Shades of Simon Gray (30 page)

We All Fall Down

ROBERT CORMIER

0-440-21556-0

At 9:02 P.M. on April Fools’ Day, four teenage boys trash a Cape Cod cottage. At 9:46 P.M., Karen Jerome makes the mistake of arriving home early. Thrown down the basement stairs, Karen slips into a coma. The trashers slip away. But The Avenger has seen it all.

Mind’s Eye

PAUL FLEISCHMAN

0-440-22901-4

Sixteen-year-old Courtney was paralyzed in an accident and will spend the rest of her days in a convalescent home. Or will she? When Courtney’s elderly roommate asks her to read from the 1910 edition of
Baedeker’s Italy
, she reluctantly agrees. Each afternoon the two escape and are transported to another time and place, where they find hope.

Paper Trail

BARBARA SNOW GILBERT

0-440-22939-1

Hiding inside a hollow log, a fifteen-year-old boy watches as the Soldiers of God murder his mother. His family joined this violent anti-government group when he was five. After the Soldiers of God make a startling discovery about his father, the boy has to somehow find the strength and courage to escape and survive.

The Grave

JAMES HENEGHAN

0-440-22948-0

Thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has always been alone, moving from one foster home to another, and has never known the meaning of family love. When he hears that a mass grave has been unearthed on his school grounds, he feels drawn to the grave, pulled toward it, but he can’t explain why. The truth is, Tom’s life is about to change forever.

Heaven Eyes
DAVID ALMOND

0-440-22910-3

Erin Law and her friends in the orphanage are labeled Damaged Children. They run away one night, traveling downriver on a raft. What they find on their journey is stranger than you can imagine.

Kit’s Wilderness

DAVID ALMOND

0-440-41605-1

Kit Watson and John Askew look for the childhood ghosts of their long-gone ancestors in the mines of Stoneygate.

Skellig

DAVID ALMOND

0-440-22908-1

Michael feels helpless because of his baby sister’s illness, until he meets a creature called Skellig.

Becoming Mary Mehan: Two Novels

JENNIFER ARMSTRONG

0-440-22961-8

Set against the events of the American Civil War,
The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan
depicts an Irish immigrant girl and her family, struggling to find their place in the war-torn country.
Mary Mehan Awake
takes up Mary’s story after the war, when she must begin a journey of renewal.

Forgotten Fire

ADAM BAGDASARIAN

0-440-22917-0

In 1915, Vahan Kenderian is living a life of privilege when his world is shattered by the Turkish-Armenian war.

Ghost Boy

IAIN LAWRENCE

0-440-41668-X

Fourteen-year-old Harold Kline is an albino—an outcast. When the circus comes to town, Harold runs off to join it in hopes of discovering who he is and what he wants in life.

Is he a circus freak or just a normal guy?

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The Giver

LOIS LOWRY

0-440-23768-8

Jonas’s world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices, until Jonas is given an opportunity that will change his world forever.

Gathering Blue

LOIS LOWRY

0-440-22949-9

Lamed and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians.

Shades of Simon Gray

JOYCE MCDONALD

0-440-22804-2

Simon is the ideal teenager—smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon’s car crashes into a tree and he slips into a coma, another portrait of him begins to emerge.

Both Sides Now

RUTH PENNEBAKER

0-440-22933-2

A compelling look at breast cancer through the eyes of a mother and daughter. Liza must learn a few life lessons from her mother, Rebecca, about the power of family.

Her Father’s Daughter

MOLLIE POUPENEY

0-440-22879-4

As she matures from a feisty tomboy of seven to a spirited young woman of fourteen, Maggie discovers that the only constant in her life of endless new homes and new faces is her ever-emerging sense of herself.

READERS CIRCLE BOOKS

The Baboon King

ANTON QUINTANA

0-440-22907-3

Neither Morengáru’s father’s Masai tribe nor his mother’s Kikuyu tribe accepts him. Banished from both tribes, Morengáru encounters a baboon troop and faces a fight with the simian king.

Holes

LOUIS SACHAR

0-440-22859-X

Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake. But there’s more than character improvement going on at the camp—the warden is looking forsomething.

Memories of Summer

RUTH WHITE

0-440-22921-9

In 1955, thirteen-year-old Lyric describes her older sister Summer’s descent into mental illness, telling Summer’s story with humor, courage, and love.