n Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Gray, young Adam travels the roads of medieval England searching for his missing minstrel father and his stolen dog, Nick. As you join Adam in his travels, you meet the various other travelers he mets - "rich merchants, pilgrims with cockle shells on their hats, farming folk driving pigs to the fair, noblemen with retinue, minstrels and priests, saints and thieves and honest country bodies." Somewhere among these people are the father and the dog he is searching for.
favorite adventure book from the Newbery winners is 21 Balloons by Willian Pene Du Bois. In 1883 Professor William Sherman is tired of teaching arithmetic at a school for boys, so he decides to fly a hot-air balloon across the Pacific Ocean. Three weeks later he is found clinging in the Atlantic Ocean to the wreck of a platform attached to twenty-one balloons. This book is the Professor's amazing story of his travels and his brief stop on a mysterious island with an incredible secret. Unfortunately the name of the island is Krakatoa which is really a volcano and 1883 is the year of its eruption. 
Her First Hundred Years. Both of these books are about dolls made from wood, but they had very different lives. Miss Hickory, by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, is a doll made of twigs and a hickory nut for a head. She lives in a neat little house made of corncobs glued together and placed under a lilac bush. When her neighbor Crow warns her that the coming winter will be a hard one and the two-leggers (humans) are moving to the city, she stamps her foot and refuses to leave her little house. This charming fantasy follows Miss Hickory and her survival that winter along with her friends Crow, Bull Frog, and Ground Hog. Besides the danger from the winter Miss Hickory must also defend her head from animals who want to eat it.
e doll in Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field, is a tiny doll carved of a
sh-wood from Ireland. She tells her own story of all the people and creatures who owned her or took care of her. While Hitty is a lady and always tries to be proper, I see many connections to a modern book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo. Both dolls go on sailing journeys and have many adventures. If you have already enjoyed reading about Edward Tulane, take a look at Hitty's story.
about Edward Tulane brings me to another book by Kate DiCamillo that won the Newbery - The Tale of Despereaux. This fantasy follows the adventures of a mouse who is in love with a princess. When his princess is kidnapped, Despereaux makes it his quest to save her. There are side stories about a servant girl who wants to be a princess and a rat's longing for soup which has been banned when the queen died because a rat fell in her soup. Humor and fairy tale blend in this story of love.
old or Silver. The Newbery Award - gold for winner and silver for runners-up - is presented to living authors each year for books that show excellence and uniqueness in their stories and craftmanship.
imagine how I missed them. Here are a couple of examples. The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw is a mystery that takes place in ancient Egypt (mystery and historical -- my favorite combination). Ranofer, a young slave boy, finds a golden goblet that was obviously stolen from one of the great tombs in the City of the Dead. He must keep the goblet hidden until he can prove who really stole it or he will be blamed and killed.
which town will be the best and win the Gammage Cup. The town of Slipper-on-the-Water decides to redecorate all of the houses in the same color scheme to impress the judges. When five people refuse to follow this idea, they are banished from the town to the mountains beyond. While the story could end here, it doesn't. The people banished to the mountains are the first to see danger coming their way and must decide if they should warn the town that threw them out.
rtimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud - In book one, The Amulet of Samarkand, we first meet Bartimaeus, a five-thousand-year-old djinni, who is called to our world by Nathaniel, a young boy apprenticed to a rather pathetic magician. We quickly learn that Nathaniel is much more powerful than his master, powerful enough to summon Bartimaeus and set him the task of obtaining the Amulet of Samarkand from the possession of Simon Lovelace, an incredibly powerful and ruthless magician. Several things set this story apart from other fantasies. First the narration of the story alternates between Nathaniel and Bartimaeus so we see the story from the point-of-view of an oft-timed scared, but powerful apprentice and a powerful but rude djinni. Then the story takes place in modern-day London, England, but a very different London from the one we would expect. This London, England, and the British Empire are secretly run by magicians who have high positions in the government. Finally Bartimaeus often tells funny stories and makes rude comments about his life and the people around him, but in the footnotes! So don't skip them as you read along. The adventures of young magician and djinni continue in The Golem's Eye and the series ends in Ptolemy's Gate.
