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Grades 4 & 5
Suggested by your friendly, local librarian...
Fantasy | Scary | Science
Fiction | Sports | Adventure | Animals |
Contemporary |
Mystery |
Historical
Back to Good Reads for Children
Fantasy
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
Edward Tulane, a cold-hearted and proud toy rabbit, loves
only himself until he is separated from the little girl who
adores him and travels across the country, acquiring new
owners and listening to their hopes, dreams, and histories.
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The Field Guide by Toni DiTerlizzi
When the Grace children go to stay at their Great Aunt
Lucinda’s worn Victorian house, they discover a field guide
to fairies and other creatures and begin to have some unusual
experiences.
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The Fire Within by Chris D’Lacey
When college student David Rain rents a room in an unusual
boardinghouse full of clay dragons, he has no idea
that they, along with some lively squirrels, will help jumpstart
his writing career.
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Princess Academy by Sharon Hale
While attending a strict academy for potential princesses
with the other girls from her mountain village, Miri discovers
unexpected talents and connections to her homeland.
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Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg by Gail Carson Levine
After a hurricane injures the fairies’ godlike Mother Dove,
whose magical feathers and precious egg are of powerful
importance to both fairies and Neverland itself, it falls to
newcomer Prilla and two companions to set things right.
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Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo
Charlie Bone’s life with his widowed mother and two grandmothers
undergoes a dramatic change when he discovers
that he can hear people in photographs talking.
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Scary
My Friend the Vampire by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg
A horror story fan, Tony
Noodleman’s life becomes more
thrilling than anything he’s ever
read when he befriends a couple
of vampires named Rudolph and
Anna.
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Beware! R. L. Stine Picks His Favorite Scary Stories by R.L. Stine
A selection of unsettling stories — one
in graphic form along with two poems — by such authors as
Ray Bradbury, William Sleator, Robert Service, Edward
Gorey, Roald Dahl, Jane Yolen, and Mr. Stine himself.
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That's Ghosts for you: Thirteen Scary Stories
An international collection of spine-tingling stories, including
such titles as “Bigger than Death,” “The Airi,” and “The
Man Who Sang to Ghosts.”
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Chills run down my Spine by Jackie Vivelo
In these nine short stories,
Vivelo gives traditional ghost
stories a subtle twist as she
explores deeper and darker
secrets and emotions. Read
aloud or read on your own…if
you dare.
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Lunch Money by Andrew Clements
Twelve-year-old Greg, who has
always been good at moneymaking
projects, is surprised to find himself
teaming up with his lifelong rival,
Maura, to create a series of comic
books to sell at school.
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How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
Chronicles the adventures of Hiccup
Horrendous Haddock the Third as he
tries to pass the important initiation test of his Viking clan,
the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, by catching and training a
dragon.
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The Get Rich Quick Club by Dan Gutman
Summer vacation in their small Maine town does not look
too promising until twelve-year-old Gina and four of her
friends make a pact to become millionaires before school
starts in September.
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Tripping Over the Lunch Lady & Other School Stories
Summer vacation in their small Maine town does not look
too promising until twelve-year-old Gina and four of her
friends make a pact to become millionaires before school
starts in September.
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Science Fiction
Akiko on the Planet Smoo by Mark Crilley
Summer vacation has only just begun when 4th grader
Akiko is whisked off to a distant galaxy and put in charge
of a perilous mission on the planet Smoo, where she soon
gets a crash course in adventure.
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City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
The city of Ember was built deep underground as a last
refuge for the human race. Two hundred years later, the
great lamps that light the city are beginning to flicker. When
12-year-old Lina finds part of an ancient message, she is
sure it holds a secret that will save the city. She and her
friend Doon must decipher the message before the lights
go out on Ember forever!
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Eager by Helen Fox
Unlike Grumps, their old-fashioned robot, the Bell family’s
new robot, Eager, is programmed to not merely obey but to
question, reason, and exercise free will.
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The Akhenaten Adventure by P.B. Kerr
When twelve-year-old twins Philippa and John discover
that they are descended from a long line of djinn, their
mother sends them away to their Uncle Nimrod, who takes
them to Cairo where he starts to
teach them about their extraordinary
powers.
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The Time Hackers by Gary Paulsen
When someone uses futuristic
technology to play pranks on
twelve-year-old Dorso Clayman,
he and his best friend set off on
a supposedly impossible journey
through space and time trying to
stop the gamesters who are endangering
the universe.
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Sports
Babe & Me: A Baseball Card Adventure by Dan Gutman
With their ability to travel through
time using vintage baseball cards,
Joe and his father have the opportunity
to find out whether Babe Ruth
really did call his shot when he hit
that homerun in the third game of the
1932 World Series against the Chicago
Cubs.
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Lose, Team, Lose! by R.L. Stine
The biggest, toughest girl in school joins the football team
and foils a sly fourth grader’s attempts to win the affections
of the snobbiest girl in the class.
