2009-10 Battle of the Books List
*Red Denotes New Titles Added
1. The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones by R. Riordan – When their beloved Aunt Grace dies, Dan, 11, and Amy, 14 – along with other Cahill descendants are forced with an unusual choice: inherit one million dollars or participate in a perilous treasure hunt. Cahill’s have determined the course of history for centuries and this quest’s outcome will bring the victors untoward power and affect all of mankind.
2. 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson – When Henry York comes to stay with his aunt, uncle, and three female cousins in Henry, Kansas, after his parents have been kidnapped while bicycling across South America, he has hitherto “led a life that had taught him not to look forward to anything.” But the same dreary landscape that launched Dorothy to Oz here introduces Henry to his uncle’s schemes of selling tumbleweeds on E-bay, to the summer joys of sandlot baseball, and to the existence of a wall in his attic bedroom full of mysterious cupboard doors which turn out to be portals across time and space into the fantastic unknown.
3. Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson – Alcatraz Smedry doesn’t seem destined for anything but disaster. On his 13th birthday he receives a bag of sand, which is quickly stolen by the cult of evil librarians plotting to take over the world. The sand will give the Librarians the edge they need to achieve world domination. Alcatraz must stop them by infiltrating the local library, armed with nothing but eyeglasses and a talent for klutziness.
4. Allie Finkle’s Rules For Girls: Moving Day by Meg Cabot – When nine year old Allie Finkle’s parents announce that they are moving her and her brothers from their suburban split-level into an Ancient Victorian in town, Allie’s sure her life is over. She’s not at all happy about having to give up her pretty pink wall to wall carpeting for creaky rundown, old-fashioned school just two blocks from her new house.
5. Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson – Before Green Gables is the story of Anne Shirley’s life before her arrival at Green Gables. A heartwarming tale of a precocious child whose lively imagination and relentless spirit help her to overcome difficult circumstances and of a young girl’s ability to love, learn and above all dream.
6. The Big Field by Mike Lupica - For Hutch, shortstop has always been home. It’s where his father once played professionally, before injuries relegated him to watching games on TV instead of playing them. It’s where Hutch himself has always played and starred. Until now. The arrival of Darryl “D-Will” Williams, the top short prospect from Florida since A-Rod, means Hutch is displaced, in more ways than one.
7. Black Star, Bright Dawn by Scott O’Dell – Most young girl’s experiences never involved hunting bearded seals on the ice, even within the Alaskan Eskimo culture. Bright Dawn is an exception. In her father’s eyes, she became his son’s replacement ever since her brother drowned. When Bright Dawn is 18 years old, her father, recently injured, insists that she take his place in the Iditarod, the famous Alaskan dogsled race covering more than a thousand miles between Anchorage and Nome.
8. The Book of Story Beginnings by Kristin Kladstrup – When Lucy Martin moves to the house in Iowa that her father inherited from his Aunt Lavonne, she hopes to solve the mystery of Lavonne’s brother’s disappearance in 1914, when he was 14. He supposedly rowed off in a boat on a magical ocean that lapped at the garden gate. When Lucy finds the Book of Story Beginnings and writes in it about a girl whose father was a magician, her father becomes a magician who has invented a transforming potion.
9. The Book of Time by Guillaume Prevost – Sam’s father has been missing for 10 days. Searching a dusty bookstore for clues, Sam discovers a hidden room containing an old book, a strange coin, and an oddly carved stone that sends him on a gut-wrenching journey back to medieval Iona, just in time for a Viking invasion.
10. Christian the Lion by Anthony Bourke & John Rendell – As Ace and John, two friends, are searching for holiday gifts in London. They come across a lion cub for sale in Harrods, the famous department store. Unable to bear the thought of leaving the cub, Ace and John take him home and name him Christian. After a year of fun and mischief Christian has grown up, and Ace and John realize that their pet needs to be among other lions and deserves to live free, in his natural environment. Luckily, friends help introduce Christian to the African wild.
