The Wednesday Wars–by Gary D. Schmidt

Schmidt, Gary D.  The Wednesday Wars.  New York: Clarion Books, 2007.

When Holling Hoodhood starts seventh grade, he quickly finds that a bizarre coincidence is going to leave him alone with his homeroom teacher every Wednesday afternoon, and his teacher is not happy about it.  So Holling looks for help.  But help’s not coming from anyone–least of all from his father, whose chief concern about what happens to his kids seems to be whether it will affect a business deal of his…

“‘Dad, Mrs. Baker hates my guts.’

“‘What did you do?’

“‘I didn’t do anything.  She just hates my guts.’

“‘People don’t just hate your guts unless you do something to them.  So what did you do?’

“‘Nothing.’

“‘This is Betty Baker, right?’

“‘I guess.’

“‘The Betty Baker who belongs to the Baker family.’

“…’I guess she belongs to the Baker family,’ I said.

“‘The Baker family that owns the Baker Sporting Emporium.’

“‘Dad, she hates my guts.’

“The Baker Sporting Emporium, which is about to choose an architect for its new building and which is considering Hoodhood and Associates among its top three choices.’

“‘Dad…’

“So, Holling, what did you do that might make Mrs. Baker hate your guts, which will make other Baker family members hate the name of Hoodhood, which will lead the Baker Sporting Emporium to choose another architect, which will kill the deal for Hoodhood and Associates, which will drive us into bankruptcy, which will encourage several lending institutions around the state to send representatives to our front stoop holding papers that have lots of legal words on them–none of them good–and which will mean that there will be no Hoodhood and Associates for you to take over when I’m ready to retire?’

“…’I guess things aren’t so bad,’ I said.

“‘Keep them that way,’ he said.

“This wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for in an ally.” (p. 7-8 )

Blood on the River–by Elisa Carbone

Carbone, Elisa.  Blood on the River: James Town 1607.  New York: Viking, 2006.

“Some would say I am lucky.  Others would say I am doomed.  I escaped the gallows–that is why I am lucky…As for being doomed, if I am doomed then so is Richard.  We are the two boys Reverend Hunt decided to bring with him on this jounrey to the New World.” (p. 6-7)

The way we think of it, a trip across the ocean is an exciting adventure or a relaxing vacation.  For Samuel, however, who was released from jail for theft only to become one of the settlers that would found James Town, Virginia in 1607, this “vacation” looks more like this:

“We are all seasick.  And bored.  And we are going absolutely no place.  We have had nothing but storms and winds blowing the wrong direction for weeks now, and so we sit anchored in the cold, close enough to see England’s shores but still trapped down in this hole of a ‘tween deck with the stench of urine and vomit and chicken dung.” (p. 15)

Sounds like it couldn’t get much worse, but then they finally arrive on the coast of Virginia:

“Suddenly I hear a cry, then frantic shouting and someone moaning.  I run to the railing.  In the half-light of dusk I see them, five of them, crouched on a hill, their naked bodies painted, arrows flying from their longbows.  Already ne of the sailors has fallen…I see now that this land is not so free and open.  This is Indian land, and they do no want us here.  And what is worse, it seems to me that their bows and arrows are quicker, more accurate, and can shoot farther than our muskets.” (p. 61-62)

Vacation?  Not on your life, and not on Samuel’s life either.

Mister Pip–by Lloyd Jones

Jones, Lloyd.  Mister Pip.  New York: The Dial Press, 2007.

“Everyone called him Pop Eye.  Even in those days, when I was a skinny thirteen-year-old, I thought he probably knew about his nickname but didn’t care.  His eyes were too interested in what lay up ahead to notice us barefoot kids.  He looked like someone who had seen or known great suffering and hadn’t been able to forget it.  His large eyes in his large head stuck out further than anyone else’s–like they wanted to leave the surface of his face.  They made you think of someone who can’t get out of the house quickly enough.  Pop Eye wore the same white linen suit every day.  His trousers snagged on his bony knees in the sloppy heat.  Some days he wore a clown’s nose.  His nose was already big.  He didn’t need that red lightbulb.  But for reasons we couldn’t think of he wore the red nose on certain days–which may have meant something to him.  We never saw him smile.  And on those days he wore the clown’s nose you found yourself looking away because you never saw such sadness.” (p. 1)

When the village freak–the only white man left on the island–becomes the kids’ teacher, life turns upside down.  And when war and rebellion hit the island, it all goes downhill from there.  Who do you trust?

Uglies–by Scott Westerfield

Westerfield, Scott.  Uglies.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

When I was a teenager, I felt ugly; most of us do around that age, and you probably have too.  Rotten though it is, it’s normal.  We pretty much grow out of it or get over it eventually.  But it’s painful while it’s happening, right?  Wouldn’t it be perfect if we could just find a way to fix it?

