Karen Hesse
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.3 - AR Pts: 3
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Written in sparse first-person, free-verse poems, is the compelling tale of Billie Jo's struggle to survive during the dust bowl years of the Depression. With stoic courage, she learns to cope with the loss of her mother and her grieving father's slow deterioration. There is hope at the end when Billie Jo's badly burned hands are healed, and she is able to play her beloved piano again.
2) Witness
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5 - AR Pts: 2
Description
A serious of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.
3) Stowaway
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6.1 - AR Pts: 11
Formats
Description
A fictionalized journal relates the experiences of a young stowaway from 1768 to 1771 aboard the Endeavor, which sailed around the world under Captain James Cook.
7) Sable
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 3.8 - AR Pts: 1
Description
Tate Marshall is delighted when a stray dog turns up in the yard one day, but Sable, named for her dark, silky fur, causes trouble with the neighbors and has to go.
10) Safekeeping
Author
Pub. Date
[2012]
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 4.7 - AR Pts: 6
Description
When Radley returns to the U.S. after having volunteered abroad, she discovers a country under military rule with strict travel restrictions, and she must find her way back to her Vermont home through the New England woods.
12) Just Juice
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 3.8 - AR Pts: 3
Description
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.
13) A time of angels
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 9
Description
Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.
14) My Thumb
Author
Pub. Date
2016
Description
"I love my thumb, I truly do, it tastes of pears and carrot stew.It's like a hug, an "I love you." My mom hoped in a year or twothere'd be some things that I outgrew, and some I have, but never you."Kids who suck their thumbs know there's nothing better. NOTHING! Here is a fun picture book ode to the thumb.
15) Lejos Del Polvo
Author
Series
Pub. Date
1997
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.3 - AR Pts: 3
Description
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
16) Lavender
Author
Series
Pub. Date
1995
Description
When Codie's favorite aunt is having a baby, Codie has lots of worries: Will the baby and her aunt be all right, will Codie's baby quilt be done on time, and will her aunt still have time for her?
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 6
Formats
Description
In 1903 Brooklyn, fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom's life changes for the worse when his parents, Russian immigrants, invent the teddy bear and turn their apartment into a factory, while nearby the glitter of Coney Island contrasts with the dismal lives of children dwelling under the Brooklyn Bridge.
18) Night job
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 3.4 - AR Pts: 1
Description
What is it like to work at night, while the rest of the city is asleep? Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse's quietly powerful story of a boy and his father is tenderly brought to life by G. Brian Karas in this luminous tribute to an enduring, everyday sort of love.
19) Spuds
Author
Pub. Date
[2008]
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 4 - AR Pts: 1
Description
Maybelle, Jack, and Eddie want to help Ma by putting something extra on the table, so they set out in the dark to take potatoes from a nearby field, but when they arrive home and empty their potato sacks, they are surprised by what they see.