Meet Kit

This story chronicles Kit's life during the Great Depression as her father loses his job and mother's friend comes to live with her family. Kit learns to change her attitude to adjust to her new circumstances and learns to love her changed life.

• Publisher: American Girl (September 1, 2000)

Written by Valerie Tripp

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Meet Samantha

Samantha Parkington is an orphan who lives with her rich grandmother in 1904. There are many servants in Grandmary's busy, bustling household, but there is no one for Samantha to play with. That's why she's so excited when Nellie moves in next door. Nellie has come to work so that she can send money back to her family in the city. Even though their lives are different, the two girls become good friends. 

by Susan Adler and Jeanne Thieme

Publisher: American Girl 

Holes

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.

It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.

• Publisher: Yearling (May 9, 2000)

By Lois Sachar

Ella Enchanted

Written by Gail Carson Levine

Harriet the Spy

Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about each of them. 

Written by Louise Fitzhugh

• Publisher: Yearling (May 8, 2001)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Written by Stephen Chbosky

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

Written by Jon Scieszka