Fast forward to the future: you can now get a surgery to become stunningly beautiful.  Everyone does it.  As soon as you turn 16, you get the surgery, become gorgeous, move to a new city where all your perfectly gorgeous friends live, and all you have to do is party and have fun all day.  Seriously, that’s all there is to it, no hidden tricks.  And everybody’s happy all the time, because there’s no uglyness or stupid stuff like that to stress them out.

But then your best friend decides she wants to run away and not have the surgery.  What the heck?  Who wants to stay ugly forever, on purpose?  She’s obviously an idiot, and it’s not your problem…until you get dragged to Special Circumstances and find out you won’t be allowed to turn Pretty until you find her and bring her back.  You can die ugly for all they care.

That is NOT acceptable, so you go off to find her.  Pretty simple job, really.  But what’s out there in the wilderness, anyway?  Guess you’re about to find out…

Princess Academy–by Shannon Hale

Hale, Shannon.  Princess Academy.  New York: Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2005.

Up on Mt. Eskel, the villagers don’t get out much.  The only way to make a living up there is to work in the linder quarry, chipping out blocks of the marble-like stone and selling it to the lowland traders who come up the mountain every so often, and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for countless generations.  Work in the quarry, barter with the traders, work, barter, and so on.  Everyone follows this tradition without fail—everyone, that is, except fourteen-year-old Miri, who’s been barred from the quarry by her father and left to feel completely useless to the mountainside village.

The village’s hundreds of years of routine are suddenly broken up, however, when the chief delegate from the kingdom down below the mountain arrives with an unbelievable announcement: the King’s chief priests have convened, and they’ve determined that the Prince will choose his bride from among the girls of Mt. Eskel.  To prepare the girls for this honor, they’re all going to be herded into a Princess Academy for a year, where they will learn to act like polished princesses instead of rough mountain quarry workers.  Miri is pretty torn about this; she doesn’t want to leave her Pa and her hometown (not to mention Peder, the guy she’s got a huge crush on), but on the other hand it would mean a chance to see the world, never being cold and hungry again, and best of all she wouldn’t have to feel so darn useless anymore.  She decides to go for it, but before she’s been at the academy for long, she discovers that not all that glitters is gold…

“Miri awoke to a tug and a horrible feeling…She felt it again, a tugging on her scalp.  Something was caught in her braid.  She wanted to scream, but terror clamped down on her breath.  Every spot of her skin ached with the dread of what might be touching her.  It felt strong, too big to be a mouse.  The tip of a tail licked her cheek.  A rat.  Miri sobbed breathlessly, remembering the rat bite that had killed a village baby some years before.  She did not dare to call out for fear of spooking the beast…She could not move, she could not speak.  How long would she have to lie there until someone came for her?” (p. 72-73)

A Wreath for Emmett Till–by Marilyn Nelson

Nelson, Marilyn.  A Wreath for Emmett Till. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

Emmett Till was only fourteen in 1955, a friendly kid from Chicago on a trip down south to meet his relatives.  He was probably like you in many ways.  You may even have committed his crime yourself: whistling at a pretty girl.  But where you might have gotten a cross look or a joking slap for your trouble, Emmett became the victim of one of the most notorious lynchings in American history.

“Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,
my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years
by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.
That jackal laughter.  Two hundred years I stood
listening to small struggles to find food,
to the songs of creature life, which disappears
and comes again, to the music of the spheres.
Two hundred years of deaths I understood.
Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,
shivering the deep silence of the stars.
A running boy, five men in close pursuit.
One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.
Noise, silence, back-slaps.  One match, five cigars.
Emmett Till’s name still catches in the throat.”

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy–by Gary D. Schmidt

Schmidt, Gary D.  Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy.  New York: Clarion Books, 2004.

“Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for fifteen minutes shy of six hours.  He had dipped his hand in its waves and licked the salt from his fingers.  He had smelled the sharp resin of the pines.  He had heard the low rhythm of the bells on the buoys that balanced on the ridges of the sea.  He had seen the fine clapboard parsonage beside the church where he was to live, and the small house set a ways beyond it that puzzled him some.  Turner Buckminster had lived in Phippsburg, Maine, for almost six whole hours.  He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it.” (p. 1)

In some places, being the son of a minister is no big deal.  Phippsburg, Maine, is not one of them.  Everybody is constantly scrutinizing Turner to see if he is upright enough, moral enough, brave enough, polite enough, and even whether his shirt is starched-white enough.  So far, he is a miserable failure.

And things only get worse after those first six hours.  Within two days of his arrival in Phippsburg, he has become the laughingstock of the whole town for his failure at playing baseball, been teased mercilessly as a coward for not jumping off a huge cliff into the ocean, and gotten caught skipping rocks across water that just happened to bump into somebody’s old fence.  Before he can blink, he is sentenced to spend his summer reading and playing organ for a repulsive old woman who yells at him, helps spread the rumors about him, looks and smells funny, and is absolutely obsessed with her own death and making sure her last words will be written down.  He’d just as soon die.

