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West Virginia Children's Choice Book Award Nominees 2009-2010
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Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. New York: Knopf, 2008. 320 pages. Grades 4 to 8. The four
Penderwick sisters are faced with the unimaginable prospect of their widowed father dating, and they hatch a plot to stop him. -
Connor, Leslie. Waiting for Normal. New York: Katherine Tegan Books, 2008. 290 pages. Grades 6 to 8. Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother’s erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.
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Dowd, Siobhan. The London Eye Mystery. New York: David Fickling Books, 2007. 336 pages. Grades 5 to 8. When Ted and Kat’s cousin Salim disappears from the London Eye Ferris wheel, the two siblings must work together—Ted with his brain that is “wired differently” and impatient Kat—to try to solve the mystery of what happened to Salim.
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Fern, Tracey E. and Lauren Castillo, illus. Buffalo Music. New York: Clarion, 2008. 31 pages. Grades K. to 4. After hunters kill off the
buffalo around her Texas ranch, a woman begins raising orphan buffalo calves and eventually ships four members of her small herd to Yellowstone National Park, where they form the beginnings of newly thriving buffalo herds. Based on the true story of Mary Ann Goodnight and her husband Charles; includes author’s note about her work, with websites and a bibliography. -
Fleischman, Sid. The Entertainer and the Dybuk. New York: Greenwillow, 2007. 108 pages. Grades 6 to 9. A struggling American ventriloquist in post- World War II Europe is possessed by the mischievous spirit of a young Jewish boy killed in the Holocaust. Author’s note details the murder of over one million children by the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s.
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Haas, Jessie. Chase. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2007. 258 pages. Grades 5 to 9. In the coal mining region of mid-nineteenth century eastern Pennsylvania, Phin witnesses a murder and runs for his life, pursued by a mysterious man and a horse with the instincts of a bloodhound.
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Henkes, Kevin. Bird Lake Moon. New York: Greenwillow, 2008. 192 pages. Grades 4 to 7. Twelve-year-old Mitch and his mother are spending the summer with his grandparents at Bird Lake after his parents separate, and ten-year-old Spencer and his family have returned to the lake where Spencer’s little brother drowned long ago, and as the boys become friends and spend time together, each of them begins to heal.
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Holm, Jennifer L. and Elicia Castaldi, illus. Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf. New York; Atheneum, 2007. 128 pages. Grades 5 to 7. Ginny starts out with ten items on her to-do list for seventh grade, but notes, cartoons, and other “stuff” reveal what seems like a thousand things that go wrong between September and June, both at
school and at home. -
Horvath, Polly. My One Hundred Adventures. New York: Random House, 2008. 160 pages. Grades 4 to 7. Twelve-year-old Jane, who lives at the beach in a run-down old house with her mother, two brothers, and sister, has an eventful summer accompanying her pastor on bible deliveries, meeting former boyfriends of her mother’s, and being coerced into babysitting for a family of ill-mannered children.
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Kadohata, Cynthia. Cracker: The Best Dog in Viet Nam. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2007. 312 pages. Grades 5 and 8. When Willie’s family moves to a new apartment that does not allow dogs, he must give up his beloved German Shepherd Cracker. Given to the Army, Cracker gains a new master and life in Viet Nam sniffing out booby traps. This is a moving story of devotion and duty told through the eyes of Cracker and her soldier partner Rick.
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Kenny, Jeff. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. New York: Amulet Books, 2007. 224 pages. Grades 5 to 8. Greg records his sixth grade experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive, but when Rowley grows more popular, Greg must take drastic measures to save their friendship.
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Korman, Gordon. Swindle. New York: Scholastic, 2008. 252 pages. Grades 3 to 7. After unscrupulous collector S. Wendell Palamino cons him out of a valuable baseball card, sixth-grader Griffin Bing puts together a band of misfits to break into Palomino’s heavily guarded store and steal the card back; planning to use the money to finance his father’s failing invention, the SmartPick fruit picker.
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Lowry, Lois. The Willoughys. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. 174 pages. Grades 4 to 7. In this tongue-in-cheek take on classic themes in children’s literature, the four Willoughby children set about to become “deserving orphans” after their neglectful parents embark on a treacherous around the-world adventure, leaving them in the care of an odious nanny.
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McGill, Alice and Judy Daly, illus. Way Up and Over Everything. Boston: Houghton. 32 pages. Grades 1-5. In this retelling of a folktale, five Africans escape the horrors of slavery by simply disappearing into thin air.
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Murphy, Pat. The Wild Girls. New York: Viking, 2007. 288 pages. Grades 5 and 9. When twelve-year-old Joan moves to California in 1972, she becomes friends with Sarah, who is timid at school but an imaginative leader when they play in the woods, and after winning a writing contest together they are recruited for an exclusive summer writing class that gives them new insights into themselves and others.
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Rumford, James. Beowulf: A Hero’s Tale Retold. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 48 pages. Grades 5 to 8. A simplified and illustrated retelling of the exploits of the Anglo-Saxon warrior,
Beowulf, and how he came to defeat the monster Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon that threatened the kingdom -
.Seidler, Tor. Gully’s Travels. New York: Scholastic, 2008. 173 pages Grades 4 to 7. When his beloved owner falls in love with a woman who is allergic to long-haired dogs, Gulliver is given away to his doorman and the pooch’s wonderful life of leisure comes to a dramatic end after he moves in with his new owner’s family in their cramped home in Queens.
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Smucker, Anna Egan. Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman & Co., 2008. Unpaged. Grades 1 to 5. When Paul and Lloyd Stark from Missouri were looking for the perfect apple, they found it in Anderson Mullins’ shiny yellow apples from West Virginia, in a story based on real events about how the
Golden Delicious apple came to be. -
White, Ruth. Little Audrey. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008. 160 pages .Grades 3 to 6. In 1948, eleven-year-old
Audrey lives with her father, mother, and three younger sisters in Jewell Valley, a coal mining camp in Southwest Virginia, where her mother still mourns the death of a baby, her father goes on drinking binges on paydays, and Audrey tries to recover from the scarlet fever that has left her skinny and needing to wear glasses. -
Yep, Laurence and Kathleen, S. The Dragon’s Child: A Story of Angel Island. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. 133 pages. Grades 3 to 6. In 1922, ten-year-old Gim Lew reluctantly leaves his village in China to accompany his father to America, but before they go he must prepare for a grueling test that he must pass—without stuttering—at California’s Angel Island, where strict officials strive to keep out unwanted immigrants. An afterward includes facts about immigration from China and the experiences of the author’s family.
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