Strong Lead and Ending from Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

Lead:

We called him Old Yeller. The name had a sort of double meaning. One part meant that his short hair was a dingy yellow, a color that we called "yeller" in those days. The other meant that when he opened his head, the sound he let out came closer to being a yell than a bark.
I remember like yesterday how he strayed in out of nowhere to our log cabin on Birdsong Creek. He made me so mad a first that I wanted to kill him. Then, later, when I had to kill him, it was like having to shoot some of my own folks. That's how much I'd come to think of the big yeller dog.

Closing:

When finally I couldn't laugh and cry another bit, I rode on up to the lot and turned my horse in. Tomorrow, I thought, I'll take Arliss and that pup out for a squirrel hunt. The pup was still mighty little. But the way I figured it, if he was big enough to act like Old Yeller, he was big enough to start learning to earn his keep.

Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep

by Liz Kessler

Sunny golden rays beamed into the room from the skylights all along the ceiling.

--suggested by Camila E. (5th Grade)

Wood Song by Gary Paulsen

Great lead:
I understood almost nothing about the woods until it was nearly too late.
Great ending:
Cookie, the leader, stopped before the arch and I had to drag her beneath it to finish--she was afraid of the crowd of people. I turned and could not keep from crying as I hugged my wife and son and then the dogs, starting from front to back, hugging each dog until two mushers took them away to put them on beds and I turned to the mayor of Nome who was there to greet me and said the one thing I never thought I would ever say.
"We'll be back to run it again."
And I knew that it was true.

Peter's Place by Sally Grindley

Beautifully written. Great for sentence fluency!

All along the wind-torn beaches, all the way up the ravaged cliff face, this land's end was full of life.
Guillemots, shags, kittiwakes, eider ducks, and long-tailed ducks screeched and squawked and gossiped to one another while in the turbulent ocean below, seals and otters bobbed and weaved and played and feasted on the sea's riches.
A passing oil tanker drew too close. Too close for the comfort of the playful seals; too close for the comfort of the cooing eiders; too close to miss the rocks that lay just below the rough tide. Too close to Peter's place.

Frindle by Andrew Clements

I am a slow-comer to this book, and I wish I'd added it to my read-aloud repetoire years ago!

Great Opening: If you asked the kids and the teachers at Lincoln Elementary School to make three lists--all the really bad kids, all the really smart kids, and all the really good kids--Nick Allen would not be on any of them. Nick deserved a list of all his own, and everyone knew it.

Nick was an expert at asking the delaying question--also known as the teacher-stopper, or the guaranteed-time-waster.

Mrs. Granger, champion of the forces of order and authority, is battling hundreds of young frindle-fighters.

Eyes of the Emporer by Graham Salisbury

Fascinating book about a part of WWII history I'd never heard of before.

Out to sea, the ocean breathed slow and soft, a body sleeping under silk.
Inland, fresh white clouds grew up out of the mountaintops.
He stopped and squinted at me, shadows from the tree spattered all over him.
Basic training was like swimming with barracudas--you were always on edge; somebody screaming in your face hour after hour, day after day.

How the Light Gets In

Although I didn't enjoy the ending, I loved the character development and the voice.

The Mercedes smells as though it has just come out of its plastic packet.
But within moments of closing my eyes, my brain springs open, like a flick-knife.
Flo is an example of a smudge; a dull, untidy mind containing bad copies of original thoughts.