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7th Grade
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While
on a six-day journey with her eccentric grandparents, Gram and Gramps,
Salamanca Tree Hiddle faces and comes to terms with her life as it is
and not as she expected it to be. The book is multi-layered with three
main stories. The first is the story of her trip with her
grandparents. The second is the story of Phoebe Winterbottom's family
and Phoebe's mother's disappearance. The third story that underlies
Phoebe's story is Sal's story of the loss of her mother....
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The Birchbark House,
award-winning author Louise Erdrich's first novel for young
readers, this same slice of history is seen through the eyes of
the spirited, 7-year-old Ojibwa girl Omakayas, or Little Frog, so
named because her first step was a hop. The sole survivor of a
smallpox epidemic on Spirit Island, Omakayas, then only a baby
girl, was rescued by a fearless woman named Tallow and welcomed
into an Ojibwa family on Lake Superior's Madeline Island, the
Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. We follow Omakayas and
her adopted family through a cycle of four seasons in 1847,
including the winter, when a historically documented outbreak of
smallpox overtook the island. |
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The mysterious death of an
eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of
heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they
can claim their inheritance. |
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Abandoned by their tribe during
a brutal winter famine, two old women are left to perish on their
own. Although they've grown used to complaining and letting others
do for them, the two resolve not to wait passively for death but
to fight against it. With trapping skills they haven't used for
years and strengthened by their bond of friendship, the two women
survive the winter to ultimately come face to face with the
members of their tribe, none of whom has fared as well as they. |
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Following the Big Shake, which
destroyed most of civilization, a small group of individuals (the
"proovs") retreated to Eden, learned how to improve themselves
genetically, and sealed their environment off from the sprawling
ruins inhabited by the remaining normals. Plagued by genetic
defects, a toxic environment, and illnesses, normals like Spaz
live in the Urb at the mercy of latch-bosses and their gangs. Spaz
knows that his survival depends on Billy Bizmo and the Bully
Bangers, so when they send him to rob an old man, he obeys. Ryter
willingly surrenders his few possessions except for the pages of
the book he is writing-the first time Spaz has seen anything like
this. And when the boy sets out to find Bean, his dying foster
sister, Ryter insists on accompanying him. Along the way, they are
joined by Lanaya, a proov, and Little Face, an orphan. Finding
Bean is hard enough; helping her appears to be impossible, until
Lanaya takes the motley group back to Eden and confronts the
rulers with the truth about the outside world. |
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"Monster" is what the
prosecutor called 16-year-old Steve Harmon for his supposed role
in the fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. But was Steve
really the lookout who gave the "all clear" to the murderer, or
was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In this
innovative novel by Walter Dean Myers, the reader becomes both
juror and witness during the trial of Steve's life. To calm his
nerves as he sits in the courtroom, aspiring filmmaker Steve
chronicles the proceedings in movie script format. |
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