Learning and Work
Books under this theme tell heroic stories of children and adults who work hard to gain an education, find employment, and achieve their dreams. The stories often showcase topics in resilience and perseverance that the protagonists show when challenged by adversity and conflict.
Bronx Masquerade
Grimes features the voices of 18 urban youths who share their innermost feelings in their open mike poetry presentations.
Buried Onions
See the barrio life seen through the eyes of a young man desperately seeking a way out. All Eddie wants is to get by, hold down a job, and walk a straight line into the future.
East Side Dreams
Art Rodriguez experiences an unpleasant childhood full of difficult obstacles that could have profoundly impaired his chance for a normal life.
Frindle
When he decides to turn his fifth-grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a series of events that quickly move beyond his control.
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
Joey Pigza is out of control because he has attention deficit disorder (ADD). After injuring another student, Joey finally gets the right professional help and starts to regain control of his actions.
Nothing But the Truth
Ninth-grader Philip hums in his homeroom during the playing of the National Anthem, bringing him a suspension that gains national media attention.
Out of the Dust
A tribute to hope and inner strength, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo is dealing with unspeakable loss during the Great Depression.
Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights
Carley recalls the summer when, as a troubled fourteen-year-old, he came to northern Minnesota to stay with his Uncle David who was a blacksmith and gained not only new skills but also a new sense of himself.
Pygmalion
This play is about Pygmalion of legend who falls in love with his perfect female statue and persuades Venus to bring her to life so that he can marry her.
The Good Earth
The Good Earth follows the life of Wang Lung, a Chinese man who rises from a peasant farmer, struggling for a living, to become the head of the powerful House of Wang.
The Long Valley
Where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world, these stories reflect Steinbeck’s characteristic interests: the tensions between town and country, laborers and owners, past and present.
The Outside Shot
Recruited by a small Midwestern college to play basketball, Lonnie Jackson, a Harlem boy has many new experiences, including working with a child who needs physical therapy and dealing with corruption in college sports.
The Phantom Tollbooth
Milo, a very bored boy, drives his toy car through a tollbooth that mysteriously appears in his bedroom and arrives in the Kingdom of Wisdom. There he learns the importance of words and numbers, patience and responsibility.
The View From Saturday
It was a surprise to a lot of people when Mrs. Olinski's team won the sixth-grade Academic Bowl contest at Epiphany Middle School. It was an even bigger surprise when they beat the seventh grade and the eighth grade, too.