Book Talks for the
2013-2014 ORCA Nominees
Middle School Division

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming
Amelia Lost is a fascinating biography of the life and disappearance of one of the world’s most famous female pilots. The story begins with a little insight into the morning hours of July 2, 1937 when Amelia Earhart’s plane, headed toward Howland Island, lost radio contact with the coast guard cutter Itasca. The author then takes readers on a journey through Amelia’s life telling of her wild, vivid imagination and how her “rules of female conduct” bewildered and annoyed her family. The book contains many stunning photographs of Amelia in flying school, with her husband in New York, her first “welcome home” solo flight and many more. There are maps of Amelia’s route around the world, passages from her hand-written notes and even a few family secrets. If you like adventure, drama and history you will enjoy Amelia Lost. This book is full of research material and insight into one of the most talked about mysteries in U.S. History. 
(Book talk taken from http://scasl.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/JBA-Activity-Guide.pdf)

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
One night, while Stalin’s guards are pounding on the door, Lina’s mother smashes all the good China in the house. Then Lina, her mother, and her brother are herded off to an endless winter in Siberia. In Lina’s harsh new reality, a starving infant’s life means nothing, a small slice of ham means everything and a hole in the floor of a moving train car is a toilet. Nothing makes sense anymore, but if food can grow in the barren wasteland Lena is now forced to farm, then art can illuminate a path to the end of this violence and ugliness. Though all her will and energy goes to forced labor, holding back her anger towards the cruel guards, and the nearly impossible task of keeping her family together, Lena finds time to use her artistic skills to attempt to make contact with her father, who is serving a sentence for some unknown crime. Her art is secreted away on handkerchiefs and passed hand to hand in the hope that it will find her father and lead him to his wife and children. But will they ever be reunited? Will this war ever end?

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
Jack used to think he lived in a nice, somewhat boring town. But now, though he’s grounded for the rest of the summer after accidently shooting an antique Japanese rifle and plowing up his mom’s corn patch (to be fair, his dad told him to do it), he’s having the weirdest, most exciting time of his life. Suddenly there’s an airplane in his garage and a runway in his backyard. On top of that, his neighbor cooks her hands in pots of molten wax then takes him to see the bodies of the local old ladies that keep dropping dead. Meanwhile, his dad has taken to hitching houses to trucks and moving them to a whole other state and the oldest man in town rides around on an adult tricycle getting into everyone’s business. While all this is happening, 12-year-old Jack is chauffeuring old ladies around without a license, delivering obituaries to the local paper, shopping for rat poison and trying to avoid stress so he won’t get more of his epic bloody noses. Not bad for a grounded kid.

Read Dead End in Norvelt, the semi-autobiographical tale by Jack Gantos, and you will either die laughing or from a craving for Girl Scout cookies, whichever gets you first.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
The monster that wakes Conor up at midnight is not as scary as the monster that haunts his nightmares or the cancerous beast that is taking over his mother’s body. Nightly he wakes up screaming, the sensation of a feeble yet desperate hand as it slips out of his grip still in his bones. Compared to that, the monster is nothing. Still, the monster, an ancient, walking yew tree, insists that it is a force to be reckoned with and forces Conor to listen to its strange stories. While his mother gets sicker and sicker, Conor feels more and more invisible, angry, and alone. In Conor’s bleak world, where his mother can’t seem to be saved and his nights are filled with monsters, Conor must find the strength to face the truth of his own story.

Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson
Middle school is an awkward time between childhood and teendom that's difficult for the most self-confident of kids, let alone an undersized boy without friends who's bullied by a shaved-headed thug nicknamed Miller the Killer. In James Patterson's first book written specifically for middle-school readers, the horrors are laid out with words and elaborated upon with pictures that chronicle the miseries of one Rafe Khatchadorian, an incoming sixth-grader at the institution he refers to as Hills Village Prison for Middle Schoolers. Co-written by Chris Tebbetts, this fictional autobiography is a natural companion to Jeff Kinney's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series.

