CHILDREN'S Mock Newbery List

Here is the list for the 2010 Children's Mock Newbery Election program!

Kids in third grade through sixth grade are invited to attend. Read the books from the list, add comments to our blog, and join us for a discussion of which was the best children's book of the year! Advanced Registration required.

We will have refreshments, door prizes, and a lively discussion.

• Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
• The Great and Only Barnum: the Tremendous, Stupendous Life of P.T. Barnum by Candace Fleming
• The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
• Melonhead by Katy Kelly
• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Happy reading!

The Great and Only Barnum - The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P.T. Barnum by Candace Fleming

"He was P.T. Barnum -- known far and wide for his bearded ladies and skeleton collections; his midgets and three-ring circuses; his wax museums, jumbo elephants, dancing bears, and mermaids."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: Biography of P.T. Barnum, showman and founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Readers can visit Barnum's American Museum; meet Tom Thumb, the miniature man (only 39 in. tall) and his tinier bride (32 in.); experience the thrill Barnum must have felt when, at age 60, he joined the circus; and discover Barnum's legacy.

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade Books; 152 pages

Everything for a Dog by Ann M. Martin

"My tale begins with a tail."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: In parallel stories, Bone, an orphaned dog, finds and loses a series of homes, Molly, a family pet, helps Charlie through the grief and other after-effects of his brother's death, and lonely Henry pleads for a dog of his own.

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends; 211 pages

Road to Tater Hill by Edith M. Hemingway

"For months I had wished and wished the baby would be a girl, a little sister."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: At her grandparents' North Carolina mountain home during the summer of 1963, eleven-year-old Annie Winters, grief-stricken by the death of her newborn sister and isolated by her mother's deepening depression, finds comfort in holding an oblong stone "rock baby" and in the friendship of a neighbor boy and a reclusive mountain woman with a devastating secret.

Publisher: Random House; 213 pages

Printable Reading List

If you would like a compilation of all three 2010 reading lists -- ready to be printed out -- just click here! (We tried to leave enough room so you could make notes on each title as you read it.)

Here's List Number Three!

This is the third of four reading lists for this year's Mock Newbery at the Allen County Public Library:

• Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

• The Dream Stealer by Sid Flesichman

• Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French

• Crossing Stones by Helen Frost

• Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff

• Wings by Jason Lethcoe

• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
  

• The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon

• Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson

• Season of Gifts by Richard Peck

We'd love to hear what you think about these books. Just click on the titles above to leave comments about each book. If you would like to suggest a book for the next (and final!) list, send me an email or leave a comment here. Look for the other two lists here.

The Georges and the Jewels by Jane Smiley

"Sometimes when you fall off your horse, you just don't want to get
right back on."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt grows up on her family's California horse ranch in the 1960s, learning to train the horses her father sells and trying to reconcile her strict religious upbringing with her own ideas about life.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 232 pages

Eli the Good by Silas House

"That was the summer of the bicentennial, when all these things happened: my sister, Josie, began to hate our country and slapped my mother's face; my wild aunt, Nell, moved in with us, bringing along all five thousand or so of her records and a green record player that ran on batteries; my father started going back to Vietnam in his dreams, and I saw him cry; my mother did the Twist in front of the whole town and nearly lost us all."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: In the summer of 1976, ten-year-old Eli Book's excitement over Bicentennial celebrations is tempered by his father's flashbacks to the Vietnam War and other family problems, as well as concern about his tough but troubled best friend, Edie.

Publisher: Candlewick Press; 295 pages

Mock Newbery List 3 will be announced early next week

Wow! We've been seeing lots of great books -- both fiction and nonfiction -- this year, and it's time to decide which we want to include on our third "official" reading list. Which titles would YOU like to see included? Which titles do YOU think deserve to be discussed in-person in January? Let us know by responding to this post, or to the individual titles' posts.

If you want to see which titles are already on our reading list, click here.

We'll be looking forward to your responses!

Leo and the Lesser Lion by Sandra Forrester

"I don't remember dying."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: In Depression-era Alabama, twelve-year-old Mary Bayliss Pettigrew struggles to understand why her beloved older brother, Leo, died and whether she, miraculously, survived for some special purpose.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 296 pages