Raising Readers
Realistic Fiction
The Agony of Alice
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
X Naylor
Eleven-year-old, motherless Alice decides she needs a gorgeous role model who does everything right; and when placed in homely Mrs. Plotkins's class she is greatly disappointed until she discovers it's what people are inside that counts.
Anastasia Krupnik
Lois Lowry
X Lowry
Anastasia's 10th year has some good things like falling in love and really getting to know her grandmother and some bad things like finding out about an impending baby brother.
Because of Winn Dixie
Kate DiCamillo
NB DiCamillo
Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie
Frindle
Andrew Clements
X Clements
When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control.
Hoot
Carl Hiaasen
NB 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.
Joey Pigza Loses Control
Jack Gantos
X Gantos
Joey, who is still taking medication to keep him from getting too wired, goes to spend the summer with the hard-drinking father he has never known and tries to help the baseball team he coaches win the championship.
Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly
Bus
Barbara Park
X Park
In her own words, a young girl describes her feelings about starting kindergarten and what she does when she decides not to ride the bus home.
The Not-just-anybody Family
Betsy Cromer Byars
j Byars
With a young brother in the hospital, a grandfather in jail, and their mother traveling with a rodeo, Maggie and Vern try to settle family problems.
Pictures of Hollis Woods
Patricia Reilly Giff
NB Giff
A troublesome twelve-year-old orphan, staying with an elderly artist who needs her, remembers the only other time she was happy in a foster home, with a family that truly seemed to care about her.
Ruby Holler
Sharon Creech
X Creech
Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler
Shiloh
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
NB Naylor
When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
Tales of a Fouth Grade Nothing
Judy Blume
X Blume
Peter finds his demanding two-year-old brother an ever increasing problem.
There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom
Louis Sachar
X Sachar
An unmanageable, but lovable, eleven-year-old misfit learns to believe in himself when he gets to know the new school counselor, who is a sort of misfit too.
The View from Saturday
E. L. Konigsburg
NB Konigsburg
Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who choses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition