by Nancy Pearl
Dogs
Carol Ryrie Brink’s The Highly Trained Dogs of Professor Petit
Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn Dixie
Eleanor Estes’s Ginger Pye
Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller
William H. Armstrong’s Sounder
Eric Knight’s Lassie Come-Home
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Shiloh, and its two sequels, Shiloh Season and Saving Shiloh
Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows
Horses
Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion and its sequels, especially The Black Stallion and Satan
Lynn Hall’s The Something-Special Horse
Marguerite Henry’s Newbery Award-winning King of the Wind; Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague; Justin Morgan Had a Horse; and the one I most loved, Born to Trot
Will James’s Smoky, the Cow Horse (which won the 1927 Newbery Award)
John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony
DOLLS AND DOLLHOUSES
As a child, when I wasn’t at the library or lying on my bed reading, I was playing with my dollhouse. It makes sense, then, that some of the books I remember with the most fondness are those that took place in dollhouses, or at least had as their central characters dolls who just happened to have the ability to come alive occasionally (always when humans weren’t around to witness it). Be sure to take the dollhouse lover in your family to the Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where’s there’s an amazing dollhouse on permanent display. Meanwhile, here are some superb books to savor:
Edward Tulane would not want to be included in this category, since the main character in Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane would argue that he is not a doll at all. And he’d be right. But where else would I include this moving novel about the power of love to transform even a most proper (not to say full of self-pride) three-foot-tall rabbit? Edward lives a serene (not to say boring) and most self-important life under the care of a little girl named Abilene, until the unforeseen and unthinkable happens and he’s unwillingly set on a challenging series of adventures, none of which he’s prepared for and, especially at the beginning, none of which he welcomes.
Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin’s The Doll People introduces brave Annabelle, a member of the Doll family that lives in a house in eight-year-old Kate Palmer’s bedroom. She decides to search for the whereabouts of her Auntie Sarah, who disappeared forty-five years before.There’s lots of fun (among much else, there’s a Baby Doll who belongs to another dollhouse family entirely but whom the entire Doll family loves because she’s theirs) and drama to be found in Martin and Godwin’s inventive dollhouse world, such as their descriptions of the Dolls trying to coexist with The Captain, the Palmers’ dangerous cat, or avoid the fate of Doll State or—worse!—permanent Doll State, and yet have a fulfilling and non-boring life (just what we all want). When they meet the Funcrafts, a new dollhouse family, things really start to happen.The pictures by Brian Selznick help make this book special for anyone who loves playing with a dollhouse. The adventures continue in The Meanest Doll in the World.
I would bet almost anything that Godwin and Martin loved Big Susan by Elizabeth Orton Jones (originally published in 1947) as much as I did, because when I read their book, I was so reminded of Jones’s story of a group of celluloid and china dolls who come alive only on one special night a year. Again the illustrations, by Jones herself, are just perfect for this gentle and beautiful book.
Although there are no dollhouses in Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (which won the Newbery Award in 1930), this story of a doll carved out of a piece of mountain ash wood in Maine in 1829 and her grand adventures over the next century as she passes from owner to owner never loses its freshness and appeal, despite some language and situations that may not sit well with politically correct readers.
Rosemary Wells addressed these issues in Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, a rewriting of Field’s masterpiece, which adds new scenes and eliminates, for example, the cringe-causing references to “savages” and “heathens” and changes the ending altogether. While I am sympathetic to the reasons behind Wells’s revision (and while I enjoyed Susan Jeffers’s radiant illustrations), I think the original remains the one I’ll give my granddaughters to read.
The eponymous Miss Hickory, whose body is a just-the-right-shaped twig from an apple tree and whose head is an acorn, finds her formerly pleasant life in a corncob house upended when the family she lives with moves away, in Carolyn Sherwin Bailey’s Miss Hickory. It’s only with the help of Crow and Mr. T. Willard-Brown, a plain-speaking cat, that Miss Hickory realizes she might be meant for a different sort of life. (For some reason, I found this book incredibly sad when I was a child, although I’m sure it’s intended to be comforting in many ways.)
Rumer Godden wrote many books about dolls and dollhouses, including Miss Happiness and Miss Flower; The Doll’s House (which has a most unpleasant doll character named Marchpane); Impunity Jane (about a doll who didn’t want a comfortable life in a dolls’ house, but rather a life of adventure and excitement—and finally got her wish); The Fairy Doll; and Candy Floss.
Kathryn Reiss adds a dash of supernatural scariness to her dollhouse books, which include Time Windows and Sweet Miss Honeywell’s Revenge.
Even though the characters in Mary Norton’s The Borrowers are not dolls, I think both that book and its sequels belong here. I am quite fond of Arrietty Clock, who, along with her father, Pod, and mother, Homily (as well as several other Borrower families), resides in a large country house, side by side with humans who are quite unaware of their existence. When Arrietty makes the unforgivable error of allowing a human boy to see her, the Borrowers’ whole future becomes problematical. Norton’s books are a splendid choice for imaginative children who love the idea of (usually) unseen “little people” sharing their lives.
