Avi

In an effort to fulfill their dying father's last request, nine-year-old Ben and his brother and sister construct a barn on their land in the Oregon Territory

LEVEL 4. In 1880, Noah's aunt teaches the reluctant nine-year-old how to read as they explore the Colorado prairie together, Noah pushing Aunt Dora in her wheelchair.

Ben is away at school when his father mysteriously falls ill in the spring of 1855. With no adults to help, he and his brother and sister must take over the family farm in Oregon Territory's rugged Willamette Valley. Despite his siblings' doubts, Ben is determined to build the barn his Father had planned, in hope of waking him from his silent, frozen state. But will it be enough?

The Book Without Words appears to be a volume of blank parchment pages. But for a green-eyed reader filled with great desire, it may reveal the forgotten magical arts of making gold and achieving immortality. For generations, its magic has been protected from those who would exploit it. But on a terrible day of death and destruction, the Book Without Words falls into the hands of a desperate boy.

Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle relies on her resourcefulness to survive an 1832 voyage aboard the "Seahawk" commanded by the murderous Jaggery, as she assumes sailor's garb and is accused of murder

Poppy, accompanied by her troublesome son Junior, his skunk friend, and Uncle Ereth the porcupine, responds to a summons to return to her ancestral home, Gray House, to save the mice there from destruction by a bulldozer.

"It's 1951, and twelve-year-old Pete Collison is a regular kid in Brooklyn, New York, who loves Sam Spade detective books and radio crime dramas. But when an FBI agent shows up at Pete's doorstep, accusing Pete's father of being a Communist, Pete is caught in a real-life mystery. Could there really be Commies in Pete's family?"--

Poppy the deer mouse urges her family to move next to a field of corn big enough to feed them all forever, but Mr. Ocax, a terrifying owl, has other ideas.