The Letter Writer by Ann Rinaldi

Harriet Whitehead, 11, lives with her half-brother Richard, his wife Pleasant, their baby William, sister Margaret, and Mother Whitehead on a plantation in the South in 1831. Her best friend is Violet, who is her slave. Her brother is a Methodist minister and is very strict with her upbringing. Since Mother Whitehead is going blind, Harriet becomes her letter writer. She begins correspondence with her Uncle Arthur in England and writes all of Mother Whitehead's letters about the running of the plantation. She and Violet hear about a slave preacher named Nat Turner who baptizes in the river. They go to see him. Nat ends up working at their plantation and tells Harriet about a loving and forgiving God - very different from the vengeful God that Richard preaches about. Nat asks Harriet to draw a map for him of the surrounding area so that he can go to different plantations to preach to the slaves. What he ends up doing is leading a slave rebellion and killing 57 people on the surrounding plantations, including all of Harriet's family. Harriet and Violet are the only ones left. Harriet contacts her Uncle Arthur in England and tells him that everyone is dead. Harriet runs the plantation until Uncle Arthur can get there. She feels responsible for giving Nat the map. When Nat is captured, she is afraid that she will be blamed for the map. She and Violet find the map and Harriet wants to destroy it, but Uncle Arthur arrives and insists that they turn it in to the sheriff. Harriet finds out that Uncle Arthur is actually her father and that Violet is her half-sister.

The book contains graphic descriptions of the killings done by Nat Turner. Uncle Arthur also explains about his affairs with a slave resulting in Violet's birth and also with a writer in England, who was Harriet's mother. Ann Rinaldi explains in notes at the end that Nat Turner is a great mystery to historians because they don't know why he revolted and killed all the people that he did. All of his previous life he had been a minister who preached peace and love. The author presents both sides of his personality without painting him as either a hero or a villain.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The story of Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old girl in Nazi Germany during World War II. Death is the narrator. Her younger brother Werner dies on a train in 1939. Her mother gives her up for adoption and she is adopted by Rosa and Hans Hubermann. The first book she steals is The Gravediggers Handbook, which she picks up in the snow at her brother's funeral. She can't read it, but it reminds her of him. Hans (Papa) teaches her to read at night when she can't sleep because of nightmares of her brother. Her best friend is Rudy, who lives down the street. He always wants to kiss her, but she refuses. Her mother does laundry and Liesel delivers it. One day the mayor's wife invites her into their home and shows her the library. She begins to read in the library and borrow the books one at a time. One day, a Jewish man, who knew Hans as a boy, shows up at their house. They hide him in the basement and Max and Liesel become friends. The Gestapo examine the basement at one point, but do not find Max. Max writes two books for Liesel, before he leaves and ends up in Dachau concentration camp. The air raids eventually begin and Liesel reads to the other people in the shelter during the raids. Her father, Hans, and Rudy's father, Alex, are drafted into the German army and Hans is assigned to the LSE who clean up the dead bodies after an air raid. He is sent there because he tried to give a Jewish man a piece of bread. He breaks his leg and is returned home. Liesel and Rudy also try to help the Jewish prisoners as they are marched through town and are whipped because of their efforts. Liesel and Rudy steal several books from Ilse Hermann's house (the mayor's wife). She knows they are doing it and leaves the window open and one time, cookies on the desk. One night Himmel Street is bombed and the air raid sirens don't go off in time. Everyone Liesel knows and loves is killed. She survives because she is down in the basement writing. The mayor's wife adopts her. She lives to an old age, marries and has children. When death comes to get her, he gives her The Book Thief, the book she has written about her life in Germany.
This was a marvelous book. Told from the viewpoint of the German people you see a different side of the war. With Death as the narrator, you also get a philosophical viewpoint of death and war. Words and books and writing are key concepts throughout the book and you realize the power of words in people's lives, especially during this time when radio and television were not available to everyone. The book is richly written with many similies, metaphors, personification. I found myself rereading sentences and paragraphs to absorb the richness of the language.

p. 9 - personification
p. 23 - conveyor belt of eternity
p. 26 - irony
p. 29 - grey - the color of Europe
p. 29 - similes and personification in bold print

Billy Creekmore by Tracey Porter

Billy Creekmore is a 10 year old boy living in West Virginia in 1905. His mother died in childbirth, his father abandoned him and he is living at the Guardian Angels Home for Boys run by Mr. and Mrs. Beadle. Life is very hard and when Billy finds out he is being sent to work for Mr. Colder at the glass factory, he decides to run away. Before he can, his Uncle Jim arrives and takes him home to live with his Aunt Agnes. He has a good life there and begins working in the coal mines as a mule driver. After a section of the mine collapses, the workers start forming a union (UMW). When Billy's uncle and friend are killed by the Baldwin-Felts agents, his aunt tells him to run away. He joins the Sparks circus and finds his father who is working for another circus. He goes with his father, but finds that he is a drunk and unscrupulous man who will do anything for money. Billy runs away again to go back to the Sparks Circus where he has friends who love him and consider him part of their family. The book is based on the author's mothers life. She was in a foster home, abandoned by her father after her mother died in childbirth and was later adopted by her aunt and uncle. The boys who work in the mines are real boys who died before the age of 17 in the coal mines. The Sparks Circus was a real circus owned by Charles Sparks who cared for his troop like family.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

