Battle of the Books
Book List 2013-2014
Jim Ottaviani returns with an actionpacked account of the three
greatest primatologists of the last
century: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and
Biruté Galdikas. These three groundbreaking researchers were all students
of the great Louis Leakey, and each
made profound contributions to
primatology—and to our own
understanding of ourselves.
Tackling Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas in
turn, and covering the highlights of their
respective careers, Primates is an
accessible, entertaining, and informative
look at the field of primatology and at
the lives of three of the most
remarkable women scientists of the
twentieth century. Thanks to the
charming and inviting illustrations by
Maris Wicks, this is a nonfiction graphic
novel with broad appeal.
The community of Justicia may
seem like Anywhere, USA, but it’s
home to an abundance of
superheroes—or “Supers” as they
are known locally—and Highview
Middle School has a secret training
class for superhero sidekicks.
Andrew “Drew” Bean, one of the six
sidekicks-in-training, is not only
saddled with the usual middleschool angst but a problematic
Super as well. With most of the
Supers absent, a crime wave
commences and a supervillain
threatens.
Sugar Mae Cole is trying to keep it
together, but life is falling apart for her and
her mother--with no help from Sugar's
unreliable, mostly-absent father, who has a
gambling addiction. Sugar's mother is
sweet, but starts to lose it when she and
Sugar are evicted. Pretty soon the two of
them are in Chicago, homeless.
Sugar has a lovely if slightly unusual
support system. Even after she leaves
town, her English teacher Mr. Bennett is
there for her. "E-mail me," he says, and
eventually she does. Then Sugar finds a
frightened puppy and manages to keep it
even when she gets dropped into the
foster care system.
At 12 years old, lifelong friends Zach, Poppy,
and Alice are ferociously clinging to their
childhoods. Using old Barbies, pirate action
figures, dolls from Good Will, and their
imaginations, they have created an exciting
world of characters in an elaborate game.
Figuring heavily in their plotline is the
Queen, an antique doll of bone china that
belongs to Poppy's mother and is strictly
off-limits to the kids. She's also incredibly
creepy. When Zach's dad throws away his
action figures, the boy is so devastated that
he ends the game abruptly, leaving the girls
hurt and confused. Shortly thereafter,
Poppy reveals that the Queen is made of
the bones of a dead girl named Eleanor, and
she has promised Poppy that she will make
their lives miserable if they don't journey to
Ohio, find her grave, and bury her properly.
After much persuading, Zach and Alice
agree to the journey.
For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the
chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to
escape the life laid out for them since
birth. To be swept up in a world of
glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To
live in a palace and compete for the heart
of gorgeous Prince Maxon.
But for America Singer, being Selected is a
nightmare. It means turning her back on
her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste
below her. Leaving her home to enter a
fierce competition for a crown she doesn't
want. Living in a palace that is constantly
threatened by violent rebel attacks.
Then America meets Prince Maxon.
Gradually, she starts to question all the
plans she's made for herself—and realizes
that the life she's always dreamed of may
not compare to a future she never
imagined.
On the winter day Little Hawk is sent into the
woods alone, he can take only a bow and
arrows, his handcrafted tomahawk, and the
amazing metal knife his father traded for
with the new white settlers. If Little Hawk
survives three moons by himself, he will be a
man.
John Wakely is only ten when his father dies,
but he has already experienced the warmth
and friendship of the nearby tribes. Yet his
fellow colonists aren’t as accepting of the
native people. When he is apprenticed to a
barrel-maker, John sees how quickly the
relationships between settlers and natives
are deteriorating. His friendship with Little
Hawk will put both boys in grave danger.
Anikwa and James, twelve years old in
1812, spend their days fishing, trapping,
and exploring together in the forests of
the Indiana Territory. To Anikwa and his
family, members of the Miami tribe, this
land has been home for centuries. As
traders, James’s family has ties to the
Miami community as well as to the
American soldiers in the fort. Now
tensions are rising—the British and
American armies prepare to meet at Fort
Wayne for a crucial battle, and Native
Americans from surrounding tribes
gather in Kekionga to protect their
homeland. After trading stops and
precious commodities, like salt, are
withheld, the fort comes under siege,
and war ravages the land. James and
Anikwa, like everyone around them,
must decide where their deepest
loyalties lie. Can their families—and their
friendship—survive?
Four decades of peace have done little to
ease the mistrust between humans and
dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding
themselves into human shape, dragons
attend court as ambassadors, and lend their
rational, mathematical minds to universities
as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's
anniversary draws near, however, tensions
are high.
Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both
sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins
the court just as a member of the royal
family is murdered—in suspiciously
draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into
the investigation, partnering with the captain
of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously
perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they
begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to
destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to
protect her own secret, the secret behind her
musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery
could mean her very life.
You wouldn’t expect Nate and Charlie to
be friends. Charlie’s the laid-back
captain of the basketball team, and Nate
is the neurotic, scheming president of
the robotics club. But they are friends,
however unlikely—until Nate declares
war on the cheerleaders. At stake is
funding that will either cover a robotics
competition or new cheerleading
uniforms—but not both.
It's only going to get worse: after both
parties are stripped of their funding on
grounds of abominable misbehavior,
Nate enrolls the club's robot in a
battlebot competition in a desperate bid
for prize money. Bad sportsmanship?
Sure. Chainsaws? Why not. Running
away from home on Thanksgiving to
illicitly enter a televised robot death
match? Of course!
Ever since Jack can remember, his mom has
been unpredictable, sometimes loving and
fun, other times caught in a whirlwind of
energy and "spinning" wildly until it’s over.
But Jack never thought his mom would take
off during the night and leave him at a
campground in Acadia National Park, with
no way to reach her and barely enough
money for food.
