(put together for George's son.  I'm guessing on the grade because I no longer recall)

 

Kensuke's kingdom (Michael Morpurgo)

When Michael is swept off his family's yacht, he washes up on a desert island, where he struggles to survive--until he finds he is not alone. 

 

Aha! The most interesting book you’ll ever read about intelligence (Trudee Romanek) All kinds of cool stuff about how your brain works.

 

 

How to train your dragon  “by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III ; translated from the Old Norse” by Cressida Cowell

How to Be a Pirate, by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Cressida Cowell) Another nice and funny adventure.  This one, thankfully, has fewer fart jokes.

 

 

The tarantula in my purse : and 172 other wild pets (written and illustrated by Jean Craighead George of My Side of the Mountain fame) Hilarious, fascinating stories about the various wild animals (crows, weasel, ducks, toads, etc.) George and her kids rescued, healed, and released into the wild over several years. 

 

 

My Side of the Mountain (Jean C. George)

 

 

Puppies, dogs, and blue northers : reflections on being raised by a pack of sled dogs (Gary Paulsen)

 

 

The Kid Who Named Pluto and the stories of other extraordinary young people in science (McCutcheon) A fun read.  Includes the kid who invented TV; Mary Anning; Louis Braille; a modern math whiz; etc.

 

 

The Squire’s Tale (Gerald Morris) Excellent, lively, historically aware, personality rich retelling of the legend of Sir Gawain (told from the point of view of his squire, Terence, who is hero of his own story as well). 

 

 

The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo) Mouse braves dungeon and rats to save princess.  Clean writing, good characters, annoying addresses directly to “reader.”  Newbery winner. 

 

 

So You Want to Be a Wizard (Diane Duane) Science, ethics, magic, 13-year-olds with serious internal resources.  Plenty of danger and stress, so heads-up. 

 

 

Because I Could Not Stop My Bike and Other Poems (Karen Jo Shapiro)

 

 

The Capture (Guardians of Ga’Hoole #1) (Kathryn Lasky) “In this first book in the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, readers meet Soren, a barn owl who discovers a great evil in the owl kingdom which he must work to vanquish.”

 

 

Chasing Vermeer (Blue Balliett) “When seemingly unrelated and 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.”

 

 

A Coyote’s In the House (Elmore Leonard) Antwan, a hip young coyote homey from the Hollywood hills, befriends an over-the-hill canine movie star, Buddy, and they try out a Prince-and-the-Pauper-style exchange. 

 

 

Dangerous Planet: Natural Disasters that Changed History (Bryn Barnard)   Fascinating very short pieces about meteor impacts, typhoons, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, etc., that happened at just the right time to help defeat a particular enemy, destroy a crucial fleet of ships, and otherwise mess with human history.

 

 

Gregor the Overlander (Suzanne Collins) Good! “When eleven-year-old Gregor and his two-year-old sister are pulled into a strange underground world, they trigger an epic battle involving men, bats, rats, cockroaches, and spiders while on a quest foretold by ancient prophecy.  First in (at least) a trilogy.”

 

 

Dogsbody (Diana Wynne Jones) 

Charmed life / Diana Wynne Jones.  “After two centuries of feuding the powers of the two families of magicians in mythical Caprona are too weak to stop an incipient war, but the younger members of the families find a way.”

 

 

Otto and the Flying Twins Charlotte Haptie “Young Otto comes to the rescue when he discovers that his family and city are the last remnants of an ancient magical world now under threat from the Normal Police.”  Quirky, excellent.  First of Karmidee series.

              

The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau)  Almost 250 years ago, the Builders built the City of Ember, a city of darkness lit only by electric light, provisioned from greenhouses and the storerooms deep underground filled with light bulbs and cans of food.  The Builders also left Instructions, to be opened in 120 years, but somehow those Instructions, and the memory of them, was lost.  Now the City is running out of supplies, even electricity.  The generator is breaking down and blackouts are more frequent.  12-year-olds Lina and Doon know something must be done—but what? 

 

 

The People of Sparks (Jeanne DuPrau)  Sequel to The City of Ember.  Good.  The 400+ Emberites, having escaped their dying underground city, are taken in by a struggling hamlet (Sparks) in the post-Disaster world, and tensions build as the Sparks folks have to share limited resources and teach the Emberites how to survive.  Resentment and rivalries build- is war among peoples inevitable?  Or not? 

 

 

The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Field Guide (DiTerlizzi & Black) “When the Grace children go to stay at their Great Aunt Lucinda's worn Victorian house, they discover a field guide to fairies and other creatures and begin to have some unusual [and not necessarily cute] experiences.”  Good.

 

 

Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna (Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton) A fascinating account written by a man who lives part-time with his family on the African savannah, hunting and living in mud huts and drinking cow’s blood, and the other half of the year he teaches history at the Langley School in Virginia! 

 

 

Rascal (Sterling North)  A lyrical memoir of Sterling’s 11^th year, in 1918 southern Wisconsin, with his pet Raccoon kit, Rascal.  Seductively peaceful and independent images of the freedom of his boyhood in the gorgeous woods and streams around his town. 

 

 

Akiko: Volume Four (Mark Crilley) Graphic novel (compiled from Story Tree comix issues 8-13) about a resourceful girl (Akiko) and her pals from Planet Smoo. 

 

 

Hoot (Carl Hiaasen) Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.  A funny mystery.

 

 

The Wild World of the Future (Claire Pye) Totally cool weird book about evolution, with computer-generated pictures imagining how today’s animals might evolve as the earth experiences major geographic and climatic shifts. 

 

 

Olivia Kidney (Ellen Potter)  “Twelve-year-old Olivia explores her new apartment building and finds a psychic, talking lizards, a shrunken ex-pirate, an exiled princess, ghosts, and other unusual characters.” Totally surreal and excellent- has that “real” edge of genuine emotion and danger.