How to Use the Georgia Children's Book Award Blog

Students, teachers, parents, and coaches who have read a book may comment on it. All comments are approved by the blog moderator before being published on the web. After a comment has been submitted, it may take up to 24 hours for the comment to be available on the blog. Comments should be substantial. You may talk about whether you liked or disliked the book, but please give some details to support your opinion. Was the book a genre (historical fiction, realistic, or fantasy) that you particularly like or dislike? Were the characters or plot unrealistic? How does this book compare with others by the same author? You may also comment on a previous comment. You may comment on a discussion question that has been posted. You may submit practice questions for the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl. (Don't give the answers!) You may sign your comment with your first name only, or you may make up a name. You may include the name of your school. For your security, do not include any other information that could be used to identify you. No comment that belittles another commentator, uses inappropriate language, reveals personal information, or is off topic will be approved by the moderator. The books are listed in alphabetical order by title. To make a comment on a book, click on the comment hypertext (by the pencil at bottom of the post). All comments will appear on the left, and you may compose your comment in the box at the right. When you finish writing, click on anonymous and then type in the letters provided (this helps prevent spam from appearing in the blog). Now click "Log in and Publish". Check back in a day or so and you will find your comment on the web!

Bearwalker - Joseph Bruchac

As a member of the Mohawk Bear Clan, Baron has always been fascinated by bears—their gentle strength and untamed power. But the Bearwalker legend, passed down by his ancestors, tells of a different kind of creature—a terrible mix of human and animal that looks like a bear but is really a bloodthirsty monster. The tale never seemed to be more than a scary story. Until now.

During a class camping trip deep in the Adirondacks, Baron comes face-to-face with an evil being that is all too real. Although he knows how the story ends in the legend, Baron must overcome this Bearwalker on his own terms.

Billy Creekmore - Tracey Porter

This is the tale of Billy Creekmore, a young boy with mystifying powers and the gift of storytelling. But his life in the Guardian Angels Orphanage is cruel and bleak, and when a stranger comes to claim Billy, he sets off on an extraordinary journey. From the coal mines of West Virginia to the world of a traveling circus, he searches for the secrets of his past, his future, and his own true self.

Deep and Dark and Dangerous - Mary Hahn

Just before summer begins, 12-year-old Ali finds an odd photograph in the attic. She knows the two children in it are her mother, Claire, and her aunt Dulcie. But who's the third person, the one who's been torn out of the picture? Ali figures she'll find out while she's vacationing in Maine with Dulcie and her fouryear- old daughter, Emma, in the house where Ali's mother's family used to spend summers. All hopes for relaxation are quashed shortly after their arrival, though, when the girls meet Sissy, a kid who's mean and spiteful and a bad influence on Emma. Strangest of all, Sissy keeps talking about a girl named Teresa who drowned under mysterious circumstances back when Claire and Dulcie were kids, and whose body was never found. At first Ali thinks Sissy's just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry. . . .

Do the Math: Secrets, Lies and Algebra - Wendy Lichtman

Eighth-grader Tess is a math whiz, but other aspects of her life are challenging. She knows that there's organized cheating on a history exam, but isn't entirely sure who's involved. And her mother's suspicions about the apparent suicide of her friend's wife worry her as well. She can't understand why her mother doesn't take her suspcions to the police, so she does some investigation of her own. Meanwhile, she tries to make sense of her perplexities using concepts from algebra.

Elijah of Buxton - Christopher Paul Curtis

Elijah is the first child born in freedom in the Buxton settlement for escaped and freed slaves in Canada. Though he has certainly heard his elders talk, he has never experienced slavery directly. Instead, he has a good life, is getting a solid education, goes fishing, and lives with his loving family in their own home.

His closest experience of slavery has been the occasional rumors of slave catchers in the area, and when newly escaped slaves arrive at the settlement. That is, until the money Mr. Leroy was saving to buy the rest of his family out of slavery is stolen. Then Elijah, feeling partly responsible, agrees to cross over to America to try to get it back.

The Entertainer and the Dybbuk - Sid Fleishman

A struggling American ventriloquist in post-World War II Europe is
possessed by the mischievous spirit of a young Jewish boy killed in
the Holocaust. Author's note details the murder of over one million
children by the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s.