11. City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau – It is always night in the city of Ember. There is no moon, no stars. The only light during the regular twelve hours of “day” comes from flood lamps that cast a yellowish glow over the streets of the city. Beyond are the pitch-black Unknown Regions, which no one has ever explored because an understanding of fire and electricity has been lost, and with it the idea of a Moveable Light.
12. Confessions from the Principles Chair by Anne Myers – After Robin and her group of eighth-grade friends, known as the Six Pack, are caught mistreating a class-mate, Robin’s mother moves them from Denver to Prairie Dog Town, OK. Dressed in a tailored suit chosen to bother her free-spirited mother, Robin goes to enroll in her new middle school and is mistaken for the substitute principal who has the same name. During her two days in office, she encounters a girl who is constantly tormented by a clique, gains insight into the victim’s perspective, and works to empower her and address harassing behavior.
13. Cover-up by John Feinstein – The third outing for precocious teen reporters Steve Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson finds the intrepid pair transformed into TV personalities, stars of cable talk show called Kid Sports. On the eve of the Super Bowl, however, Steve is fired. Steve still has a newspaper gig, though, so the pair reunited at the Super Bowl.
14. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley’s Journal by Jeff Kinney – Greg is a conflicted soul. He wants to do the right thing, but the constant quest for status and girls seems to undermine his every effort. His attempts to prove his worthiness in the popularity race are constantly foiled by well meaning parents, a younger and older brother and nerdy friends.
15. A Dog Called Grk by Joshua Doder – It turns out that the endearing little dog Tim finds outside his house is Grk, the much loved pet the recently replaced ambassador of Stanislavia. In trying to reunite them. Tim must break into a high security prison, (and get out again!) and pilot a helicopter in a nail biting race for the border.
16. A Dog’s Life: An Autobiography of a Stray by Ann Martin – Squirrel and her brother Bone are pups living in a country estates garden shed. When their mother fails to return one day, Squirrel follows her brother to look for a new home. Mother had taught them basic survival skills, to hunt for food and beware of humans.
17. Elephant Run by Roland Smith – In 1941, bombs drop from the night skies of London, demolishing the apartment Nick Freestone lives in with his mother. Deciding the situation in England is too unstable, Nick’s mother sends him to live with his father in Burma, hoping he will be safer living on the family’s teak plantation. But as soon as Nick arrives, trouble erupts in the remote Burmese elephant village. Japanese soldiers invade, and Nick’s father is taken prisoner. Nick is left stranded on the plantation, forced to work as a servant to the new rulers. As life in the village grows more dangerous for Nick and his young friend, Mya, they plan their daring escape.
18. Eleven: A Mystery by Patricia R. Giff – What is eleven, and why does Sam fear it? Could it be a month, a day, an address, an age? Two trees standing side by side or the double mast on a boat? What ever it is, it haunts Sam’s dreams more frequently as his eleventh birthday approaches. Then, while secretly searching the attic for birthday presents, he notices a newspaper clipping with a picture that could be him at a much younger age and the mysterious headline MISSING.
19. The Fairy Tale Detective (The Sisters Grimm) by Michael Buckley – After their parents disappear, sister Daphne and Sabrina Grimm are placed with a grandmother they have never heard about. Sabrina, the eldest, is highly suspicious; why didn’t their parents mention granny Relda? She grows more concerned once they arrive at Relda’s home in the New England town of Ferryport Landing, where Relda serves emerald-green meatballs in rooms lined with books about magic.
20. Findle by Andrew Clements – Ten year old Nick Allen has a reputation for devising clever, time-wasting schemes guaranteed to distract even the most conscientious teacher. His diversions backfire in Mrs. Granger’s fifth grade class, however, resulting in Nick being assigned an extra report on how new entries are added to the dictionary. Surprisingly, the research provides Nick with his best idea ever and he decides to coin his own new word.