While most of the books in this section are generally thought of as being aimed at girls, Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard and its sequels are well loved by both boys and girls, and doll lovers of both sexes will also enjoy Lady Daisy by Dick King-Smith, the story of nine-year-old Ned, who becomes the focus of teasing and trouble when he decides to keep Lady Daisy Chain, an old-fashioned wax doll that speaks only to him.
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Double the fun, double the stress, and double the mishaps! At least that’s the way it appears when you encounter a pair of twins in a good book—excitement, misunderstandings, and mischief abound. Most people are familiar with the two sets of Bobbsey twins—Nan and Bert, Flossie and Freddie—but there are lots more twins to read about. From identical to fraternal, from realistic portrayals of sibling rivalry to fantasies of twins with supernatural abilities, each of these books shows that life as a double is never ordinary.You can certainly multiply the pleasure of middle-grade reading with these books.
Never Mind: A Twin Novel by Avi and Rachel Vail introduces a set of very different fraternal twins; Edward is the class clown, while Meg goes to a school for gifted students.Told in alternating chapters by each sibling, readers get a glimpse into the life of a pair of twins who, although different, may be more alike than they think in this humorous, lively novel. (The fact that Avi himself has a twin sister certainly adds a bit of authenticity to the story.)
In Sea Legs by Alex Shearer, rather than spend more boring time with their grandparents, twin brothers Clive and Eric stow away on the luxury cruise liner where their father works. As Eric tells it, although the boys try to steer clear of their father, trouble follows, which makes for a humorous and sometimes suspenseful read.
Ten-year-old twins Pauline and Arlene absolutely hate each other in January 1905, a historical novel by Katharine Boling told in alternating first-person, present-tense chapters. Arlene, who has a crippled foot, works at home cleaning and cooking, while Pauline puts in long hours at the nearby cotton mill. Each believes the other has it easier (although both seem pretty difficult existences to me), and e
ach dreams of living the other’s life. How they come to respect each other’s lot in life makes for a satisfying conclusion.
Adventure fans will be happy to meet Grace and Mary, the thirteen-year-old fraternal twins in Cryptid Hunters by Roland Smith who are stranded in the Congo while on a trip with their uncle. Dinosaurs, possibly mythical animals, and a ruthless killer add to the suspense, as the twins realize that although they have their own special talents, their strength lies in working together.
The main characters in P. B. Kerr’s Children of the Lamp series are fraternal twins descended from a long line of djinni—John and Philippa Gaunt’s adventures begin in The Akhenaten Adventure and continue in The Blue Djinn of Babylon.
Other twin books to look for are The Twin in the Tavern by Barbara Brooks Wallace; Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson; Angela and Diabola by Lynne Reid Banks; Stephanie S.Tolan’s Ordinary Miracles; Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech; The Well-Wishers by Edward Eager; and Beverly Cleary’s Mitch and Amy.
FRIENDS MAKE THE WORLD GO ROUND
Making friends is sometimes hard. Keeping them is often even harder, but always worth working at. A good friend can make the hardest times in someone’s life a little easier. Many of these novels explore unexpected friendships that cross cultures, ages, race, and certainly gender, but never in a heavy-handed or didactic way. Here are some of my favorite books about friendship in all its (sometimes unusual) permutations, all written with honesty and (occasionally) humor.
April and Melanie’s friendship is cemented by their common love of all things Egyptian, but when a game they’re playing takes an unexpected (and possibly sinister) turn, they wonder if they’ve gone too far, in The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E. L. Konigsburg (which is a Newbery Honor book) is a tale in which the friendship of two fifth-grade girls overcomes both loneliness and racial differences, as Jennifer and Elizabeth bond together through their interest in witchcraft and particularly in coming up with an ointment that will enable them to fly.
With her beloved grandmother Miss Eula away for a visit to a new grandbaby, nine-year-old Ruby Lavender has no one to share adventures and good times with in her hometown of Halleluia, Mississippi, until Melba Jane proves to be less of an enemy and more of a friend, in Deborah Wiles’s delightful Love, Ruby Lavender. (Incidentally, the audio book, narrated by Judith Ivey, is top notch as well.)
Other outstanding “friendship” reads include Crossing Jordan by Adrian Fogelin; How Do You Spell Geek? by Julie Anne Peters; P.S. Longer Letter Later and Snail Mail No More by Paula Danziger and Ann M. Martin (can two thirteen-year-olds stay friends though they live in different cities?); The Storyteller’s Beads by Jane Kurtz (set in Ethiopia in the 1980s); The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto (translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano); Nikki Grimes’s Meet Danitra Brown (a series of poems about the friendship between two young girls); Farley Mowat’s Lost in the Barrens; The Tulip Touch by Anne Fine; Frances O’Roark Dowell’s The Secret Language of Girls; Jean Thesman’s In the House of the Queen’s Beasts; and Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom.
