Forest of Reading®, 7 to 12 Programs

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis; D. Ellis The Breadwinner brings to life an issue that has recently exploded in the international media -- the reality of life under the Taliban. Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because he has a foreign education, her father is arrested by the Taliban, the religious group that controls the country. Since women cannot appear in public unless covered head to toe, or go to school, or work outside the home, the family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan. She cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy to earn money for her family. Parvana's determination to survive is the force that drives this novel set against the backdrop of an intolerable situation brought about by war and religious fanaticism. Deborah Ellis spent several months talking with women and girls in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Russia. This suspenseful, timely novel is the result of those encounters. Royalties from the sale of The Breadwinner will go toward educating Afghan girls in Pakistani refugee camps. "...a potent portrait of life in contemporary Afghanistan, showing that powerful heroines can survive even in the most oppressive ... conditions." -- Booklist

Men of Stone by Gayle Friesen Fifteen-year-old Ben can't make sense of his life. He lives in a house full of women, yet he can't talk to girls. He tries to be a jock, but can't even make the co-ed volleyball team. And ridicule from the guys has driven Ben to give up the one thing at which he truly excels -- dance. Now, he's being bullied by a thug named Claude, who's found out about Ben's ballet classes. Ben feels his anger and frustration grow with each passing day. Then Great-Aunt Frieda comes to visit and Ben learns about the old woman's life in Russia. He's surprised at how Frieda dealt with the Men of Stone -- Stalin's agents who terrorized her community and family. As Frieda tells her powerful story, Ben begins to understand who he is and what kind of person he wants to be. But first he must get past the rage that has taken control of his life.

Raspberry House Blues by Linda Holeman Poppy is on an odyssey. Her adoptive mother has taken off to find herself, so Poppy decides to live with her adoptive father, his new wife, Calypso, and their toddler, Sandeep, in a ramshackle rasp-berry-colored house. At first Poppy is distressed by the disordered household, which is unlike anything she has ever known, but soon it becomes a jumping-off point for her search for her birth mother.Poppy discovers a great many things in the course of her search. She finds a kindred spirit in a strange, sickly woman named Becca, and an unexpected connection with the hippy, Calypso. But most of all, she finds a part of herself she didn't even know was missing.

Storm Warning by Monica Hughes A chilling, thrilling underwater adventure. Stormwarning explores the world of a sunken wreck and the secrets it holds - secrets that have the power to heal, and to destroy.

The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence There was once a village bred by evil. On the barren coast of Cornwall, England, lived a community who prayed for shipwrecks, a community who lured storm-tossed ships to crash upon the sharp rocks of their shore. They fed and clothed themselves with the loot salvaged from the wreckage; dead sailors' tools and trinkets became decorations for their homes. Most never questioned their murderous way of life. Then, upon that pirates' shore crashed the shipThe Isle of Skye.And the youngest of its crew members, 14-year-old John Spencer, survived the wreck. But would he escape the wreckers? This is his harrowing tale.

Charlie Wilcox by Sharon E. McKay In 1915 in Newfoundland, fourteen-year-old Charlie, anxious to disprove his parents' belief that his club foot makes him unfit for fishing and seal hunting, stows away on a sealing vessel only to find himself on a troop ship headed for the war in Europe.

Over the Edge by Norah McClintock "The death of a boy at Chloe's high school looks like an accident... until Chloe discovers that he was blackmailing several other students. Was it accident--or murder? Chloe's job as a newshound for her high school paper helps her uncover some startling truths. First, it looks like Daria, the school's high-profile poet, might have plagarized some of her award-winning poems. And then it appears that Peter, the writer of the paper's astronomy column--a boy recently found dead from an accidental fall over a cliff--was blackmailing Daria. And she wasn't the only one." -Website

The Secret Under My Skin by Janet McNaughton In the year 2368, humans exist under dire environmental conditions and one young woman, rescued from a workcamp and chosen for a special duty, uses her love of learning to discover the truth about the planet's future and her own dark past.

Rebound by Eric Walters It's like I said, it isn't what you do with the shots you make, but the ones that don't go in. The rebounds. Sean vows that this year will be different: he'll stay out of trouble and make the basketball team, even if it means ditching his old friends. David also needs to make a new start. A serious accident has left him confined to a wheelchair and horribly bitter about how his life has changed. Forced together, the boys learn to like each other, and their friendship may be what they both need to get back in the game.

The Boy in the Burning House by Tim Wynne-Jones Two years after his father's mysterious disappearance, Jim Hawkins is coping -- barely. Underneath, he's frozen in uncertainty and grief. What did happen to his father? Is he dead or just gone? Then Jim meets Ruth Rose. Moody, provocative, she's the bad-girl stepdaughter of Father Fisher, Jim's father's childhood friend and the town pastor, and she shocks Jim out of his stupor when she tells him her stepfather is a murderer. "Don't you want to know who he murdered?" she asks. Jim doesn't. Ruth Rose is clearly crazy -- a sixteen-year-old misfit. Yet something about her fierce conviction pierces Jim's shell. He begins to burn with a desire for the truth, until it becomes clear that it may be more unsettling than he can bear. What is the real meaning of the strange prayers Father Fisher intones behind the door of his private sanctuary? Why does Ruth Rose suddenly disappear? And what really happened thirty years ago when a boy died in a burning house?