Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Jason is a 12-year-old with autism. He knows that his brain functions differently than other kids' brains, but still it is hard to change his behaviors in ways that will make him fit in better with his peers. The greatest joy in his life is his writing, and he posts his stories on a website called Storyboard. A fellow writer named PhoenixGirl reads his stories and strikes up a friendship with him. Jason finds out that her real name is Rebecca and he has some illusions that she might be his girlfriend. But when he finds out that he and Rebecca will both be attending a Storyboard users conference in Texas he fears that she will see what he is really like and not be his friend anymore. While not heavy on plot, the strength of this book is the first-person look inside the mind of a bright, struggling autistic boy. I would recommend it to readers who like to get inside of different characters heads and understand how they think and act. (By the way, the autism spectrum teacher at my middle school said it's the best middle school fiction book with an autistic character she has ever read.)

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

This biography of a relatively unknown civil rights pioneer should be in every middle and high school library. I had heard of Claudette Colvin because I read Freedom Walkers by Russell Freedman, but I had no idea of the real story behind this 15-year-old girl who was arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery bus months before Rosa Parks came along. Instead of being hailed as a hero, Claudette was actually ostracized and vilified by most of her fellow students. She faced criminal charges and was shortly after expelled from school due to her unplanned pregnancy. She could have given up the fight for justice but the next year she was the key witness in the federal lawsuit that officially ended bus segregation in Alabama. She risked her life to testify and never really got much credit for her efforts. Author Phillip Hoose tracked down Claudette Colvin in New York City and personally interviewed her numerous times for this book. It's well-written and absorbing and a great example of using primary sources. Recommended for readers of all ages—including adults.

Written in Bone by Sally Walker

Imagine if someone found your body 400 years from now. What would they know about you? What could they learn from your skeleton? Believe it or not, scientists and anthropologists can learn a lot from human remains and this book tells about several mysterious bodies found in Virginia and Maryland. All the bodies were from people who died in the 1600s during the time in which Europeans were colonizing the "new world." In most cases historians knew absolutely nothing about the individual people found, but scientists were able to learn how old they were, whether they were male or female, how hard they worked, what country they came from, how long they had been in the colonies, and what diseases they suffered from. In some cases they have been able to figure out exactly how they died and who they were. This book is not only brilliantly written by award-winning author Sally Walker, it's full of stunning photographs and information about how these scientists do their jobs. A great choice for social studies teachers as well as curious middle or even high school readers.

Forever Princess by Meg Cabot

This is the 10th and final book in the Princess Diaries series. Mia has grown up and matured and is now turning 18. In the beginning she finds herself telling lies to everyone—her parents, her boyfriend, and even her best friends. She lies about her college acceptances (she got in to every college and she thinks it's because she's a princess) and her senior thesis (which is really a steamy 400 page romance novel). Most importantly, she's lying to herself in thinking that she is in love with her current boyfriend, J.P. But when former boyfriend Michael returns from Japan she can't deny her real attraction to him. One of the most satisfying parts is that she and former best friend Lilly resolve their issues and Mia concludes that her oldest friends are the most important ones in her life. It's a believable and happy ending to the series and those who have read all of the books will not want to miss this one. Meg Cabot is, as always, funny and hip and in touch with teen girls. However, as a middle school librarian I have to say that a major plotline of this story is whether or not Mia will have sex after prom. She is the only remaining virgin among all of her friends and it is discussed a great deal. While Mia ends up making thoughtful decisions, the attitude of her friends toward sexuality is pretty flippant. I have always thought that Meg Cabot was writing for teenagers, not little girls or tweens, and that is definitely the case here. I have not seen this mentioned in any other reviews and I think it's a significant part of this book.

This Full House by Virginia Ewer Wolff

I have waited a long time for this final installment in the Make Lemonade trilogy. It has been years since I have read Make Lemonade and True Believer, but the pleasure of reading those books came back to me as soon as I started reading. LaVaughn is an inner city girl who dreams of getting out of the projects and going to college. She's now in her senior year and accepted into a "women in science" program that may be her ticket to college acceptance. She's feeling regret about the way she once treated a boy named Patrick and she's still babysitting the two children of Jolly, a teen mother who she worked for in the first book of the trilogy. Oh, and her best friend Annie is pregnant. All the lines of the story come together when she comes to suspect a connection between Jolly and the head of her science program. Unfortunately, the coincidence is too great to believe, but the writing is so good and the characters so real that it didn't really matter to me. I was just interested in seeing LaVaughn through to college and achieving her dreams. There was a strong theme of acting according to your conscience and doing the right thing. And Wolff doesn't shy away from the complexity of figuring out what the right thing is. It's not always clear and it certainly can cause pain. The free verse format makes this a quick read and even when using dozens of scientific terms, Wolff makes it all sounds like poetry.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