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Making the Save by Matt Christopher
When the Soccer ‘Cats decide to earn money to buy a gift
for Coach Bradley, Bucky goes out of his way to make the
gift a wonderful surprise.
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Technical Foul by Rich Wallace
Jared, a high-scoring member of
the Hudson City Middle School
basketball team, gets angry
when the point guard accuses
him of being responsible for
their string of losses, but finally
realizes they can win only if he
becomes a team player.
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Adventure
The Xanadu Adventure by Lloyd Alexander
Vesper Holly’s adventures continue as
she, her guardians, and their friends
journey to Asia Minor in search of the
ancient city of Troy, but fall into the
trap of an old nemesis.
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Lion Boy by Zizou Corder
In the near future, a boy with the ability to speak the
language of cats sets out from London to seek his
kidnapped parents and finds himself on a Paris-bound
circus ship learning to train lions.
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Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
When Michael is swept off his family’s yacht, he washes
up on a desert island, where he struggles to survive—until
he finds he is not alone.
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Ice Drift by Theodore Taylor
Two Inuit brothers must fend for
themselves while stranded on
an ice floe that is adrift in the
Greenland Strait.. Throughout
their six-month-long journey
the brothers face bitter cold,
starvation, and most frightening of
all, vicious polar bears. But they
still remain hopeful that one day
they’ll be rescued.
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Animals
Charlie's Raven by Jean Craighead George
Charlie Carlisle’s grandfather is ill. Charlie’s friend,
Singing Bird, a Teton Sioux, tells him that ravens have
curing powers, so Charlie steals a baby bird from its nest.
Granddad, a retired naturalist, encourages Charlie to
record his observations of the bird and study the effect it
has on humans. Charlie just hopes that the raven will make
Granddad well.
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Into the Wild by Erin Hunter
For generations, four clans of wild cats have shared the
forest. When their warrior code is threatened by mysterious
deaths, a house cat named Rusty may turn out to be the
bravest warrior of all.
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Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel
When a newborn bat named Shade but sometimes called
“Runt” becomes separated from his colony during migration,
he grows in ways that prepare him for even greater journeys.
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Angus and Sadie by Cynthia Voigt
Angus and Sadie, of mostly border
collie heritage, are adopted by a
young couple and start living on a
Maine farm, where they begin to
learn sheep herding and come to
appreciate how they are different
from each another.
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Contemporary
Chasing Vermeer by Blue Bailliett
When seemingly unrelated and
strange events start to happen and a
precious Vermeer painting disappears,
Petra and Calder combine their talents
to solve an international art scandal.
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Defiance by Valerie Hobbs
While vacationing in the country,
eleven-year-old Toby, a cancer patient,
learns some important lessons about
living and dying from an elderly poet and her cow.
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Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
Chronicles the close friendship between Japanese-American
sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s, and
the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.
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The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Motherless Alice decides she needs a gorgeous role model
who does everything right; and when placed in homely Mrs.
Plotkins’s class she is greatly disappointed.
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Mystery
What's a Serious Detective Like Me Doing in Such a Silly Movie? by Linda Bailey
While working as an extra in a movie
being filmed close to her home,
Stevie Diamond hears rumors that
the production is haunted after
numerous strange incidents befall
the cast and crew.
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The Dark Stairs by Betsy Byars
The intrepid Herculeah Jones helps
her mother, a private investigator, solve a puzzling and
frightening case.
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Assassin by Patricia Finney
Thirteen-year-old Lady Grace Cavendish, the youngest and
favorite maid of honor of Elizabeth I, must solve a murder
mystery and clear the name of her betrothed.
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Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy by Wendelin Van Draanen
Sammy continues to make life with her grandmother interesting
as she tries to discover who is stealing from St. Mary’s church, befriends
a homeless girl, and plays in a softball tournament against a bitter rival.
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Historical
The Misadventures of Maude March by Audrey Couloumbis
After the death of the stern aunt who raised them since
they were orphaned, Sallie and her sister escape their self-serving
guardians and begin an adventure resembling those
in the dime novels Sallie loves to read.
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In Darkness, Death by Dorothy Hoobler
In eighteenth-century Japan, young Seikei becomes
involved with a ninja as he helps Judge Ooka, his foster
father, investigate the murder of a samurai.
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The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts by Richard Peck
In rural Indiana in 1904, Russell’s dreams of quitting school
and joining a wheat threshing crew are disrupted when
his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room
schoolhouse after mean old Myrt Arbuckle “hauls off and
dies.”
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Blue Fingers: A Ninja's Tale by Cheryl Aylward Whitesel
Having failed apprenticeship as
a dye maker, Koji is captured
and forced to train as a ninja,
where he remains disloyal until
he discovers samurai have
burned his former village.
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