But then he meets Lizzie, an island girl who can row a boat, play baseball like nothing else, dig clams, and speak to whales.  And that changes everything forever.

The Higher Power of Lucky–by Susan Patron

Patron, Susan.  The Higher Power of Lucky.  New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006.

Lucky is a regular kid: she has one awesome friend who’s going to be president one day, one annoying little kid friend who survives entirely on cookies, a paying job cleaning up litter after the 12-step meetings, and an impressive collection of bug specimens for future scientific exhibits.  Her mom died when she was eight, but she’s got a pretty good life with her Guardian, Brigitte.  One day, though, Lucky finds something that changes everything…

“Heading into the wind turned out to be way, way harder, even without her backpack and supply sack.  Lucky had to scuttle along doubled over, like an old woman, keeping her squinted eyes on the road.  Without the mask or the dishcloth her face was completely exposed.  She couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead.  She almost tripped over HMS Beagle, who trotted up to her with her head low to the ground, he ears whipping forward.  She touched Lucky with her nose and then abruptly turned and bounded back toward the town.  Maybe HMS Beagle was right and they should go home.  Lucky stopped.  “Hey, Beag!” she yelled.  Then, faintly, she heard a cat or some other animal crying, and saw that HMS Beagle was nudging that pile of rags.  Very carefully Lucky approached the thing, which was huddled in a tight ball.  It looked like the thing was rolled up in an old tablecloth or sheet.  Sticking out of the roll was a small sneaker with a toe poking through a hole in the side…”  (p. 111)

Elijah of Buxton–by Christopher Paul Curtis

Curtis, Christopher Paul.  Elijah of Buxton.  New York: Scholastic Press, 2007.

Life’s hard, right?  You have to go school, do what crazy grown-ups tell you even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense, and put up with being called “fra-gile” all the time even when you are clearly NOT being fragile.  Elijah gets this all the time, even from his parents!  He’s pretty sure the WORST thing on earth has happened to him after his mom decides to play a trick on him:

“…I moved my hand ‘round in the bottom of the jar, I felt one n’em rope cookies…and Mrs. Brown must’ve just brought these cookies over, ‘cause the last one left was still warm!  I pulled the cookie outta the jar.

“My heart quit beating, my blood ran cold, and time stood still!  My fingers were wrapped ‘round the neck of the worst-looking snake in Canada West!  I screamed, ‘Snake!’ and afore I knowed it, I was tearing off ‘cross the road into the woods.  By the time I worned myself out I must’ve run two miles.  I stopped and leaned ‘gainst a tree, waiting for my breathing to catch up to me.  Something made me look down in my hand.

“I screamed, ‘Snake!’ for the second time.  But this time I remembered to turn the snake’s neck a-loose and throwed it down.  I wouldn’t’ve thought I had enough strength left in me to run, but being afeared and being tired look like two things you caint feel at the same time.” (p. 19)

TOTALLY unfair, right?  Never mind that this was payback for putting the biggest toady-frog in Canada West in his ma’s sewing basket!  And Elijah gets it worse than anyone because he, the first child born free from slavery in the Buxton settlement in Canada, had a terrible accident as a baby…which unfortunately involved vomit and a visit from Frederick Douglass…but never mind that, just wait till Elijah gets growned, then he’s gonna show everybody!

But when there comes an opportunity to buy a neighbor’s family out of slavery, it looks like he’s gonna have to show how grown up he is sooner than anybody thinks…

Red Spikes–by Margo Lanagan

Lanagan, Margo.  Red Spikes.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Do you have nightmares?

“It’s not possible, Tregowan had said.  I saw Ark.  No one the size and make of Thomas Chauncey could do such damage.  His ear was torn near right off.” (p. 79)

“And fluffther-fluffther over the rim they came like boiling, only the boilings ran away on little gray-and-pink legs, and pulled gray tails behind them.  They poured off the table edges and ran out the door and away to the west, to the town.” (p. 125)

“In the end I said to it, ‘I have already been eaten by one of you.’  It puffed up all fat and stiff-legged.  ‘Why don’t you go and find a real bird?’” (p. 61)

“‘Well, how about—these is good for a snack, after they’ve lain awhile.’  He looked doubtfully at the pile.  He had one in his hand, by its little blackened leg.  As Oll watched, the leg came out of its rotten hip socket, and the rest of the baby fell back onto the pile.” (p. 52)

“Yes, it was always a trudge here.  But what was the hurry when it came to eternity?  Might as well trudge as not.  Barto was new here; he didn’t realize.  He’d just arrived, and by car accident, so he was still in a kind of shock.” (p. 98)

“Underneath is other cloth, finer, paler, with a shape inside.  I don’t want to touch it.  And you don’t have to, says my hunter’s mind.  See?  You’ve got a second chance to walk away.  Take it, take it.  Go.  My breath, through my teeth, sounds like a straw broom sweeping a stone step.” (p. 37)

What if your nightmares were real?