21. Ghost Ship by Dietlof Reiche – A summer job waiting tables at her father’s seaside restaurant, Ye Olde Seashell Room, gets more interesting for 12 year old Vicki when a mystery brews surrounding an old sailing ship and missing gold. The figurehead of the Storm Goddess, a local ship from 230 years ago, hangs on the wall of the restaurant. When it is taken down for restoration, Vicki discovers a hidden secret, and she and a vacationing boy named Peter become involved in a suspenseful adventure.
22. Griffin’s Castle by Jenny Nimmo – Dinah, 11, is bright and self-sufficient but has a young, single, and somewhat immature mother. Ever since the child can remember, they have moved from one makeshift living arrangement to another, till Dinah’s greatest desire is to have a stable home for the two of them. When the mother’s new, wealthy boyfriend moves them into his huge dilapidated old mansion, Dinah determines to make her wish come true.
23. Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson – Orphaned at age, Hattie longs for a place where folk will welcome her and become her family. When an uncle leaves her a claim of 320 acres in Montana, she hastens to make a home of her own, unprepared for life on the prairie in the brutal winter of 1918.
24. Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck – Set in rural Indiana, circa 1914, tomboy PeeWee works with her dad adored older brother Jake. The automobile is replacing the horse and buggy and the young brother and sister run a fledging gas station. When a tornado rips through town and tears up the defunct library, the town elders are shamed into reopening it. Irene Ridpath and three of her sorority sisters fresh out of library school arrive and set the small town on its ear.
25. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen – Roy Eberhardt is the new kid again. This time around it’s Trace Middle School in humid Coconut Grove, Florida. But it’s still the same old routine: table by himself at lunch, no real friends, and thick headed bullies like Dana Matherson pushing him around. But if it wasn’t for Dana Matherson mashing his face against the school bus window that one day, he might never have seen the tow-headed running boy. And if he had never seen the running boy, he might never have met tall, tough, bully beating Beatrice.
26. How To Steel a Dog by Barbara O’Connor – Georgina and her family have been living in their car since her father left and they were evicted from their apartment. Mama is working two jobs to earn rent money and trying hard to hold things together. Desperate to help out, Georgina decides to steal a dog for the reward money, laying out the details of her plan in a diary. However, the dog’s owner can’t afford to offer a reward and Georgina ends up feeling sorry for the lonely woman.
27. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell – The miraculous story of how Karana forages on land and in the ocean, clothes her self and secures shelter. Perhaps even more startling, she finds strength and serenity living alone on the island.
28. Jesse James: Wild West Train Robber by Elaine Landau – A biography of the outlaw who, with his brother Frank, led a gang of bank and train robbers from the late 1860’s through the 1870’s.
29. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard – Three med set out on a journey into the heart of Africa to search for a lost friend. They stumble upon an unknown country, cut off from civilization and learn of a diamond mine from which no one has returned…
30. Laura Ingalls Wilder Biography by William Anderson – This biography of the quintessential pioneer girl who loved the “Little House” stories and later captured them for posterity in her books is substantial in length and content. Like the subject’s enduring series, it not only chronicles growing up on the frontier, but also pictures a way of life that has long since vanished.
31. Listen! by Stephanie S. Tolan – Charley’s mother died just a short time ago and still raw with grief the 12 year old is faced with a miserable summer recuperating from a car accident that has left her with a slowly healing leg. Her best friend is spending the summer at tennis camp and her father has buried himself in work because of his own pain.
32. Lost and Found by Andrew Clements – Although it’s a drag to be constantly mistaken for each other, in truth, during those first days at a new school, there’s nothing better than having a twin brother there with you. On day one of sixth grade, Ray stays home sick and Jay is on his own. No big deal. It’s a pretty nice school, good kids, too. Jay quickly discovers a major mistake. No one seems to know a thing about his brother. Ray’s not on the attendance list. He doesn’t have a locker or even have a student folder. Jay almost tells the school, almost, but then decides that this lost information could be very useful. Even fun.