Any other kid would report his mom gone,
but Jack knows by now that he needs to
figure things out for himself - starting with
how to get from the backwoods of Maine
to his home in Boston before DSS catches
on. With nothing but a small toy elephant
to keep him company, Jack begins the long
journey south, a journey that will test his
wits and his loyalties - and his trust that he
may be part of a larger herd after all.
Ben and Maggie have met, fallen in love,
and died together countless times. Over the
course of two pivotal day--both the best
and worst of their lives--they struggle again
and again to resist the pull of fate and the
force of time itself. With each failure, they
return to the beginning of their end, a wild
road trip that brings them to the scene of
their own murders and into the hands of
the man who is destined to kill them.
As time circles back on itself, events
become more deeply ingrained, more
inescapable for the two kids trapped inside
the loop. The closer they come to breaking
out, the tighter fate's clutches seem to grip
them. They devise a desperate plan to
break free and survive the days ahead, but
what if Ben and Maggie's only shot at not
dying is surviving apart?
Victoria hates nonsense. There is no need for
it when your life is perfect. The only smudge
on her pristine life is her best friend
Lawrence. He is a disaster—lazy and dreamy,
shirt always untucked, obsessed with his silly
piano. Victoria often wonders why she ever
bothered being his friend. (Lawrence does,
too.)
But then Lawrence goes missing. And he’s
not the only one. Victoria soon discovers that
The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls is not
what it appears to be. Kids go in but come
out…different. Or they don’t come out at all.
If anyone can sort this out, it’s Victoria—even
if it means getting a little messy.
As twelve-year-old Marlee starts middle
school in 1958 Little Rock, it feels like
her whole world is falling apart. Until
she meets Liz, the new girl at school. Liz
is everything Marlee wishes she could
be: she's brave, brash and always knows
the right thing to say. But when Liz
leaves school without even a good-bye,
the rumor is that Liz was caught passing
for white. Marlee decides that doesn't
matter. She just wants her friend back.
And to stay friends, Marlee and Liz are
even willing to take on segregation and
the dangers their friendship could bring
to both their families.
In a land without magic, where the king rules
with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned
to the castle. She comes not to kill the king,
but to win her freedom. If she defeats
twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in
a competition, she is released from prison to
serve as the king's champion. Her name is
Celaena Sardothien.
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The
Captain of the Guard will protect her. But
something evil dwells in the castle of glass-and it's there to kill. When her competitors
start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for
freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a
desperate quest to root out the evil before it
destroys her world.
Sixteen heirs who are mysteriously chosen to
live in the Sunset Towers apartment building
on the shore of Lake Michigan, somewhere in
Milwaukee, come together to hear the will of
the self-made millionaire, Samuel W.
Westing. The will takes the form of a puzzle,
dividing the sixteen heirs into eight pairs,
giving each pair a different set of clues which
consist of almost all of the lyrics from
"America The Beautiful", and challenging
them to solve the mystery of who murdered
Sam Westing. As an incentive, each heir is
given $10,000 to play the game. Whoever
solves the mystery will inherit Sam Westing's
$200 million fortune, and his company,
Westing Paper Products.
Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius,
obsessed with nature and diagnosing
medical conditions, who finds it comforting
to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her
to connect with anyone other than her
adoptive parents, but that hasn't kept her
from leading a quietly happy life . . . until
now.
Suddenly Willow's world is tragically changed
when her parents both die in a car crash,
leaving her alone in a baffling world. The
triumph of this book is that it is not a
tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but
extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to
push through her grief. Her journey to find a
fascinatingly diverse and fully believable
surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to
read.
When teenage movie star Graham Larkin
accidentally sends small town girl Ellie O'Neill
an email about his pet pig, the two
seventeen-year-olds strike up a witty and
unforgettable correspondence, discussing
everything under the sun, except for their
names or backgrounds.
Then Graham finds out that Ellie's Maine
hometown is the perfect location for his
latest film, and he decides to take their
relationship from online to in-person. But can
a star as famous as Graham really start a
relationship with an ordinary girl like Ellie?
And why does Ellie want to avoid the media's
spotlight at all costs?
The remarkable, inspiring story of a
persevering female coach, a soccer team
of refugee boys, and the Georgia town
that is their home. With conviction and
skill, Jordanian Luma Mufleh established
and coached three soccer teams known
as the Fugees. Her players were haunted
by memories of war-torn homelands and
personal tragedies and were struggling to
adjust to life in the United States.
However, her high expectations and
willingness to help families impacted her
young players. Despite challenges to
locate a practice field, minimal funding
for uniforms and equipment, and zero
fans on the sidelines, the Fugees
practiced hard and demonstrated a team
spirit that drew admiration from referees
and even their competitors.
World War II was raging, with thousands of
American soldiers fighting overseas against
the injustices brought on by Hitler. Back on
the home front, the injustice of
discrimination against African Americans
was playing out as much on Main Street as
in the military. Enlisted black men were
segregated from white soldiers and regularly
relegated to service duties. At Fort Benning,
Georgia, First Sergeant Walter Morris’s men
served as guards at The Parachute School
while the white soldiers prepared to be
paratroopers. Morris knew that in order for
his men to be treated like soldiers, they
would have to train and act like them, but
would the military elite and politicians
recognize the potential of these men, as well
as their passion for serving their country?
When Ely's beloved dog, Tommy, is hit
by a car, he goes to his grandpa's house
for the summer to get his mind off
things. While exploring a nearby cave
one day he discovers a full-grown but
friendly Tyrannosaurus Rex. As the
news of the dinosaur grows around
town, so does the friendship between
Ely and his Jurassic pet. But Randy, the
mean kid down the street, decides he's
going to make life miserable for Ely and
his dinosaur-to devastating effect.