Copper Sun by Sharon Draper

A very well-done story of a young girl taken from her home in Africa by treachery, the terrible things that were done to her, and her escape to a life of freedom in Fort Mose outside of St. Augustine, Florida. A bit too graphic for upper elementary.

We done fell out the trouble tree and hit every branch on the way down!

Amari glanced toward the west and watched the sun set. It glowed a bright metallic copper--the same sun that set each evening upon her homeland. She knew that she had found a home once more. [ending]

Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori

She sat down after her silent speech feeling as though she was filled with the bright ble and green brushstrokes on Monet's canvas.

The bonfire was a ritual of cleansing, of putting things behind and moving on into the new year.

Its design, showing a cluster of irises, was made up of various shades of blue -- some of them closer to green, others closer to purple.

pictures of hollis woods by Patricia Reilly Giff

A lace curtain of snow blew across the porch.

I liked the feeling of hacking and slashing and getting things done.

It was wonderful, the first place the sun hit every day, so that squares of light turned the room to lemon gold.

I'd drawn pages of animal tracks for him, raccoon and deer, rabbit and possum . . . and birds, even a loon that had come out of the water to sun itself on a rock.

After I ate I looked at the tree figure Josie was doing of me: a long piece of wood, spaces drilled in the sides where the arms would be, a face beginning to take shape, a mouth begun, a small, pointed nose, and a tiny cut on the forehead.

Dancing at the Odinochka by Kirkpatrick Hill

Mama insisted they must carve the spear points from caribou bone because it was hutlaanee to use any metal at all when you were fishing.

The willow leaves had a silvery side and a green side, so that the leaves flashed in the breeze, now silver, now green.

Yuri had everyone line up in the dirt in front of the store, and then he patiently taught them what to do when he called out the instructions: Promenade, and allemande left, allemand right, and do-si-do and swing your partner.

"Curiosity makes a good scientist," he said, and Erinia was pleased because no one before had ever thought curiosity was a good thing.

the ANYBODIES by N.E. Bode

This YA novel - totally suitable for the younger crowd - has me in stitches. Don't miss this read. It is worth reading for the voice alone.

Fern Drudger knew that her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Drudger, were dull.

Ridiculously dull.

Incredibly tragically dull.

Fern tried to believe the sensible Drudgers. She tried. But there was some part of Fern's mind that was glowing, singing, rowdy, brassy as a m,arching band with characters so big and cartoonish they seemed to be careening down a parade route like giant helium balloons.

(Here you should take a sip of water or stretch or look around you to make sure that everything is intact. Hopefully the house isn't on fire or being invaded by a horde of some sort. Sometimes I've gotten caught up in a book, and I would have appreciated a quick reminder from the author concerning the outside world; and I swore that if I ever wrote a book, I would include one. So, here it is. Is everything in order? Okay then. Go on.)

The Bone's car was old, rusted out. It growled cancerously. It pitched thick balls of gray smoke out of its tailpipe. The Bone seemed to be volleying more than steering. He'd turn the wheel, and eventually the car would decide to go in that general direction. Every once in a whie one of the wipers would bump along the windshield, stall, then bump back again. One of the backseat doors was tied shut with rope that was attached to the driver's headrest. The ceiling lining, which had been originally set at some distant and probably now-abandoned factory, had come unglued and hung like the stretched-out underbelly of an ominous cloud; Fern's mind fluttered momentarily back to the man from the cencus bureau with the misty gray hand.

There was a sign dug into the dirt: BOARDERS WELCOME. MUST BE TIDY AND WELL-READ.

Has it ever happened to you that you had no desire to do something until someone told you not to? Don't poke your finger into the cake! your mother tells you, and although it hadn't dawned on your to poke your finger into the cake, you suddenly want to do it, desperately.

Sometimes you need to dig down deep, to rely on your own resources. This is a very American thing, self-reliance. Our forefathers and our foremothers, and, for that matter, our foreaunts and foreuncles, would say that self-reliance is a cornerstone of something or other.

Travel Team by Mike Lupica

A delightful, dare I say heart-warming, YA sports novel with a short but quick protagonist, a mom who quotes old-school song lyrics, and a dad, well - you'll just have to meet him.

HE KNEW HE WAS SMALL.

He just didn't think he was small.

Big difference.

Danny Walker, even at twelve, was smart enough to know this about girls: They were smarter than boys already. They were smarter about all the important stuff in life that didn't include sports, and would stay smarter from now on, which meant that he and the rest of the boys would be playing catch-up, trying to come from behind, the rest of the way.

Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford

I recently reread this YA classic and enjoyed the voice as much now as I did when I was a Young Adult! This was published in 1968, so I must have read it when it just came out.

This was just the kind of talk to make me squirm, and he knew it, so I just sat there for a while and squirmed, and he puffed on the Havana and grinned. He took it out of his mouth, and looked at the tip, and then shot a left at me that caught me on the shoulder and stung down to my kneecaps. -- p.22

At the top, a thousand feet or so higher, the hot, dry desert air vanished, to be replaced by air with a completely different set of qualities; mountain air, cool, fresh and joyous to breathe, as clean in its own way as a breeze from the Gulf. -- p. 29

That's the best way to get through a war: Don't be big and strong, be hard to find. -- p. 34

To my left, burning out of the sea of pink and tan faces, was the meanest-looking human pan I'd ever seen, a brown flat face with hot black eyes, a mouth so thin and lipless and straight that it seemed like the slot in a piggy bank. -- p. 49

"It's pretty up here, isn't it?" I said, making some of the brilliant drawing-room repartee for which I was famous on three continents. -- p. 89

"Steenie, " Marcia said, "you lie better and more often than anybody I know. I don't think you'll ever make it to medical school. You're going to be a career grocery-bagger at Safeway, and get a testimonial dinner after forty years of putting the lettuce and the eggs at the botton of the sack with the cans on top." --p. 114

A rattly blue bus makes a daily circle of the little mountain towns in Cabezón County, from Sagrado to the valley at Yunque, and then up through the hills -- San Esteban, Santa María, Villa Galicia, Ojo Amargo, Río Venado, Río Conejo, Amorcita, and, at the end of the route, nearly 11,000 feet high, La Cima. -- p. 137