Intermediate (ages 9-14)

Material appropriate for intermediate age groups

The Secret History of Tom Trueheart

Tom’s six older brothers are adventurers who go on dangerous quests in the Land of Stories. Tom stays home with his mother. Tom’s brothers are famous for the exciting endings they discover for the tales the Story Bureau assigns to them. Tom worries he will never have a story of his own. But when his brothers fail to return from their adventures in time to celebrate Tom’s twelfth birthday, a letter from the Story Bureau arrives … addressed to Tom. It is up to him to find out why his brothers haven’t completed their missions. Tom packs his bags and kisses his mother good-bye. It turns out that he has his own story after all.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village

Step back to an English village in 1255, where life plays out in dramatic vignettes illuminating 22 unforgettable characters. Maidens, monks and millers’ sons–in these pages, readers will meet them all. There’s Hugo, the lord’s nephew, forced to prove his manhood by hunting a wild boar; sharp-tongued Nelly, who supports her family by selling live eels; and the peasant’s daughter, Mogg, who gets a clever lesson in how to save a cow from a greedy landlord. There’s also mud-slinging Barbary (and her noble victim); Jack, the compassionate half-wit; Alice, the singing shepherdess; and many more.

Hero Of Lesser Causes

World War II has just been won, and everything seems possible to young Keely Connor. She sees herself as a hero on a white charger, able to conquer the world, even though in reality her charger is Lola, the placid horse that lives in the field behind her house. One fateful summer day her brother Patrick is stricken with polio. Here is an enemy Keely cannot conquer. With all the will in the world, she cannot pass on to Patrick her zest or her energy or her own good health.

Light Foot/Pies Ligeros

Once upon a time no creatures on Earth died. But they had baby after baby, and before long the world grew crowded. Death decided to solve the problem by challenging everyone to a skip-rope contest — as an immortal, Death won every time, and one by one everyone succumbed to her dare. Soon, every living being knew Death. This intriguing fable is based on Francisco Toledo’s series of engravings of Death, a dominant figure in Mexican culture. Toledo, the heir to the great generation of Mexican artists that included Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, has imaginatively explored this integral part of life, and his entrancing images are matched by poetic text from his wife Natalia.

Sunwing

Shade, a young silverwing bat in search of his father, discovers a mysterious Human-made building containing a vast forest. Could his father be there? Home to thousands of bats, the indoor forest is warm as a summer night, teeming with insect food, and free from the tyranny of the deadly owls. But Shade and his friend Marina aren’t so sure this is paradise. Shade has seen Humans enter the forest and take away hundreds of sleeping bats for an unknown purpose. And where is Shade’s father? Before long Shade and Marina are on a perilous journey to the far southern jungle, where the vampire bat Goth rules as king of all the cannibal bats. Now Shade must use all his resourcefulness to find his father — and stop Goth from creating eternal night.

This is a companion to  Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing.

The Time Thief

When an attempt to bring Peter and Kate back to their own time is bungled, Peter finds himself stranded in 1763 while The Tar Man, a villainous eighteenth-century criminal, returns with Kate to twenty-first-century London.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

When the government of the magic world and authorities at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry refuse to believe in the growing threat of a freshly revived Lord Voldemort, fifteen-year-old Harry Potter finds support from his loyal friends in facing the evil wizard and other new terrors.

Ely Plot

You’d think growing up in a medieval abbey, surrounded by nothing but monks and hundreds of miles of swamp, would be pretty boring. Pip thinks so too, until the day he meets Perfect, a small stone gargoyle with a life of her own. Before long, the two find themselves in the midst of an assassination attempt against the new king, escaping into the cold dark night, being chased across the fens by a man bent on killing them.

Redwall: The Rogue Crew

When the peaceful life of ancient Redwall Abbey is shattered by the arrival of the evil rat Cluny and his villainous hordes, Matthias, a young mouse, determines to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior which, he is convinced, will help Redwall’s inhabitants destroy the enemy.