33. The Magnificent Mummy Maker by Elvira Woodruff – Tired of being compared to his brilliant, 10 year old stepbrother, Jason, Andy Manotti, also 10, resigns himself to mediocrity, but the plot thickens. When the fifth grade classes visit the local museum, he feels a strong and powerful link to an Egyptian mummy display. Back to school, Andy draws an exquisite picture of a mummy case and soon finds that it has the power to grant him wishes.
34. Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli – Maniac Magee is a folk story about a boy, a very excitable boy. One that can out run dogs, hit a home run off the best pitcher in the neighborhood, tie a knot no one can undo. “Kid’s gotta be a maniac”, is what the folks in Two Mills Say. It’s also the story of how this boy, Jeffrey Lionel “Maniac” Magee, confronts racism in a small town, tries to find a home where there is none and attempts to soothe tensions between rival factions on the tough side of town.
35. Mister Monday by Garth Nix – Arthur Penhaligon’s school year is not off to a good start. On his first day, he suffers an asthma attack while running cross country and dreams that a mysterious figure hands him a key shaped like the minute hand of a clock. However, when he wakes up, he still has the key. That’s when strange things begin to happen.
36. Mudshark by Gary Paulsen – His reflexes honed chasing triplet toddler sisters, Lyle Williams, 12, earned the nickname Mudshark during an especially fierce game of Death Ball. He relished reading and observing the world as much as he enjoys sports, and his memory for finding lost articles wins him the prestige of unofficial school detective. The inevitable trouble in paradise occurs when the librarian’s psychic parrot threatens his reputation.
37. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George – Every kid thinks about running away at one point of another; few get farther than the end of the block. Young Sam Gribley gets to the end of the block and keeps going all the way to the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There he sets up house in a huge hollowed out tree, with a falcon and a weasel for companions and his wits as his tool for survival.
38. Nim at Sea by Wendy Orr – This time Nim is the fish out of water as she stows away on a cruise ship to save her kidnapped sea lion friend. Accompanied by her likable iguana, Fred, the island girl lands with a splash in Manhattan, on the run from a very bad guy, and on her way to reunite with her friend, cowardly adventure novelist Alex Rover.
39. The Orphan of Ellis Island by Elvira Woodruff – Dominic Cantori has spent most of his life in foster care. When a guide asks Dominic’s fifth grade class to talk about their families during a field trip to Ellis Island, the boy is embarrassed because he has no heritage to discuss, and hides in a storage closet where he promptly falls asleep. Waking after the museum is closed he panics until the prerecorded voice of one of the exhibits soothes him back to sleep. When he wakes again, he finds himself in Italy in 1908. He is befriended by three orphan brothers who are waiting for sponsors to pay their passage to America.
40. Outrageous Woman of Civil War Times by Mary Rodd Furbee – They were pioneers and trailblazers, spies and ex-slaves, reformers and first ladies. They became America’s first women nurses, doctors, preachers and voters. These Outrageous Women of Civil War Times braved the battlefield, fought for their rights, wrote inspiring works and became heroines!
41. Oracles of Delphi Keep by Victoria Laurie - Along the southern coast of England atop the White Cliffs of Dover stands a castle. And at the castle’s old keep is an orphanage. Delphi Keep has seen many youngsters come and go through its gates, and Ian Wigby and his sister, Theodosia, are happy to call it home. Life has always been simple at the keep, and the orphanage safe, until one day, Ian and Theo find a silver treasure box. Within the box, a prophecy. Three thousand years ago a great Greek oracle wrote of a quest. A quest on which the fate of the world depends. A quest that names two children Ian and Theodosia. Suddenly Delphi Keep is no longer safe. Ian and Theo, along with a very special group of friends, realize they must unravel the meaning behind the scroll of Dover Cavern before darkness falls on the world.
