DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER BOOK AWARD
MASTER LIST 2005-2006
The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award, first given in 1957, is co-sponsored by the Vermont State PTA and the Vermont Department of Libraries.
These books, to be read during the 2005-2006 school year, comprise the master list for the award to be made in 2006. Voting forms will be made available to all Vermont schools and public libraries in spring, 2006, so children can vote for their favorite book. The master list titles have been selected to satisfy the reading interests of children in grades 4-8. Please note grade level before ordering the books. The grades listed should be regarded more as maturity levels than reading levels.
MASTERLIST OF ANNOTATIONS
Barry, Dave and Ridley Pearson. Peter and the Starcatchers. Soon after Peter, an orphan, sets sail from England on the ship Never Land, he befriends and assists Molly, a young Starcatcher, whose mission is to guard a trunk of magical stardust from a greedy pirate and the native inhabitants. $17.99. ISBN 2-004-05527-5.
Bruchac, Joseph. Hidden Roots. Although he is uncertain why his father is so angry and what secret his mother is keeping from him, eleven-year-old Sonny knows that he is different from his classmates in their small New York town. $16.95. ISBN 0-4393-5358-0.
Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Does My Shirts. A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister. $15.99. ISBN 0-3992-3861-1.
Coman, Carolyn. The Big House. When Ivy and Ray's parents are sent to jail, and left in the custody of their parents' accusers, they decide to look for evidence that will "spring" their parents. $16.95. ISBN 1-9324-2509-8.
Creech, Sharon. Heartbeat. Twelve-year-old Annie ponders the many rhythms of life the year that her mother becomes pregnant, her grandfather begins faltering, and her best friend (and running partner) becomes distant. $15.99. ISBN 0-060-54022-2.
De Guzman, Michael. Beekman's Big Deal. Tired of the frequent moves that he and his father must make, twelve-year-old Beekman begins to make connections with neighbors and classmates after settling in a small, unusual New York City neighborhood. $16.00. ISBN 0-3743-0672-9.
Freedman, Russell. The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marion Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights. Traces Anderson's career from childhood when her amazing voice was discovered, through international fame to the ground-breaking concert in 1939 at the Lincoln Memorial. $18.00. ISBN 0-618-15976-2.
Giff, Patricia Reilly. A House of Tailors. When thirteen-year-old Dina emigrates from Germany to America in 1871, her only wish is to return home as soon as she can, but as the months pass and she survives a multitude of hardships living with her uncle and his young wife and baby, she finds herself thinking of Brooklyn as her home. $15.95. ISBN 0-3857-3066-7.
Grover, Lorie Ann. On Pointe. In this novel written in free verse, Clare and her grandfather must deal with changes in their lives when Clare's summer growth spurt threatens to end her dream of becoming a ballet dancer and her grandfather suffers a stroke. $16.95. ISBN 0-689-86525-2.
Hahn, Mary Downing. The Old Willis Place: A Ghost Story. Tired of the rules that have bound them ever since "the bad thing happened," twelve-year-old Diana ignores her brother's warnings and befriends the daughter of the new caretaker, setting in motion events that lead to the release of the spirit of an old crazy woman who once ruled the old Willis place. $15.00. ISBN 0-6184-3018-0.
Hautman, Pete. Godless. When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own. $15.95. ISBN 0-6898-6278-4.
Kadohata, Cynthia. Kira Kira. Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. $16.95. ISBN 0-6898-5639-3.
LeGuin, Ursula. Gifts. When a young man in the Uplands blinds himself rather than use his gift of "unmaking" - a violent talent shared by members of his family - he upsets the precarious balance of power among rival, feuding families, each of which has a strange and deadly talent of its own. $17.00. ISBN 0-1520-5123-6.
Marsden, Carolyn. Silk Umbrellas. Eleven-year-old Noi worries that she will have to stop painting the silk umbrellas her family sells at the market near their Thai village and be forced to join her older sister in difficult work at a local factory instead. $15.99. ISBN 0-7636-2257-5.
