Funerals and Fly Fishing (2004) is a book by Mary Bartek. It follows Brad Stanislawski,a bullied, tall, sixth grade, who, at the beginning of the book, is happy for school to be over. When he meets with his mother, he finds out that he must visit his grandfather, a man that he has never met, in Pennsylvania.
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is an American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Naylor is best known for her children's-novel quartet Shiloh and for her "Alice" book series, one of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade.
Maniac Magee is a novel written by American author Jerry Spinelli and published in 1990. Exploring themes of racism and inequality, it follows the story of an orphan boy looking for a home in the fictional town of Two Mills. Two Mills is harshly segregated between the East and West, blacks and whites. He becomes a local legend for feats of athleticism and helpfulness, and his ignorance of sharp racial boundaries in the town. It is popular in middle school curricula, and has been used in social studies on the premises of reaction to racial identity and reading. A TV movie was released on February 23, 2003.
Cryptid Hunters is a 2005 young adult science fiction novel by Roland Smith; it follows the adventures of thirteen-year-old siblings Grace and Marty O'Hara, who are sent to live with their Uncle Wolfe after their parents are lost in an accident. He is an anthropologist on a remote island, searching for cryptids, which are animals thought to be extinct or not to exist. His rival Noah Blackwood, a popular animal collector, tries to acquire an alleged dinosaur egg from Wolfe, and the twins get involved in the conflict which reveals a convoluted family history. The novel was nominated for several library awards and book lists, which include Hawaii's 2008 Nene Recommended Book List, the Texas Library Association's 2007-2008 Lone Star Reading List, and Third Place for the Missouri Association of School Librarians' Mark Twain Readers Award. Smith has written three sequels called Tentacles, Chupacabra, and Mutation.
Peg Kehret is an American author, primarily writing for children between the ages of 10 and 15. After beating three types of polio at age 12, Kehret went on to become an author of children's, young adults', and adults' literature, winning over fifty awards throughout her career.
The Mark Twain Readers Award is given annually to a book for children in grades four through six.
Abduction! by Peg Kehret, is a novel about a 13-year-old girl named Bonnie who searches for her brother Matt and their dog Pookie who were both abducted. Her abductor, a mystery at first, ends up being someone much close to home.
The Lightning Thief is a 2005 American fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology, the first children's novel by Rick Riordan. The opening installment in the series Percy Jackson & the Olympians, the book was recognized among the year's best for children. Riordan followed the novel with various books and spin-off series, spawning the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles media franchise.
Richard Russell Riordan Jr. is an American author, best known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. Riordan's books have been translated into forty-two languages and sold more than thirty million copies in the United States. 20th Century Fox adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a series of films in which Riordan was not involved. Riordan currently serves as a co-creator and executive producer on the television series adaption of the book series that was released on Disney+ in 2023. Riordan's books have also spawned other related media, such as graphic novels and short story collections.
The Massachusetts Children's Book Award is an annual literary award recognizing one book selected by vote of Massachusetts schoolchildren from a list prepared by committee. It was established in 1975 by Dr. Helen Constant, associate professor of education at Salem State College, and it continues to be sponsored by the School of Education at Salem State University. The purpose is to help maintain interest in reading among children in the "intermediate grades".
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio is a memoir of author Peg Kehret's childhood experience of polio. The book won the Golden Kite Award in 1997.
Mary Downing Hahn is an American writer of young adult novels and a former school librarian. She is known for books such as Stepping On The Cracks and Wait Till Helen Comes. She published her first book in 1979 and has since written over 30 novels. Her novel What We Saw was published in September 2022.
Albert Watkins Key, Jr., publishing under the name Watt Key and Albert Key, is an American fiction author who is known for writing young-adult survival fiction. A resident of Alabama, his debut novel Alabama Moon was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2006 and was the 2007 winner of the E.B. White Read-Aloud Award for older readers. It received a 2006 Parents' Choice Award. Alabama Moon has been translated and published in eight languages. In 2015 Alabama Moon was listed by TIME Magazine as one of the top 100 young-adult books of all time.
Carol Gorman is an American writer of children's fiction. She originally aspired to be an actress, and for a few years taught seventh grade at an Iowan middle school. Inspired by her husband and fellow author, Ed Gorman, she began writing in the mid-1980s. With over 22 books published under several names, Carol Gorman continues to write and teach.
Michelle Knudsen is a New York Times best-selling American children's author. She has written 50 books for children, including the multiple-award-winning Library Lion, the Trelian middle grade fantasy trilogy, and the Evil Librarian young adult horror/comedy/romance trilogy.
Kat Falls is an American novelist specializing in science-fiction. Some of her works are Dark Life, the sequel Rip Tide, Inhuman, and the sequel Undaunted.
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library is a children's novel by author Chris Grabenstein. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for Middle Grade novels for 111 weeks between 2013 and 2016, peaking at #8 in hardback and #2 in paperback.
A Friendship for Today is a 2007 book by Patricia McKissack about the life of a girl, Rosemary Patterson, attending one of the first integrated Missouri schools during the 1950s.
Stacey Heather Lee is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for Under a Painted Sky and Outrun the Moon. Her works tend to be contemporary and historical fiction, with some magical elements.
Stolen Children, by American writer Peg Kehret, is a 2008 novel for young adults. In the book, a 14-year-old girl who's just finished a babysitting course and the baby she was hired to take care of are kidnapped.
