room is a story appropriate for all readers, ages 10 and up. The Spare Room by Jenny Land is a fast-paced, entertaining and thoughtful novel for young adults, the kind of book I loved to read as a child: not old-fashioned, but timeless, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird or the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House In The Big Woods series. The story is set in Vermont in 1843, almost twenty years before the onset of the American Civil War, during a time when abolitionists in New England were already calling for an end to slavery and escaped slaves from southern states were moving north toward Canada. Land has written a thoroughly engaging book, well grounded in the atmosphere of a time and a place when life was often very hard for families. The Spare Room brings this to the reader with carefully researched detail blended with the captivating energy of Susannah Allen s perceptive view of her world. This is a book that readers of any age will find hard to put down, and impossible to forget.The Spare Room reminds us that the freedom and equal opportunity we take for granted today were achieved only after a time of adversity and division, when many principled Vermonters took a stand. --Reeve Lindbergh, Author Land writes with the magical touch of Laura Ingalls Wilder. --Howard Frank Mosher, Author The Spare Room reminds us that the freedom and equal opportunity we take for granted today were achieved only after a time of adversity and division, when many principled Vermonters took a stand. --Jim Douglas, former Vermont Governor and historian
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The Shadowed Valley
In The Shadowed Valley, nothing is quite what it seems. What Celia faces here is worse than anything she experienced in the land of Dauthus. The evil residing in the valley messes with your mind.
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A fast-paced adventure of a quick-witted young teen who finds himself catapulted back through time and space to ancient Egypt. Suddenly captured and scared, he befriends the ancient god of Anubis. The two set out to battle the evil Set and free Egypt from his clutches.
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Brian, His Granddad and the Cup of Ages
When eleven-year-old Brian Pankhurst has to stay with his grandparents, he's not exactly enthusiastic. He barely knows them, after all, and they're a little strange. They're stranger than he realises, in fact. Very soon after he arrives at their ancient house, Brian starts to feel that something isn't right. Why has someone sent his granddad a completely blank letter? Why don't people who go in to the local bookshop ever seem to come out again? What does his granddad mean when he says Brian's father wasn't really an accountant? Then Brian wakes in the middle of the night and finds he's going to have to adjust to three things very quickly: magic is real, monsters are real, and he and his family are in terrible danger...
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Back to Bataan
Hiding out in Riverside Park after lashing out at the boy who stole his girlfriend, Jack joins ranks with a group of vagrants and is soon under the sway of a man called the Leader, a charismatic ex-convict.
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A Horse Named Viking
A rogue. An outlaw. An unlikely hero. Viking is the sole offspring of a savage and vicious mare. The colt is the pride of the stable until his dam kills a groom in her stall. Viking is a painful reminder of the tragedy, and so he is sold off. The black colt has a coarse face and a mean curl to his nostrils, but he is beautifully proportioned with magnificent gaits. With his teeth and thick weapon of a tail, Viking brutalizes everyone who handles him and humiliates the best trainers in the world until Anne O'Neil tries him. The first time she rides him, she declares she will not buy him if he was the last apple in the barrel. The second time, she rides him as if he is as sensitive as one of her Thoroughbreds, and she is amazed by the results. Kindness and sugar turn out to be the keys to Viking's heart. Viking and Anne become rising stars until a cruel and brutal trainer seeks to crush his spirit. A Horse Named Viking follows the life journey of an incredible, unforgettable horse.
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Melonhead and the Vegalicious Disaster
Gillian Johnson, Katy Kelly
It's not fair! Not only is Melonhead's new fifth-grade teacher notoriously strict and mean, his mother is making him eat more and more vegetables. So Melonhead and his pals come up with a genius idea to get out of eating his mom's vegalicious meals, all the while convincing her that they actually love them. But the genius idea leads to totally unexpected and stinky results!
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Pie in the Sky
Jane Smiley
Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her horse? Abby's dad seems to think it will be Abby. Pie in the Sky is the most expensive horse Abby has ever ridden. But he is proud and irritable, and he takes Abby's attention away from the continuing mystery that is True Blue.And then there's high school—Abby finds new friends, but also new challenges, and a larger world that sometimes seems strange and intimidating. She begins to wonder if there is another way to look at horses, people, and life itself.Accompanied by the beautiful imagery of 1960s Northern California, Abby's charming mix of innocence and wisdom guide us through Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley's latest middle-grade horse novel.