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Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award

Master List 2008 – 2009

 

For a snazzy, printable color brochure of the new list, click HERE.

These books, to be read during the 2008-2009 school year, comprise the master list for the award to be made in 2009. Voting forms will be made available to all Vermont schools and public libraries in spring, 2009, so children can vote for their favorite book. The master list titles have been selected to satisfy the reading interests of children in grades 4-8. Please note grade level before ordering the books.  The grades listed should be regarded more as maturity levels than reading levels.

 

 

MASTERLIST OF ANNOTATIONS

 

 

Applegate, Katherine.  Home of the Brave.  $16.95. 978-0-3123-6765-7. Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.

 

Avi. The Traitors’ Gate. $17.99. 978-0-689-85335-7. When his father is arrested as a debtor in 1849 London, fourteen-year-old John Huffman must take on unexpected responsibilities, from asking a distant relative for help to determining why people are spying on him and his family.

 

Babbitt, Natalie. Jack Plank Tells Tales. $15.95. 978-0-545-00496-1. Pirate Jack Plank is unable to get a job and he spends his evenings telling stories to the other boarders at Mrs. DeFresno boarding house.

 

Barakat, Ibtisam. Tasting the Sky. $16.00. 978-0-3743-5733-7. A memoir of a Palestinian woman's childhood experiences during the Six-Day War and its aftermath.

 

Burns, Loree Griffin. Tracking Trash. $18.00. 978-0-618-58131-3. Describes the work of a man who tracks trash as it travels great distances by way of ocean currents.

 

Clements, Andrew. No Talking. $15.99. 978-1-4169-0983-5. The noisy fifth-grade boys of Laketon Elementary School challenge the equally loud fifth-grade girls to a “no talking” contest.

 

Curtis, Christopher Paul. Elijah of Buxton. $16.99. 978-0-439-02344-3. In 1860, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family’s freedom.

 

Freedman, Russell. Who Was First?. $19.00. 978-0-6186-6391-0. Examines the debate over who really discovered America, looking at Columbus, the Vikings, the Chinese and the native peoples who came many thousands of years earlier.

 

Grandits, John. Blue Lipstick. $5.95. 978-0-6188-5132-4 (pap.); $15.00. 978-0-618-56860-4.
A teenaged girl named Jessie voices typical and not so typical teenage concerns in this unique, hilarious collection of concrete poems.

 

Haas, Jessie. Chase. $17.89. 978-0-06-112851-6 (PLB). 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.

 

Hale, Shannon. Book of a Thousand Days. $17.95. 978-1-59990-051-3. Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren’s years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both Dashti and Saren must hide their identities as they work as kitchen maids.

 

Hill, Kirkpatrick. Do Not Pass Go. $15.99. 978-1-4169-1400-6. When Deet’s father is jailed for using drugs, Deet learns that prison is not what he expected, nor are other people necessarily the way he thought they were.

 

Holm, Jennifer. Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf. $12.99. 978-0-689-85281-7.
Ginny’s first year of middle school is told through “stuff”: IMs, notes, appointment cards, cartoons and report cards.

 

Hulme, John & Michael Wexler. The Seems: the Glitch in Sleep. $16.95. 978-1-59990-129-9. When twelve-year-old Becker Drane is recruited by The Seems, a parallel universe that runs everything in The World, he must fix a disastrous glitch in the Department of Sleep that threatens the ability of everyone to ever fall asleep again.

 

Jonell, Lynne. Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat. $17.95. 978-0-8050-8150-3.
When Emmy discovers that she and her formerly loving parents are being drugged by their evil nanny, who has access to rodent potions that can change people in frightening ways, she and some new friends must try everything possible to return things to normal.

 

Kadohata, Cynthia. Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam. $16.99. 978-1-4169-0637-7.
A young soldier in Vietnam bonds with his German Shepherd whom he trains to sniff out booby traps.

 

Kinney, Jeff. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. $12.95. 978-0-8109-9313-6. Greg records his 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.

 

Korman, Gordon. Schooled. $15.99. 978-0-7868-5692-3. Home schooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, tasted a pizza, or even heard of a wedgie. But when his grandmother lands in the hospital, Cap is forced to move in with a social worker and attend the local middle school. While Cap knows a lot about tie-dyeing and Zen Buddhism, no education could prepare him for the politics of public school.

 

Rex, Adam. The True Meaning of Smekday. $16.99. 978-0-7868-4900-0. When her mother is abducted by aliens on Christmas Eve (or "Smekday" Eve since the Boov invasion), 11 year-old Tip hops in the family car and heads south to find her and meets an alien Boov mechanic who agrees to help her and save the planet from disaster.

 

Rumford, James. Beowulf. $17.00. 978-0-618-75637-7. An 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.

 

Schlitz, Laura Amy. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!. $19.99. 978-0-7636-1578-9. A collection of short one-person plays featuring characters between ten and fifteen years old who live in or near a thirteenth-century English manor.

 

Schmidt, Gary. The Wednesday Wars. $16.00. 978-0-6187-2783-3. During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker’s classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

 

Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. $22.99. 978-0-439-81378-5. When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.

 

Smith, Roland. Elephant Run. $15.99. 978-1-4231-0402-5. Nick endures servitude, beatings, and more after his British father’s plantation in Burma is invaded by the Japanese in 1941, and when his father and others are taken prisoner and Nick is stranded with his friend Mya, they plan a daring escape on elephants, risking their lives to save Nick’s father and Mya’s brother from a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

 

Sturm, James & Rich Tommaso. Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow. $16.99. 978-0-7868-3900-1. A graphic novel telling of how Satchel Paige, one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived, inspired other African Americans to believe they could make a difference.

 

Thomson, Sarah L. Dragon’s Egg. $16.99. 978-0-0612-8848-7. Mella, a young girl trained as a dragon keeper, learns that the legends of old are true when she is entrusted with carrying a dragon’s egg to the fabled Hatching Grounds, a dangerous journey on which she is assisted by a knight’s squire.

 

Urban, Linda. A Crooked Kind of Perfect. $16.00. 978-0-15-206007-7. Ten-year-old Zoe Elias, who longs to play the piano but must resign herself to learning the organ, instead, finds that her musicianship has a positive impact on her workaholic mother, her jittery father, and her school social life.

 

Varon, Sara. Robot Dreams. $16.95. 978-1-59643-108-9. A dog and a robot search for friendship in this wordless graphic novel.

 

Wells, Rosemary. Red Moon at Sharpsburg. $16.99. 978-0-6700-3638-7. As the Civil War breaks out, India, a young Southern girl, summons her sharp intelligence and the courage she didn’t know she had to survive the war that threatens to destroy her family, her Virginia home, and the only life she has ever known.

 

White, Ruth. Way Down Deep. $16.00. 978-0-3743-8251-3. In the West Virginia town of Way Down Deep in the 1950s, a foundling called Ruby June is happily living with Miss Arbutus at the local boarding house when suddenly, after the arrival of a family of outsiders, the mystery of Ruby’s past begins to unravel.

 

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Committee Members 2008-2009