Intermediate (ages 9-14)

Material appropriate for intermediate age groups

Rescuing the Children: The Story of the Kindertransport

This important book tells the story of how ten thousand Jewish children were rescued out of Nazi Europe just before the outbreak of World War II. They were saved by the Kindertransport — a rescue mission that transported the children (or Kinder) from Nazi-ruled countries to safety in Britain.

The book includes real-life accounts of the children and is illustrated with archival photographs, paintings of pre-war Nazi Germany by artist, Hans Jackson, and original art by the Kinder commemorating their rescue.

The Boy in the Box

Eleven-year-old juggling enthusiast Sullivan Mintz helps his family run the Stardust Home for Old People. It’s not ideal: his best friend, Manny, is eighty-one years old. But life as usual turns upside down when Master Melville’s Medicine Show comes to town. Sullivan’s excitement at finding performers his own age dissolves into dread when he steps onstage for a magic act only to wake up imprisoned in the traveling show’s caravan. As his fears subside, his questions multiply. Is his family better off without him? Would life as a juggler performing with other kids be worse than living in an old folks’ home? Being kidnapped could be the best thing that ever happened to him. or decidedly not

Somebody’s Girl

Martha knows she is adopted, but she’s okay with that, at least until her mother gets pregnant. Suddenly she’s no longer number one. She picks fights with her closest friends and, to make matters worse, she is forced to do a school project about sturgeon with Chance, an oddball boy in her class. When Martha’s birth mother announces that she is getting married and moving away, a lonely and confused Martha realizes that she needs to figure out a way to be a better friend and daughter, and an even better sister.

The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen

Thirteen-year-old Henry’s happy, ordinary life comes to an abrupt halt when his older brother, Jesse, picks up their father’s hunting rifle and leaves the house one morning. What follows shatters Henry’s family, who are forced to resume their lives in a new city, where no one knows their past. When Henry’s therapist suggests he keep a journal, at first he is resistant. But soon he confides in it at all hours of the day and night.

In spite of Henry’s desire to “fly under the radar,” he eventually befriends a number of oddball character, both at school and in his modest apartment building. And even though they know nothing about his past–at least, not yet–they help him navigate the waters of life after “IT.”

Bigfoot Boy: Into the Woods

Rufus is bored at his grammy’s house in the country. But when he follows a girl into the woods and finds a totem in a hollowed-out tree, things become a whole lot more interesting. Especially when he reads the word etched into the magical talisman: “Sasquatch.”

Seraphina

In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical talents.