Sharkey is a Sunker–he was born on a fortunate tide, and everyone in the giant submersible Rampart knows it. The trouble is his life is based on a lie. He’s been a fake hero for years, but when tragedy strikes, he must become a real one. And he has no idea how to go about it.
Intermediate (ages 9-14)
Material appropriate for intermediate age groups
The Only Road
Twelve-year-old Jaime makes the treacherous and life-changing journey from his home in Guatemala to live with his older brother in the United States.
This book was reviewed in Volume XI, Issue 1 of WOW Review: Reading Across Cultures.
The Adventurer’s Guide To Successful Escapes
Anne has spent most of her thirteen years dreaming of the day she and her best friend Penelope will finally leave Saint Lupin’s Institute for Perpetually Wicked and Hideously Unattractive Children.
Making Canada Home
People from every single country in the world call Canada home. From the very first arrivals as long as 30,000 years ago the ancestors of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples right up until today, people have settled in this country to build a better life.
Not As We Know It
Twins Jamie and Ned do everything together, from watching their favorite show, Star Trek, to riding their bikes, to beachcombing after a storm. But Ned is sick with cystic fibrosis, and he may someday leave Jamie behind.
Root Beer Candy And Other Miracles
Eleven-year-old Bailey believes in miracles. She has to; it will take a miracle to keep her warring parents together. This summer they are at a Marriage Counselling camp, leaving Bailey and her little brother Kevin with their estranged grandmother in the island town of Felicity Bay.
Goldfish
I am Lou Brown: Social outcast, precocious failure, 5’10” and still growing. I was on the fast track to the Olympic superstardom. Now, I’m training boys too cool to talk to me. In a sport I just made up. In a fish tank. My life has quickly become very weird.
Scar
Sixteen-year-old Noah Daniels wants nothing more than to fight in George Washington’s Continental Army, but an accident as a child left him maimed and unable to enlist. He is forced to watch the Revolution from his family’s hard scrabble farm in Upstate New York–until a violent raid on his settlement thrusts him into one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution, and ultimately, face to face with the enemy.
Skating With The Statue Of Liberty
After escaping the Germans in Nazi-occupied France, Gustave and his family have made it to America at last. But life is not easy in New York. Gustave’s clothes are all wrong, he can barely speak English, and he is worried about his best friend, Marcel, who is in danger back in France.
Somewhere Among
Eleven-year-old Ema has always been of two worlds–her father’s Japanese heritage and her mother’s life in America. She lives in Japan and has spent summers in California for as long as she can remember, but this year she and her mother are staying with her grandparents in western Tokyo as they await the arrival of Ema’s baby sibling.
Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 3.