This book has it all. For those who like horror and suspense it's dark and creepy, and the book begins and ends with an attempted murder. But at the same time it's also got humor and heartwarming family moments, a sweet friendship between a boy and a girl, and it becomes a tearjerker on the final page. It's hard to believe that an author could take such a ridiculous sounding plot and put so much substance to it, but Neil Gaiman did it. Nobody Owens (Bod for short) survives the murder of his entire family when as a toddler he wandered into a nearby graveyard. Now he is being lovingly raised by the dead residents of the graveyard and the mysterious Silas who is neither alive nor dead. Bod is human but has been given some special powers in the graveyard. His early adventures are within the graveyard, but as he gets older he longs to see a little more of the world and even go to school. Eventually he finds out that the man Jack who killed his family is still after him and he will not ever be safe until he confronts this enemy. It's really a story of growing up, moving away from the "family" that raised you, confronting your fears, and moving into the wider world. It will be a popular middle school book and would be a great read-aloud. And of course, it won the Newbery Medal for 2009.

We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson

I don't like baseball, and while I vaguely know about the racial injustices in American baseball I had never actually read a book about the Negro Leagues before I read We Are the Ship. From the first words on the page I was drawn into the story—not because of the baseball but because of the history and human drama. The author writes as if he was one of the many players in the Negro Leagues, and this narrative voice drew me in. I could see the crowded buses, the restaurants and hotels that turned away black players, and the clowning moves of some of the early players. The artwork in this book is stunning and took the author/illustrator eight years to complete. This book is written at a perfect level for middle school students, but I'm afraid that they won't pick it up because at first glance it looks like a picture book for younger readers. If this book made me want to keep reading, anyone who actually likes baseball will be absolutely riveted. It should be read by anyone of any age who wants to learn about the history of the Negro Leagues. Teachers, this book would make a fantastic read aloud, either the whole thing or any one of the nine chapters (Nelson calls them "innings"). I was happy to see that this book won both the Coretta Scott King Award and the Sibert Award for children's nonfiction. It deserves it!

Absolutely Maybe by Lisa Yee

First of all I should say I liked this book a lot. I cared about the characters and wanted to see them through to the end. The main character, named Maybe (short for Maybelline), is on the run to California looking for her biological father and trying to get away from her beauty-pageant-crazed mother. She's with two good friends—Ted, a flamboyant character and true friend who gets himself a job as the personal assistant to a former Hollywood starlet, and Hollywood, an aspiring film student and secret admirer of Maybe. I loved these three teens' friendship and how they all had a distinct path they were on in finding who they are. I also liked the way the story came together with Hollywood's award-winning documentary film. I don't think this book is too mature for middle school, but it is definitely a notch up from Lisa Yee's other books. The scene where Maybe's future stepfather tries to rape her was surprising and a little jarring for me, but it served as the catalyst to send her on her journey to California. While not a comedy, the book is infused with humor throughout and not a heavy problem novel like many YA books. It is populated with memorable secondary characters that stay vividly in your mind. I would recommend this for teens from 7th grade up through high school.

Chasing Lincolns Killer: The Search for John Wilkes Booth by James L. Swanson

Most people know that Abraham Lincoln was shot by a man named John Wilkes Booth, but you might not know that after the shooting it took the nation's best police officers and detectives twelve days to finally track down the killer. This book does a great job of detailing the events of those fascinating days—including the day of the assassination and the steps Booth took to prepare for killing the president. Booth had a group of co-conspirators, none of whom were particularly smart or all that helpful to him. Only one was with him on his 12-day spree. He got pretty lucky in escaping into Maryland and then found a series of sympathetic people to help with his wounded leg, feeding him and his one companion, and getting them on a boat to Virginia. I found the play-by-play action to be fascinating and I think a reader interested in crime, action, or Abraham Lincoln will race through this book.