Isabel and Ruth Finch are promised their freedom when Miss Mary Finch dies, but instead they are sold to a wealthy English couple, Anne and Elihu Lockton. They are taken to New York where conflict is high between the Loyalists and the Patriots. Isabel finds herself spying for the patriots. Her sister Ruth has epilepsy and when she has a seizure, Anne sells her. Isabel runs away but is captured and branded I for Insolance. Lady Seymour, the master's aunt, befriends Isabel and nurses her back to health, but then returns her to Madam Lockton. Curzon, a young slave boy about Isabel's age, befriends her and helps her when he can. There is a terrible fire and Lady Seymour's house burns. Isabel rescues her and takes her to the Locktons. Curzon is captured along with other rebel soldiers and put into jail. Isabel brings him scraps of food from the Lockton house. Isabel continues passing messages for the rebels, but is caught and put into the potato bin. She decides to run. She manages to get Curzon out of jail by offering to clean the cells and carrying him out in a wheelbarrow as a dead body. They find a boat and escape to Jersey. Sequel will be Forge.

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

This is a great book. It was hard to get started, but once I got into the book, it was hard to put down. Nick is a teenage boy living with his mother in England during World War II. When the bombings got too bad in England, his mother decided to send him to live with his father on his plantation in Burma. Nick was safe there for a while, but then the Japanese invaded and captured his father and the plantation. His father was captured and sent to a prison camp. Nick was also captured and kept locked in his room and treated as a slave in his own home. He manages to escape and after hiding, tries to find and rescue his father. His friend Mya has a brother who has also been captured. She goes with him to try to free her brother along with the help of Hilltop, a buddhist monk who helps them. The first two or three chapters were slow and I almost didn't read the rest of the book, so don't give up on it. Keep reading! You'll love it.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

Billie Jo age 14. lived with her ma and Daddy in the panhandle of Oklahoma, during one of the hardest times in American History.

We will struggle with her through her sorrows, disappointments, and the never ending dust, and drought.

Her Daddy worked his wheat very hard hoping to have a good harvest and the end of the season. Many times the harvest was lost due to the dust and no rain.

Billie Jo watched her friends and her family leave the panhandle to search for a better place to live, only to find the same, no work. dust, and drought.

Billie Jo loved to play the piano, until there was a accident , and her hands were damaged.

One day when the children arrived at school, they had to dig out 2 feet of dust to get to their desks.

Billy Jo began thinking of that train that went through the panhandle heading west. One night she decided that she had to get out of the dust.... She walked through the calm night under the stars and headed to where the train stops long enough for a long legged girl to latch on and climb into the box car headed West.

Did she climb into the box car, where she could get Out of the DUST?
by Abi Chase
(from Nancy Keane's booktalking course)

Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton

Endymion Spring is a young man working for Johann Gutenberg in Germany in 1492 when he is inventing his printing press. Johann Fust came to visit and in his possession he had a book - a magic book. The pages were made of dragon skin and it contained secret knowledge of past, present,and future. Endymion Spring opens the book and takes a few of the magic pages.
600 years later, Blake Winters finds these pages in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. He can read the riddles contained in the book, but to others, including his sister, Duck, the pages are blank. Blake learns that there is another book - The Last Book and the two parts must be joined. He and his sister decide they must find the Lost Book and return the lost pages, but others in the library world are also searching for the book. The book tells Blake that there is a Person in Shadow who will try to kill him to get the pages. Is it Professor Jolyon Fall, the book expert; Sir Giles Bentley, the book collector; Psalmanazer, the homeless man; or Diana Bentley, Sir Gile's wife. Some of these characters seem to be helping Blake and Duck but can they be trusted?
Great mystery! Both boys and girls would like it. Flashbacks are well marked.

Having reluctantly accompanied his academic mother and pesky younger sister to Oxford, twelve-year-old Blake Winters is at loose ends until he stumbles across an ancient and magical book, secretly brought to England in 1453 by Gutenberg's mute apprentice to save it from evil forces, and which now draws Blake into a dangerous and life-threatening quest. - OCLC

Sneak Peek: "" You've stumbled on to something much larger than you can possibly imagine." "In the dead of night, a cloaked figure drags a heavy box through snow-covered streets. The chest, covered in images of mythical beasts, can only be opened when the fangs of its serpent's-head clasp taste blood. Centuries later, in an Oxford library, a boy touches a strange book and feels something pierce his finger. The volume is blank, wordless, but its paper has fine veins running through it and seems to quiver, as if it's alive. Words begin to appear on the page--words no one but the boy can see. And so unfolds a timeless secret . . . . "From the Hardcover edition.

Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

Dewey Kerrigan's father is a scientist working on a secret project in Los Alamos, New Mexico during World War II.  When she goes out to live with him, she meets a new friend Suze, whose mother and father are also working on the project.  They start out as enemies, but when Dewey's father has to go to Washington, D.C. for a conference, Dewey is left to live with Suze and they become friends.  When Dewey's father is killed in a traffic accident, she becomes part of their family.  "The Project" is finally completed and tested.  When it is detonated it creates a green glass sea as the heat from the explosion melts the sand in the desert.  Their "Project" is the creation of the first atomic bomb which is dropped on Hiroshima to end World War II. 

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

Hattie, an orphan, is left a claim by her Uncle Chester. Only 17, she moves on her own to Montana, to prove up the claim left by her uncle. Although she fails to prove the claim, she learns much about herself and makes friends with her neighbors.