First published in 1967, this favorite is now back in print. Twelve-year-old George Stable wants to be a rock star someday, but he gets horrible stage fright unless he has his teddy bear with him. Hiding his teddy in his guitar seems like a good idea, until George discovers someone has hidden sto...
Nick is an orphan who has grown up in his uncle Jack's care on the wild, wooded coast of New England. His parents died when he was a baby during a terrible influenza epidemic that swept the region not long after World War I. Nick first realizes something is wrong when he notices he no longer has ...
When Billy hears that gold is hidden in the mountains, he escapes from the orphanage, taking Possum with him. The two runaways embark on a journey through the Western frontier in search of the gold.
I wish it was possible to give less than one star, or even negative stars. This book was just that bad. For one thing, the title? I mean, seriously? It gives away what happens in the book. I am not even going to mark this post for spoilers because the title already does that for you. I have never...
When her spendthrift father goes into debt after buying a sheep and the inner workings of a clock, fifteen-year-old Annie Steele is sent to work in the town's new wool mill to help support her family. Her job is full of risk -- especially after she and her friend Robert discover that the mill's c...
We’ve probably each read several dozen books addressing slavery in America at the time of the War Between the States. There are just gobs of them – many skewed in perspective, some accurate – but they’re very common. I started Jump Ship to Freedom thinking it would be the same formula – abused sl...
Playing the cornet is the first thing that twelve-year-old Paulie Horvath has taken seriously, but his obsession with becoming a jazz musician leads him into conflict with his parents and into the tough underworld of Chicago in the 1920s.
An odd book. James Lincoln Collier is particularly gifted at first-person narratives of teenagers that feel very real. But this book feels a bit flat. Fergy has been traveling the country with his parents and sister; his father is a thoroughly unlikeable grifter and egomaniac. His mother inexplic...
After being discovered during a six-second spot on television, George Stable is now being groomed into the hot new singing sensation, "The Boy Next Door." Unfortunately, his dad has other plans for him for the summer, so George must weave a wacky web of deception - that might just get him killed!...
Basket’s CHAPTER 5 ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON we were allowed out from the end of dinner until five o’clock to see the sights of London. It gave us plenty of time to call Leslie’s father. London isn’t like New York or Chicago or, I guess, any other American cities, although I haven’t been to them. It’s ...
I wished I’d told Uncle Ned that the hours for the tutoring school were earlier, but if I’d done that the meeting would have gone on all day, and Uncle Ned would have wanted to have known why I was late for dinner. Not that I was in any rush to get back to sit around admiring Sinclair’s perfectne...