I Will Save You

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I Will Save You
by Matt De la Pena

After running away from a group home, 17-year-old Kidd Ellison sets up camp at a beach, where he is put to work by Mr. Red, an aging surfer who runs a maintenance shop. Hardworking and handsome, if somewhat slow, Kidd begins to make friends with some of the camp’s teens, especially Olivia, a blond beauty who wears a ski cap that covers part of her face regardless of the weather. Then Devon, Kidd’s former best friend and nemesis, finds Kidd and threatens to destroy the peaceful life that he has fallen into.

Narrated by Kidd, it moves from the immediate past and a possible murder to the present, then to the far past, constantly offering clues to the mysteries of Kidd’s sad and violent life.


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740 Middle School 320 Adventure 2011 0385738285

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Treasure Island

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Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson

A classic tale of a treasure map, a perilous sea journey across the Spanish Main, a mutiny led by the infamous Long John Silver, and a lethal scramble for buried treasure as seen through the eyes of cabin boy Jim Hawkins.


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1100L Middle School 160 Adventure 1993 1416925082

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Hatchet

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The Hatchet
by Gary Paulsen

Brian Robeson, 13, is the only passenger on a small plane flying him to visit his father in the Canadian wilderness when the pilot has a heart attack and dies. The plane drifts off course and finally crashes into a small lake.

Miraculously Brian is able to swim free of the plane, arriving on a sandy tree-lined shore with only his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present.


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1060 Middle School 192 Triller/Suspense 1997 1416925082

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Heist Society

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Heist Society
by Ally Carter

After a childhood spent assisting her father, one of the world’s most talented art thieves, Katarina Bishop tries to leave the family business behind when she forges her way into a New England boarding school.

She quickly discovers, though, that her past is inescapable. Her father has been accused of stealing already stolen masterpieces from a dangerous Italian billionaire.

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Certain that her father is innocent, Kat resolves to find the missing paintings and return them to their unsavory owner, who has given her a two-week deadline. Carter, the author of the Gallagher Girls series, skillfully maintains suspense as Kat assembles a team of teen accomplices, travels across Europe, and plots an impossible art heist to save her dad.


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1060 High School 304 Adventure 2011 1423116615

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Orange Houses

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The Orange Houses
by Paul Griffin

This story follows three kids through the pressure cooker of inner-city teenage life as it moves toward its crushing conclusion.

Tamika Sykes is a partially deaf student agonizing over whether she really wants to hear all the noise surrounding her.

Fatima Esperer is a 16-year-old refugee who fled the violence and poverty of her unspecified African country to live in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

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Jimmy Sixes, already a disturbed veteran at age 18, is either a street poet or a junkie. The three form an unusual friendship, connecting both artistically and emotionally. All this is set in a city that has become a powder keg of anti-immigration sentiment (thanks to a recently passed law that rewards citizens for reporting illegals) and is perilously close to the ever-present spark of gang violence.


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750L High School 176 Adventure 2011 0142419826

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Stitches

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Stitches: A Memoir
by David Small

The story starts when the narrator is six years old and follows him into adulthood, with most of the story spent during his early adolescence. The youngest member of a silent and unhappy family, David is subjected to repeated x-rays to monitor sinus problems. When he develops cancer as a result of this procedure, he is operated on without being told what is wrong with him. The operation results in the loss of his voice, cutting him off even further from the world around him.

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Small’s black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small’s intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible post-surgery scar on the main character’s throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree.


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750L Middle School 329 Autobiography 2010 0393338967

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Henry & Mudge

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Henry & Mudge Collection
by Cynthia Rylant

Will this lovable duo ever run out of opportunities for good times and good feelings?

This fun series of a boy and his best friend will amaze even the youngest of readers.

This series is a perfect marriage of pictures and words.


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400 Elementary School 30 Adventure 2005 0545048087

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Book of Dares

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Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

Dash and Lily, 16, find themselves on their own in Manhattan at Christmas. Dash is alone by choice –he’s told each of his divorced parents that he’s spending the holiday with the other, leaving them both to take vacations out of town.

Lily’s parents are taking the honeymoon they couldn’t afford when they got married. They think that Lily is in the capable hands of her older brother, but he’s less interested in her than in his new boyfriend, and then he gets sick and spends most of the holiday in bed.

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He does, however, start in motion the activity that is central to the story. It involves a red Moleskine notebook with a list of literary clues that Lily leaves in the stacks at the Strand bookstore. Bookish and erudite Dash finds it and is intrigued enough to follow Lily’s lead and leave some clues of his own. The dares in the book’s title refer to innocent things such as going to various crowded places like Macy’s and FAO Schwartz to pick up messages. As the dares go on, the teens reveal more and more about themselves in the pages of the notebook, until they finally meet under the worst possible circumstances.


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860L High School 272 Adventure 2010 0375859551

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Ship Breaker

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Shipbreaker
by Paolo Bacigalupi

Set on the American Gulf Coast, Nailer works light crew. His dirty, dangerous job is to crawl deep into the wrecks of the ancient oil tankers that line the beach, scavenging copper wire and turning it over to his crew boss.

After a brutal hurricane passes over, Nailer and his friend, Pima, stumble upon the wreck of a luxurious clipper ship. It’s filled with valuable goods –a “Lucky Strike” that could make them rich, if only they can find a safe way to cash it in.

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Amid the wreckage, a girl barely clings to life. If they help her, she tells them, she can show them a world of privilege that they have never known. But can they trust her? And if so, can they keep the girl safe from Nailer’s drug-addicted father?


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690L High School 336 Adventure 2010 1594480001

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Magic Half

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The Magic Half
by Annie Barrow

The middle child between two sets of twins, Miri often feels left out, overlooked, and unremarkable. When her family moves to a new home, she feels lonelier than ever. She soon learns from an elderly neighbor of a legend surrounding her house.

According to town lore, many years earlier a thief left buried treasure somewhere on her property. Quickly, the siblings race to uncover it. Soon after the hunt begins she notices a small piece of glass taped to her wall. Looking through the lens, Miri finds herself still in her room, but in 1935.

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It is here that she meets Molly, a girl badly in need of help to escape her abusive situation, but Miri accidentally returns to her own time before she can save her new friend. Alone again, she must figure out how to rescue Molly before it’s too late.


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640 Middle School 224 Drama 2007 1594480001

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