G AND T’S : GIFTED AND TALENTED
So what it’s like to be really, really smart? The view from the outside in is fun to read, as can be seen in the books described below:
All through school, Nora, now in the fifth grade, has managed to fool everyone into thinking that she’s just a normal kid, but that’s all about to end when she decides to help her friend Stephen feel better about himself after he does poorly on some standardized tests, in The Report Card by Andrew Clements.
Possibly the smartest person of prehistoric times, Ug is always inventing things to make life in the Stone Age easier for everyone, in Raymond Briggs’s delightful Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age.
Other G and T’s to meet are found in Wendelin Van Draanen’s Secret Identity, the first in her Shredderman series about ultra-brainy Nolan (“Nerd”) Byrd, whose brains lead him to ultimately outdo the fifth-grade class bully; Someday Angeline by Louis Sachar; Eoin Colfer’s Half Moon Investigations; Sheila Greenwald’s Alvin Webster’s Surefire Plan for Success (And How It Failed); and Jacqueline Woodson’s Maizon at Blue Hill.
GIRL POWER!
Sometimes the best part of reading a particular book is that you can find yourself in its pages, or that you can find a braver, more exciting, more beautiful, smarter, kinder, or just more interesting you. The books below are filled with all sorts of girls, solving all sorts of problems, living all kinds of lives.
Everyone has problems,but as is made clear in Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted (a very loose retelling of Cinderella), when a fairy gives you the dubious gift at birth of always having to be obedient, it does make life difficult, especially when you have some pretty mean stepsisters and fall in love with the prince of the kingdom. Anyone who loved the world where Ella Enchanted is set will also want to read Fairest, a story about a girl who doesn’t believe she can be loved for herself.
If your name was Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking, wouldn’t you want to change it to Pippi? And if your name were Pippi, wouldn’t you want to live with only a monkey in your own house, called Villa Villekulla? And be busy having all sorts of adventures? It’s hard not to want be the irrepressible heroine of Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.
Can you imagine Larry McMurtry writing a book for nine- to twelve-year-olds? If so, you’ll have a good idea what the charms of The Misadventures of Maude March by Audrey Couloumbis are: plucky girls, nonstop adventures, and a killer who may or may not have a heart of gold.
Harriet loves to eavesdrop (and keep notes) on other people’s lives, but she runs into trouble when her notebook falls into the hands of some people who aren’t thrilled with her life as a spy, in Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy.
A thirteen-year-old Inuit girl runs away from her Alaskan home to escape an arranged marriage and ends up living with a pack of wolves in Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George.
What would you do if you were ten years old and woke up one fine day to find a silver crown on your pillow, your parents mysteriously gone (well, that part might be okay with a lot of kids!), and an unmistakable threat from something called the Hieronymous Machine that wants your crown? Ellen faces all that and more in Robert C. O’Brien’s The Silver Crown, now available in a beautiful new edition.
Heidi, the main character in So B. It by Sarah Weeks, sets out to unravel the mysteries surrounding her life with her mentally retarded mother.
Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink is the story of two sisters shipwrecked on a small island along with four babies. How they survive (and even prosper) after meeting the local version of Daniel Defoe’s Friday makes this book a grand read for boys and girls alike. (It was one of my favorites when I was a child.)
Other books with really cool girl characters include The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi; Zeely by Virginia Hamilton; Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows; The Star of Kazan and Which Witch by Eva Ibbotson; Shannon Hale’s The Princess Academy; The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley and its sequel (which can actually be read on its own), The Blue Sword; and Diane Duane’s iconic pre-Harry Potter fantasy, So You Want to Be a Wizard, the first of the Young Wizards series, all starring Nita Callahan, who gets her wizardry start as a result of a visit to a library; others in the series include Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry, and Wizard’s Holiday.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Keep an eye out for these winners, all published more than four decades ago. They may be hard to find, but they’re wonderful choices for your middle-grade readers. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever be reissued, unfortunately. I would love to hear from anyone who’s read them, too—I sometimes fear I’m the only one (besides my sister and daughters) who remembers them.
Anne Barrett’s Caterpillar Hall (a lovely story about a magical umbrella that allows its young owner, Penelope,
to see into people’s pasts)
Ruth Christoffer Carlsen’s Mr. Pudgins (I don’t understand why the books about Mary Poppins remain in print, while this cheerful tale of an eccentric babysitter has been unavailable for years)
Richard Church’s Five Boys in a Cave (I don’t actually know of any other fiction book about spelunking written for grades four through eight, and this is a thrilling adventure, indeed)
John Keir Cross’s The Other Side of Green Hills (probably one of the most inventive and scary fantasies a child can read)
Norman Dale’s The Casket and the Sword (a thrilling adventure tale marked by an unlikely villain and a long lost treasure)
Jennie Dorothea Lindquist’s The Golden Name Day (one of those quiet books that a certain type of girl—who loves the Betsy-Tacy books, for example—will very much enjoy)
Dean Marshall’s The Invisible Island, Dig for a Treasure, and Wish on the Moon are probably close to impossible to find (they were published more than fifty years ago but are still—I just reread them—reasonably contemporary in tone and thoroughly enjoyable family stories)