I'll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War by Anita Silvey

This book is both fascinating and frustrating. It tells the stories of many women who, disguised as men, fought in the American Civil War. This was not an isolated thing—we know for sure that hundreds of women did this for various reasons. Some for adventure, others to follow husbands or brothers, and others to escape from poverty. The stories that we do know about these women are fascinating. The frustrating part is that we will never know the details of most of these women's lives. There are many tidbits in this book (such as women giving birth as prisoners of war) that are so intriguing, yet we never can know the details of their dramatic lives (How did they hide it? What happened after they gave birth? What did their families back home think of them?). Silvey has researched these women for years and what is known is well-told in this book. It's particularly fascinating to look at the photos of some of these women, both in uniform and in traditional dress.

She Touched the World: Laura Bridgman, Deaf-Blind Pioneer by Sally Hobart Alexander and Robert Alexander

This biography of Laura Bridgman was fascinating. Years before Helen Keller became famous for her accomplishments, Laura went blind and deaf at the age of two. At that time no one had ever taught someone to read and communicate who had both of these disabilities. Laura was lonely and hard to deal with until she was sent away to a blind school to learn from Dr. Howe. She learned finger spelling quickly and from there the world was opened up to her. According to this book she was one of the most famous people in the U.S. in the early 1800s. She showed the world that all people, no matter what their challenges, should be given the opportunity to learn and live a meaningful life. The techniques Dr. Howe developed with Laura went on to be used with Helen Keller and many others after her. One of the book's authors is herself blind and deaf and in the final chapter she explains how life is different for people today with these disabilities. This book flowed well, was easy to understand, and could be appreciated by readers in 5th grade on up through adults. Recommended for people who like to read about people overcoming big challenges.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

Finally a book that I could not put down! I have not been very excited about very books published in 2008, but this one was fantastic. It's set during 1776 when patriots and loyalists were fighting it out over liberty. But we forget that many people in the colonies were slaves and neither side was talking about truly giving freedom to all people. Isobel and her sister Ruth are supposed to gain their freedom when their mistress dies but instead they are sold to a New York couple loyal to the King of England. They are transported to New York City, forced to work extremely hard, and treated poorly by their new owners. This is Isobel's story as she struggles to find a way out of slavery while all around her soldiers are preparing for war and her only friend is imprisoned and near death. When her sister, Ruth, is taken from her she loses hope but later regains it. Isobel is a determined, believable character and her situation is both heartbreaking and hopeful. The horrors of slavery are not glossed over, and there's lots of history here, so I think it will be most appreciated by readers seventh grade and up through adults. Social studies teachers should definitely read this one.

Bodies from the Ice: Melting Glaciers and the Recovery of the Past by James M. Deem

I am a big fan of James M. Deem's books, especially Bodies from the Ash about Pompeii, so I was excited to read this one. It covers all kinds of frozen bodies, from the famous European Ice Man to the child sacrifices of the Andes Mountains to George Mallory, who died scaling Mt. Everest. The book has beautiful photography throughout which makes it fun to browse through. There are several children's books about frozen mummies, but what sets this apart is the focus on melting glaciers and climate change. There's lots of science here, so I recommend it to teachers as well as to students.

Snatched by Pete Hautman and Mary Logue

Roni is a high school reporter who gets involved in a missing person case. Her classmate, Alicia Camden, is beaten one day and disappears a few days later. The police are on the case, but it's Roni and her sidekick Brian who take big risks and do some crazy things to solve the mystery. Brian and Roni aren't really friends, but they are both smart and determined and they need each other to really figure things out. I enjoyed the humorous relationship between them and the clues and strategies they use to solve the mystery. I definitely recommend it to middle schoolers who like mysteries. And if you like it, read Doppelganger and Skullduggery, the two sequels.

The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues Book 1) by Rick Riordan

Grace Cahill dies and leaves her relatives a choice—take a million dollars or a get a clue to the family secret. It turns out that the Cahill family is the most powerful family in world history but they have lost the source of their power and there are 39 clues that need to be found. The main characters are orphans named Dan and Amy, and they are competing against several other nasty groups of distant Cahill relatives who choose the clue. The first clue is pretty vague but leads them to researching Ben Franklin. First they go to Philadelphia then they end up in Paris. The competitors are cutthroat and there are fires and explosions that threaten to kill Dan and Amy. This book reminded me of The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure because of the complex historical clues that send the characters to some pretty amazing places. I thought I would love this book but I really didn't. Some of the supporting characters were stereotypical and completely unbelievable and I thought that no real kid in the world could ever have figured out the complex clues that Dan and Amy solve. If you can get past my complaints it is a story with lots of action and history. I'm sure lots of kids will love it and enjoy playing the online game that goes along with it. It has received great reviews and Rick Riordan is a good author, so read the book and convince me I'm wrong!