Feathers - Jacqueline Woodson

"Hope is the thing with feathers" starts the poem Frannie is reading in school. Frannie hasn't thought much about hope. There are so many other things to think about. Each day, her friend Samantha seems a bit more "holy." There is a new boy in class everyone is calling the Jesus Boy. And although the new boy looks like a white kid, he says he's not white. Who is he?
During a winter full of surprises, good and bad, Frannie starts seeing a lot of things in a new light — her brother Sean's deafness, her mother's fear, the class bully's anger, her best friend's faith, and her own desire for "the thing with feathers."

The Entertainer and the Dybbuk - Sid Fleishman

A struggling American ventriloquist in post-World War II Europe is
possessed by the mischievous spirit of a young Jewish boy killed in
the Holocaust. Author's note details the murder of over one million
children by the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s.

Football Genius - Tim Green

Twelve-year-old Troy White has a gift: he can predict any football play before it happens. When his mom gets a job with the Atlanta Falcons, Troy is determined to prove just how much the team needs him on board, in this gripping story written by former star linebacker Green.

Greetings from Nowhere - Barbara O'Connor

In North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains, a troubled boy and his mother, a happy family seeking adventure, a man and his lonely daughter, and the widow who must sell the run-down motel that has been her home for decades, meet and are transformed by their shared experiences.

Hiroshima Dreams - Kelly Easton

Lin can’t explain the knowledge she has of the future, of what people will say or what will happen. It’s a gift she shares with Obaasan, her grandmother, who has recently come from Japan to live with Lin’s family. But seeing the future is more than knowing whether or not a boy will call. What is Lin to make of the visions she has of a day long ago, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima?

Leepike Ridge - N.D. Wilson

Eleven-year-old Thomas Hammond is in for the ride of his life when he's swept downstream and underground aboard a crumbling raft of Styrofoam. Washing up on a dark subterranean "beach," his only companions are an impulsive dog named Argus and a corpse, from which he takes a flashlight and an all-too-limited supply of batteries. What Tom finds under Leepike Ridgea castaway, four graves, a tomb, and buried treasurewill answer questions he hadn't known to ask and change his life forever. Now, if he can only find his way home again. . . .

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen - Eric Berlin

Winston Breen is just finishing his 8th grade year when he solves a puzzle for his school's principal. By solving the puzzle Winston's school is invited to participate in a puzzle adventure set up by Dmitri Simon, President of Simon Snack Foods. Winston's school along with several other will all compete in an all day adventure with the winning school receiving $50,000 for their school. Of course the adventure is filled with tricky puzzles which the reader has the opportunity to solve, but there are also other problems to solve along the way. Let me just say there is a cheater in the competition!

The Rising Star of Rusty Nail - Lesley Blume

Franny Hansen is a 10-year-old piano prodigy living in Rusty Nail, Minnesota. Once the Coot Capitol of the world, in 1953 it's just a run-of-the-mill town with one traffic light and a bizarre cast of characters. She's long exhausted the talents of the town's only piano teacher and seems destined to perform at church events and school assemblies, until a mysterious Russian woman arrives in Rusty Nail. Franny's neighbors are convinced the "Commie" is a threat to their American way of life, but Franny's not so sure. Could this stranger be her ticket out of Rusty Nail?

Saving the Griffin - Kristen Nitz

For Kate, life back home in Minnesota is a not-so-distant memory. Her father's work has brought the family overseas to a countryside estate in Tuscany. Kate spends much of her time with her younger brother, nine-year-old Michael, roaming the beautiful estate grounds that are filled with moss-covered statues, cypress trees, and olive groves.

But when Kate and Michael find a lost baby griffin--a strange, fantastical creature with colorful downy feathers and tufts of fur-- they enter into a magical adventure marked by danger, fear, and a sinister, beckoning presence named Prince Eduardo.

The two try to keep Grifonino safe and his existence a secret, but pursuit by greedy paparazzi and eager scientists threatens the creature's safety. Now, with the help of their older brother Stephen, the siblings set out to solve the mystery of where the magical creature came from...and how to get him back there once and for all.

Someone Named Eva - Joan Wolf

On the night Nazi soldiers come to her home in Czechoslovakia, Milada’s grandmother says, “Remember, Milada. Remember who you are. Always.” Milada promises, but she doesn’t understand her grandmother’s words. After all, she is Milada, who lives with her mama and papa, her brother and sister, and her beloved Babichka. Milada, eleven years old, the fastest runner in school. How could she ever forget?