Rafe lives with his little sister, Georgia, his overworked waitress mom and a boorish stepfather-to-be whose only value is warming the couch. So when Rafe's reaction to an assembly presentation of the school's code of conduct is the goal of breaking every rule in the book, no one is there to offer a smarter path. What starts with the pulling of a fire alarm escalates to the destruction of school property and detention with Ms. Ruthless Donatello, a.k.a. the Dragon Lady.

But Rafe is a kindhearted mischief maker whose rule-breaking is conducted with a no-hurt mandate. He doesn't understand what is compelling him and neither does the reader until the book's end.

"Inside, what are you like?" Rafe asks toward the tail end of the first chapter of a book that's framed as a bid for friendship. "Are you basically a pretty good, pretty decent person? Says who? Says you? Says your 'rents? Says your sibs?" After showing the readers a pen-and-ink drawing of himself sporting a bowl cut, polo shirt and backpack worn safely on both shoulders, he asks, "We still friends, or are you out of here? Hey — don't go — all right?" Readers will want to stick around.

(Taken from Susan Carpenter’s review in the L.A. Times)

Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Regan Barnhill
In life there are truths, but most of them are mostly true, not completely true. It’s mostly true that Jack’s parents and brother ignore him completely, to the extent that they sometimes forget he exists entirely and none of the family pictures include him. It’s mostly true that Frankie disappeared for a while, and when he returned he was mute and angry red scars covered half his face. It’s mostly true that Wendy, his sister, will beat up anyone and go anywhere to find out what happened to him. Anders has an unusually powerful intuition, especially when he’s barefoot. Jack’s uncle’s house seems to have a pulse. Mr. Avery is worried about a contract that will lead to the theft of his child’s soul. Mr. Perkins has an old worn piece of rawhide that protects his soul. All these things are mostly true. And all these truths are so deeply buried that it will take nothing less than magic to uncover them, but Jack doesn’t believe in magic… Mostly. 

Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt
Doug’s father is a jerk. So is his older brother. And so is his oldest brother, though he’s not supposed to think that since he’s fighting for his country in Vietnam. Because Doug’s father is a jerk, he can’t keep a job. Which is why Doug ends up leaving his friends behind and moving with his family to some backwater little town in New York. Now, Doug lives in a dump, his family’s always walking on eggshells to avoid his dad’s quick temper and even quicker fists, his mom never seems to smile, and he has to hide his Joe Pepitone-signed Yankees jacket or else his brother will ruin it out of spite. 
Doug’s got some things going for him, though. He’s no chump, he’s got a good sense of humor and a strong sense of justice. Before too long he’s got a job delivering groceries, a girl with amazing eyes who is almost kinda his friend, and he discovers a talent for drawing he never knew he had. All this could shape up to be a good life if his family would stop ruining everything.

Doug is our hero and our narrator in this book about a little bit of everything including war, horseshoes, crime waves, baseball, rare bird drawings, ice cream, tattoos, Jane Eyre, Broadway plays and how good it feels on a hot day to drink an ice-cold soda handed to you by a pretty girl.

Wildwood by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis
What do you call a group of lions? Pride. A group of whales? Pod. A group of caterpillars? Army. How about a group of crows? Murder. Creepy, right? And what if a murder of crows swoops out of nowhere and steals your baby brother, flying away with him into the impassable wilderness. Would you try to get him back? Well, that’s what happens to Prue, and she does try to get him back, hopefully before her parents find out what happened. But she ends up staying in Wildwood for a long time. Long enough to become a messenger for the crown prince of the kingdom of birds. Long enough to fight alongside the soldiers of the Wildwood Irregulars for the freedom of the woods. Long enough to find a new home. Fans of the Narnia books and the Lord of the Rings will love Wildwood, and Oregonians will be surprised to learn of the fantastical kingdom hidden within Portland’s Forest Park, the book’s setting.