Martin, Ann. Here Today. In 1963, when her flamboyant mother abandons the family to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, eleven-year-old Ellie Dingman takes charge of her younger siblings, while also trying to deal with her outcast status in school and frightening acts of prejudice toward the "misfits" that live on her street. $16.95. ISBN 0-439-57944-9.
McMullan, Margaret. How I Found the Strong. Frank Russell, known as Shanks, wishes he could have gone with his father and brother to fight for Mississippi and the Confederacy, but his experiences with the war and his changing relationship with the family slave, Buck, change his thinking. $15.00. ISBN 0-618-35008-X.
Montgomery, Sy. The Tarantula Scientist. Describes the research that Samuel Marshall and his students are doing on tarantulas, including the largest spider on earth, the Goliath birdeating tarantula. $18.00. ISBN 0-618-14799-3.
Morris, Gerald. The Princess, The Crone, and the Dung-Cart Knight. Determined to find the knight responsible for the terrible deaths of her mother and the Jewish peddler who had given them a home, thirteen-year-old Sarah is helped in her quest by a strange old woman, a magical sword, a young faery, and an unkempt knight with little armor and no horse. $16.00. ISBN 0-618-37823-5.
Napoli, Donna Jo. Bound. In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well. $16.95. ISBN 0-6898-6175-3.
Peck, Richard. The Teacher's Funeral. In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dreams of quitting school and joining a wheat threshing crew are disrupted when his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean, old Myrt Arbuckle. $16.99. ISBN 0-8037-2736-4.
Philbrick, Rodman. The Young Man and the Sea. After his mother's death, twelve-year-old Skiff Beaman decides that it is up to him to earn money to take care of himself and his father, so he undertakes a dangerous trip alone out on the ocean off the coast of Maine to try to catch a huge bluefin tuna. $16.99. ISBN 0-4393-6829-4.
Pinkwater, Daniel. Looking for Bobowicz: A Hoboken Chicken Story. Upon moving to Hoboken, New Jersey, a boy convinces his two new friends to help him track down the mysterious phantom who stole his bicycle, as well as Arthur Bobowicz, owner of a giant chicken that once terrorized local citizens. $15.99. ISBN 0-060-53554-7.
Prelutsky, Jack. If Not for the Cat. Haiku-like poems describe a variety of animals. $17.89. ISBN 0-060-59678-3.
Ryan, Pam Munoz. Becoming Naomi Leon. When Naomi's absent mother resurfaces to claim her, Naomi runs away to Mexico with her great-grandmother and younger brother in search of her father. $16.95. ISBN 0-439-26969-5.
Schmidt, Gary. Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers - and Turner's - want to change into a tourist spot. $15.00. ISBN 0-6184-3929-3.
Scieszka, Jon. Science Verse. When the teacher tells his class that they can hear the poetry of science in everything, a student is struck with a curse and begins hearing nothing but science verses that sound very much like some well-known poems. $16.99. ISBN 0-6709-1057-0.
Shusterman, Neal. The Schwa Was Here. A Brooklyn eighth-grader nicknamed Antsy befriends the Schwa, an "invisible-ish" boy who is tired of blending into his surroundings and going unnoticed by nearly everyone. $15.99. ISBN 0-5254-7182-0.
Van Leeuwen, Jean. Cabin on Trouble Creek. In 1803 in Ohio, two young brothers are left to finish the log cabin and guard the land while their father goes back to Pennsylvania to fetch their mother and younger siblings. $16.99. ISBN 0-8037-2548-5.
Warren, Andrea. Escape from Saigon. Chronicles the experiences of an orphaned Amerasian boy from his birth and early childhood in Saigon through his departure from Vietnam in the 1975 Operation Babylift and his subsequent life as the adopted son of an American family in Ohio. $17.00. ISBN 0-3743-2224-4.
Whelan, Gloria. Chu Ju's House. In order to save her baby sister, fourteen-year-old Chu Ju leaves her rural home in modern China and earns food and shelter by working on a sampan, tending silk worms, and planting rice seedlings, while wondering if she will ever see her family again. $15.99. ISBN 0-060-50724-1.