Then the Nazis take Milada away from her family and send her to a Lebensborn center in Poland. There, she is told she fits the Aryan ideal: her blond hair and blue eyes are the right color; her head and nose, the right size. She is given a new name, Eva, and trained to become the perfect German citizen, to be the hope of Germany’s future—and to forget she was ever a Czech girl named Milada.

Inspired by real events, this fascinating novel sheds light on a little-known aspect of the Nazi agenda and movingly portrays a young girl’s struggle to hold on to her identity and her hope in the face of a regime intent on destroying both.

The Sorta Sisters - Adrian Fogelin

Anna Casey likes living in North Florida with biology teacher Miss Johnette, her latest foster mother. Best of all, Miss J wants to adopt Anna. Still, it is hard grow into a new family, a new life, and a new school all at once, especially when you've been rootless nearly all of your life. Mica Delano likes living aboard her sailboat, the Martina, which is docked at a marina in the Florida Keys. Best of all, the marina's owners, whom she calls Aunt Emma and Uncle Bert, try hard to make up for the sometimes inattentive parenting she gets from her marine biologist father. But Mica fears that her restless father will soon pull anchor, taking them away from the safety of Bert's Marina. A chance correspondence between these two girls separated by the length of the state of Florida becomes a flourishing friendship. As they share their love of nature, each helps the other cope with uncertainty and loneliness and profound change. When her father gets a grant that will last a year, Mica enrolls in public school for the first time since first grade and suffers the agony of trying to fit in. When her beloved foster mother becomes serious about a suitor, Anna must make room in her heart for a possible rival. In the end, Anna and Mica save each other and themselves with hope, humor, and a shared love of the natural world.

Trading Places - Claudia Mills

When fifth-grade twins, Amy and Todd, tackle a school project, they also have to cope with issues of friendship at school and problems at home, including their father's unemployment. Todd and Amy Davidson may be twins, but they're complete opposites - Todd is organized and is the family "engineer," while Amy is outgoing and has been dubbed the "poet." So it would seem that for a fifth-grade economics project, Todd would come up with a master invention, and Amy would have a blast with her best friends as partners. To their surprise, Todd can"t think of a single idea, and Amy gets stuck working with the class crybaby. Then Todd begins writing poetry. But this is nothing compared to the switch their parents have made. Their father has been unemployed for months and their mother has started to work at a crafts store. Now there"s never enough food in the house, everybody is always on edge, and when Amy"s friends come over after school, they find Mr. Davidson, uncombed and unshaven, in his ratty old bathrobe. Will life ever return to normal?

Uprising - Margaret Haddix

Around her the workers were screaming out prayers and curses.... She herself was sobbing tearlessly.... Her only prayer was still, "I don't want to die."

Oh, please, God, don't let me die, she thought. I've never even had a chance to live.

Bella, newly arrived in New York from Italy, gets a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. There, along with hundreds of other immigrants, she works long hours at a grueling job under terrible conditions. Yetta, a coworker from Russia, has been crusading for a union, and when factory conditions worsen, she helps workers rise up in a strike. Wealthy Jane learns of the plight of the workers and becomes involved with their cause.

Bella and Yetta are at work -- and Jane is visiting the factory -- on March 25, 1911, when a spark ignites some cloth and the building is engulfed in fire, leading to one of the worst workplace disasters ever.

Margaret Peterson Haddix draws on extensive historical research to bring the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to tangible life through her thrilling story of Bella, Yetta, and Jane.

The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous - Suzanne Crowley

Merilee leads a Very Ordered Existence. V.O.E., for short.

Her schedule (which must not be altered) includes, among other entries:

School (horrendous)
Litter patrol (30 minutes daily)
Lunch (PB&J and a pickle)
Bottle return (Friday only at the Piggly Wiggly)
Dame Fiona's meditation show (Saturday only, 6:00 AM)

The V.O.E. is all about precision.
Merilee does not have time for Biswick O'Connor.
Merilee does not have time for Miss Veraleen Holliday.

He with his annoying factoids and runny nose. She with her shining white shoes as big as sailboats. Both of them strangers who, like the hot desert wind that brings only bad news, blow into town and change everything.