When their baby sister becomes dangerously ill, thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother make a journey of over 300 kilometers from their village to Johannesburg, where their mother works as a maid for a white family.
Intermediate (ages 9-14)
Material appropriate for intermediate age groups
The Kite Rider: A Novel
In thirteenth-century China, after trying to save his widowed mother from a bad second marriage, twelve-year-old Haoyou has life-changing adventures when he takes to the sky as a circus kite rider and meets the great Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.
Rose Blanche
A young German girl watches as the streets of her town fill with soldiers and tanks. Then, one day, she follows a truck into the woods and discovers a secret.
Margrit’s World War Ii
In 1943, five-year-old Margrit was separated from her mother, father, and siblings and sent to a farm in Bavaria to escape the bombing in the big city of Hamburg.
Boori
It traces the early years of an Australian Aboriginal boy as he grows to be both a hero of the People and a skilled magician. Scott’s tale is enhanced by his use of real locations in Northern Australia.
Jojofu
A young man is saved from death three times by the keen senses of his faithful hunting dog. Based on an old Japanese tale.
Even A Little Is Something: Stories Of Nong
Twenty-three vignettes present Nong, a ten-year-old girl living in present-day Thailand, and the characters of her village as they slowly make the transition from rural poverty to western modernization.
Notso Hotso
Anthony, a neglected pet dog, develops an irritating skin condition and has most of his hair shaved off, which embarrasses him greatly until he realizes he now looks like a lion and can frighten other animals and people.
Lydia, Queen Of Palestine
Ten-year-old Lydia describes her childhood escapades in pre-World War II Romania, her struggles to understand her parents’ divorce amid the chaos of the war, and her life on a kibbutz in Palestine. Based on the life of the Israeli poet Arianna Haran.
The 7 Professors Of The Far North
Eleven-year-old Sam and his new friends, brother and sister Ben and Zara, set off for the Arctic to try and rescue the siblings’ great-uncle and five other professors from the mad scientist holding them prisoner.