All of the Above, by Shelley Pearsall

Mr. Collins challenges his seventh grade math students to stay after school to build the world's largest tetrahedron and earn a world record. Four students alternate voices to tell what happens next and through the telling their individual stories emerge as well as their growing sense of teamwork and purpose. When vandals wreck their first attempt, the community rallies to help them. Mr. Collins sprinkles math facts and questions throughout like, "Each level of a tetrahedron increases by a factor of four." In order to beat the existing record, they must make four times as many pieces. Marcel's dad owns a barbecue place, and recipes for spicy barbecue sauce are also interspersed throughout the story. I expected to enjoy this book because it had a math theme, but was delighted to find it was a story with much greater depth because of the characters and their interactions.

Grades 5-8

Weedflower, by Cynthia Kadohata

A powerful story of a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Before Pearl Harbor Sumiko works with her uncle's family on a flower farm in southern California and dreams of owning her own flower shop. When the war starts Sumiko's family is split apart and she is moved to a camp in Arizona - a camp located on a Mojave reservation. There she works with a neighbor, Mr. Moto, to grow an award-winning garden and she befriends Frank, a young Mojave. Through her friendship with Frank, she sees the injustices perpetrated on the Native Americans and tries to reason out the very difficult decisions her family has to make. Students will relate to and understand Sumiko's feelings at each step of her amazing story. The author's father was interred at the Poston camp and she writes a moving and well written testimony to the courage and perseverance of Japanese Americans during this dark period in American history. SLJ starred review.

Grades 5 - 8

Clementine, by Sara Pennypacker

Clementine conquers all sorts of disasters with spunky persistence and unflagging optimism. She tries her best to help--but things do not always go as planned. For example, Clementine's best friend Margaret's extreme haircut. She tried to help her friend by evening it up--by cutting the other side. The result wasn't good so they agreed to cut it all off. Then they drew it back in permanent flame colored marker. The Principal and Margaret's mother were less than pleased with the results. Clementine is forever getting in trouble for not paying attention--but she is paying attention and seeing lots of things no one else would ever see.
A wonderfully humorous look into a child's world of life, school, and friends with superb dialog and fabulous pen and ink drawings that capture the spirit of the characters. A laugh out loud uplifting read and a wonderful addition to early chapter books. Notables SLJ Best Books and PW .

Grades 2-4

Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy

In free verse form Roy tells the story of her aunt's life and her family's survival in the Lodz ghetto in Poland during World War II. Her Aunt Syvia entered the ghetto at the age of four and was liberated the day before her 10th birthday. She was one of twelve children to survive the ghetto. Through a child's voice we learn the horrors of living in the ghetto and picture of survival for those 800 of 270,000 who lived to tell this story.
It is amazing the compassion and passion Roy evokes in such spare text.
Recommeded for 4-7 grades.

Runaway by Wendelin Van Draanen

Holly is a 12-year old homeless child (she prefers the term "gypsy") of a dead drug addicted mother. After a caring teacher gives Holly a journal, we join her for five months in her unsuccessful efforts to find a stable environment in which to live. Through her angry but often very amusing journal entries, the reader experiences a gritty, physically, and emotionally painful way of life living on the streets of "beautiful Los Angeles, CA".

Holly is a tempermental but sensible, real and believable twelve year old girl. The ending is plausible but possibly a bit too tidy.

Van Draanen shows a new but powerful rough edge to her writing.

Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became An Inventor, by Emily Arnold McCully

As a child, Mattie Knight loved to play with tools and invent toys and other useful devices for her brothers and widowed mother. Her mechanical abilities and perseverance also led to other inventions most notably a machine to produce square-bottomed paper bags. The story underscores the difficulties the inventor faced as a woman as well as her ingenuity and perseverance. Watercolor illustrations and small sketches of many of the inventions further illuminate the text.