en of the Lamp, by P.B. Kerr - In the first book of this series, The Akhenaten Adventure, we meet the twins John and Philippa Gaunt as they discover that they are descended from a long line of djinn. All of a sudden they have the power to grant wishes, travel to extraordinary places, and make people and objects disappear. While their parents preferred the twins not knowing about their heritage, their eccentric and fun-loving Uncle Nimrod is very willing to be their guide and teacher as they learn to control their powers. This first adventure takes the twins and their uncle to Egypt where they have to find the ancient, dead pharoah Akhenaten and release the seventy lost djinn he is holding to restore the balance betwwen good and evil in the world. The adventure moves at breakneck speed from the deserts of Egypt to the British Museum in London with thrills and laughs all along the way. The twin's adventures continue in The Blue Djinn of Babylon and The Cobra King of Katmandu. What may have started out as a trilogy now boasts and fourth book The Day of the Djinn Warriors. I see a pattern in the titles that may indicated many books are planned for the future.
Do you like a story that keeps you guessing? Then you need to take a look at the books by Margaret Peterson Haddix. You may already be familiar with the Shadow Children series that begins with Among the Hidden. The suspense in that book was always wondering if Luke would get caught by the Population Police as a third child. This science fiction story that takes place in the near future deals with a society with dwindling resources so families are only allowed to have two children. Luke is a third child and is considered illegal. This book which was a Rebecca Caudill nominee lead to six sequels: Among the Imposters, Among the Betrayed, Among the Barons, Among the Brave, Among the Enemy, and Among the Free. I enjoyed the books where Luke was a character better than those where he did not appear, but all of these books kept that element of suspense wondering whether Luke or his friends would be found out. In the final book when the Population Police are overthrown, there is the suspense of wondering what kind of society will take the place of the Shadow Children one. 
nee, this book looked like it took place in the 1840s. However it was a science experiment where families of the 1990s lived in a protected community made to look like the 1840s. A major disagreement arose when a diphtheria epidemic breaks out and the scientists running the project will not allow 1990's medicine be used to stop the epidemic. Only young Jessie can save the people of the experiment by escaping and finding the necessary medicine in the world of the 1990s that she never knew existed.
chool-year blog What's New on the Book Shelves I wrote about 2 other Haddix books - Double Identity and The House on the Gulf - both of which will keep you guessing about what is really going on. Two other Haddix books in the IMC collection are
Just Ella, a twist on the Cinderella story, and Take-offs and Landings, about two children reconnecting with their mother while flying around the country on a two-week speaking tour. In the fall you can look forward to Escape from Memory, about a girl who reveals another life under hypnosis, as one of our new books. For a complete list of books by Margaret Peterson Haddix, consult Novelist on the IMC webpage. If you have forgotten the ID and password, just e-mail me and I'll send it to you.
Hi, Summer Readers! I hope you are enjoying this lovely cool weather by taking some time to read. This week I would like to highlight one of my favorite authors for action and adventure - Will Hobbs. I don't remember now which book was the first one I read by Hobbs, but I can tell you that when I read Downriver, I was hooked! Downriver is the story of a group of teenagers who have ditched an outdoor education program to start their own adventure white-water rafting down the heart of the Grand Canyon. As I read this book I could almost feel the water spraying in my face as the two-boat group navigates the rapids. Of course with no adult or experienced guide, everything that could go wrong does for this group. Plus the fact that there are helicopters out looking for them just seems to add to the excitement. Once I read Downriver, I couldn't wait for the sequel River Thunder.
If you have already read Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief or any of the books in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, you may be ready to enter the incredible world of Greek mythology. Riordan's series unites mythology with twenty-first century characters. But reading the original myths is as adventure-packed as the Percy Jackson adventures. It is best to start with the stories of the gods - Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis, Hera, Hermes. Each god or goddess has his or her own story of powers, symbols, and rivalries. Athena and Aphrodite have very unusual birth stories. You won't believe them! Then there are the stories of the heroes like Heracles, Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts, and, of course, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus in the Trojan War. All the blood and gore you could want!