42. The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls by Elise Primavera – Set in the picturesque town of Sherbet, this story centers around four girls who live on Gumm Street. Franny, Pru and Cat are not friends (at least not at first). Pru thinks Franny is reckless. Franny thinks Pru is a big baby and they both dislike Cat because she is just too perfect. When Ivy moves into the neighborhood everything changes. First she discovers a pair of ruby slippers. Then the girls’ piano teacher, Mr. Staccato disappears. Finally a strange and magnetic woman claiming to be his sister moves into the house.
43. Seeds of Hope: The Gold Rush Diary of Susanna Fairchild by Kristiana Gregory – Fourteen year old Susanna Fairchild and her family embark on a journey that they hope will bring them good fortune. Boarding a ship sailing from New York to the West, the Fairchild’s set out for Oregon where they plan to start a new life. Tragedy strikes when Susanna’s mother is lost at sea and they must continue on without her. Hearing stories of enormous wealth, Susanna’s physician father decides to join the hordes of men rushing to California to mine gold.
44. The Sixth Grade Name Game by Gordon Korman –Wiley and Jeff have been best friends for all of their 11 years. Notorious for the nicknames they have awarded the people in their school, they are quick to dub their new teacher, Mr. Hughes, the former high-school football coach with a booming voice and can do attitude, Mr. Huge. However, their game soon begins to backfire. A bet with a classmate that nicknames don’t stick unless they fit has unpredicted results.
45. Steel Tapp by Ridley Pearson – 14 year old Steve “Steel” Trapp sets off with his mom and their dog, Cairo on a 2 day Amtrak journey to compete in the National Science Competition in Washington, DC. Steel is both blessed and cursed with a remarkable photographic memory. Just one look and whatever he sees is imprinted for keeps. Trying to be a Good Samaritan on the train, he instead becomes embroiled in an ingenious, international plot of kidnapping and bribery that may have links to terrorists.
46. Swindle by Gordon Korman – After a mean collector named Swindle cons him out of his most valuable baseball card, Griffin Bing must put together a band of misfits to break into Swindle’s compound and recapture the card. There are many things standing in their way a menacing guard dog, a high tech security system, a very secret hiding place, and their inability to drive, but Griffin and his team are going to get back what’s rightfully his even if hijinks ensue.
47. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – The epic tale of a young man’s quest to capture a hidden treasure on the open seas.
48. The Underneath by Kathi Appelt & David Small – There is the tale of an abandoned, pregnant calico cat who finds shelter and friendship with the bloodhound, Ranger. He is the abused and neglected pet of Gar Face, a broken jawed recluse who lives in the Texas Bayou, where he fled 25 years previously to escape an abusive father. Finally there is a story of Grandmother Moccasin, a shape shifting water snake that has lain dormant in a jar for a thousand years, buried beneath a loblolly pine tree. The threads are bought together when Puck, one of the newborn kittens, breaks the rule of straying from the safety of The Underneath, the sliver of space beneath Gar Face’s porch where Ranger is chained and the cats live.
49. The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby – In a New York City of the future, almost everyone can fly except for lead foots like 12 year old Gurl, and Orphan at the Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless. When she sneaks out one night to rummage for food, she discovers that she can make herself invisible. When Mrs. Terwiliger, the matron who runs the institution, finds out about Gurls ability, she blackmails her into stealing clothing and perfumes and into fixing a $20,000 plastic surgeon bill by hacking into his computer. Bug, a new boy determined to fly, befriends Gurl and the mysterious cat she has found. They run away, only to be caught by notorious gangster Sweet Cheeks Grabowski, who realizes that Gurl is a Wall, a person born every 100 years or so who can become invisible. He, too, has designs on her and will do anything to hang on to her.
50. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry – Two wicked parents cannot wait to rid themselves of their four precocious children and vice versa versa and so on.