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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...

Age Group: Middle Grade Genre: Sports Fiction/ Mystery Publishing Date: September 29th, 2015 by HarperCollins Summary:   From   New York Times   bestselling author and former NFL player Tim Green comes a riveting new stand -alone football novel. When Ryan's estranged father unexpectedly dies, Ryan learns that he has inherited the Dallas Cowboys. With his new role as owner of this NFL team, Ryan has high hopes that he can be more than just a middle-school misfit. Maybe he can even get off the bench and into the starting lineup of his own football team. With the help of his friends Jackson and Izzy, Ryan takes advantage of his newfound stardom. He convinces his coach to use a tricky passing offense that plays to Ryan's strengths. But just when things are looking up, Ryan's nasty stepmother makes a legal play to make her own son the Cowboys' kid owner. With drama heating up both on and off the field, Ryan quickly realizes he may lose much more than just the Dallas...

Age Group: Middle Grade Genre: Realistic Fiction/Comedy Publishing Date: March 6th, 2017 by Jimmy Patterson Summary:  Goodreads~  In the newest installment of James Patterson's bestselling Middle School series, everyone's favorite underdog hero Rafe Khatchadorian is headed to the dangerous wilds of Australia!  Rafe isn't exactly considered a winner in Hills Village Middle School to say the least, but  everything's  about to change: he's won a school-wide art competition, and the fabulous prize is getting to jet-set off to Australia for a whirlwind adventure! But Rafe soon finds that living in the Land Down Under is harder than he could've ever imagined--his host-siblings are anything but welcoming, the burning temperatures are torturous, and poisonous critters are ready to sting or eat him at every step. So with the help of some new misfit friends, Rafe sets out to show everyone what he does best: create utter mayhem!  What I Liked:  Out of all the...

Age Group: Middle Grade Genre: Realistic Fiction Publishing Date: September 15th, 2006 by Disney Hyperion Summary:   Goodreads ~  Whisper Nelson hates sports--all sports--with a passion! So when by a fluke she wins a chance to kick a goal past a professional soccer star for a million-dollar prize, she is torn. Should she try it and risk humiliation, or just forget the whole thing and save what dignity she has left? But the Million Dollar Kick might be Whisper's big chance not only to win a million dollars, but to regain confidence in herself. What I Liked:  First off, what I liked about this book is that Dan Gutman managed to pack all the good stuff for a middle grade novel into around a hundred pages. So I think that even for those who don't like to read at all, not only is it a good book, it's also a good book that will take around thirty minutes to an hour to complete. To elaborate on the "good stuff", I do like the whole build up to the kick. It w...

Age Group: All Ages Genre: Non Fiction Publishing Date: August 1st 2011 by Scholastic Paperbacks Summary:  Goodreads ~ "Discover all of the amazing things that can happen around the world in just one day! You already know all of the amazing things that can happen in just one minute on Earth, so think what could happen in a whole day! Your taste bud cells are replaced at a rate of 50,000 a day, almost 40,000 trees are cut down every day just to make paper bags, and a mayfly lives its entire life in a single day. This book is full of fun facts about space technology, pop culture, food, animals, sports, the human body, and more!" What I Liked:  I think I'd like to compare this book to the fabulous almanac/encyclopedia that National Geographic sent me a month or two ago. This is a book I recently picked up because the title intrigued me and honestly I'm into these sort of weird fact books. And it delivered. It has just a little bit of everything from practically ...