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Warning: So yeah, this book has been known to be banned in schools because of its language. If you aren't okay with reading racial slurs and all, this probably isn't the book for you. Age Group: Young Adult Genre: Historic Fiction Publishing Date: JB Lippincott & Co. July 11th, 1960 Summary : The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appea...

Age Group: Middle Grade Genre: Realistic (ish) Fiction Publishing Date: January 27th 2015 by Scholastic Press Summary:  In all the ways that matter, Mark is a normal kid. He's got a dog named Beau and a best friend, Jessie. He likes to take photos and write haiku poems in his notebook. He dreams of climbing a mountain one day. But in one important way, Mark is not like other kids at all. Mark is sick. The kind of sick that means hospitals. And treatments. The kind of sick some people never get better from. So Mark runs away. He leaves home with his camera, his notebook, his dog, and a plan to reach the top of Mount Rainier--even if it's the last thing he ever does. The Honest Truth is a rare and extraordinary novel about big questions, small moments, and the incredible journey of the human spirit. What I Liked:  Like the last book I just recently covered, Full of Beans , even though it was definitely unintentional, for some reason the book had a sort of nostalg...

Age Group: Middle Grade Genre: Historical Fiction Publishing Date: August 30th, 2016 by Random House Books Summary:  Goodreads ~ Newbery Honor Book Turtle in Paradise is beloved by readers, and now they can return to this wonderful world through the eyes of Turtle’s cousin Beans. Grown-ups lie. That’s one truth Beans knows for sure. He and his gang know how to spot a whopper a mile away, because they are the savviest bunch of barefoot conchs (that means “locals”) in all of Key West. Not that Beans really minds; it’s 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. With no jobs on the island, and no money anywhere, who can really blame the grown-ups for telling a few tales? Besides, Beans isn’t anyone’s fool. In fact, he has plans. Big plans. And the consequences might surprise even Beans himself. Praise: “As a storyteller, Holm is superb.”— School Library Journal “Holm impressively wraps pathos with comedy.”— Booklist “Anyone interested in learning to write crowd-pleasing...