Escape to West Berlin by Maurine Dahlberg

It’s July of 1961, and Heidi Klenk is about to have the worst summer of her life. To start things off, she just found out that her family won’t be going to visit Opa and Oma, her grandparents, on their farm this August like they do every year. Her mom is about to have a baby, so she doesn’t want to travel, and Heidi’s parents won’t let her go alone; they say she’s too young.

Even worse, Heidi’s father is being called a traitor. You see, Heidi and her family live in Berlin, which after World War II was split into two parts – the East, which is Soviet, and the West, which is not. Heidi’s family lives in East Berlin, but her father works in the West, and has since long before the division of the city. Some people in the East think that border-crossers like Heidi’s dad are betraying the East by working in the higher-paying West but receiving the health care and other benefits of the East, and recently the tension has been getting worse and worse.

Now even Heidi’s best friend Petra won’t play with her, and Heidi’s father has been told he must get a job in the East. Their landlord is threatening to evict them, and Heidi’s parents have begun whispering behind closed doors.

And that is worst of all, because above all else, Heidi wants to be treated like the responsible teen she is and not like a child. She wants to be able to ride the train out to Opa and Oma’s on her own, she wants to be able to choose her friends, and she wants to be able to help make the decisions about her family’s life.

But when everything goes wrong all at once, will Heidi be as level-headed and responsible as she thinks she is?

Cat Running by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Fast Cat Kinsley, the fastest runner at Brownwood School. She took first in the Play Day races last year, even though she was only a short skinny fifth-grader then. But she beat out all the boys, even the sixth-grade ones, from Lincoln and Elmwood too.

Cat loves running. It makes her feel free, the way her legs burn and her lungs ache and everything seems to kind of fade away. She can forget about bossy Ellen and teasing Cliff, about frail Mama and stern Father, about the fact that she won't be running in the Play Day races this year...

And that's all Father's fault, and he'd better know it. Every other girl at school will be wearing slacks for Play Day, but Cat will be stuck in a dress, because Father is too old-fashioned and too stubborn and won't pay a dime for anything Cat wants. Won't he feel guilty when Brownwood loses the games and don't get the prize money to buy new gloves and bats for the kids to play with.

But Browntown School does win, and all because of That Zane Perkins. He's a newcomer to school, one of the Okies who set up camp down by Mr. Otis' farm looking for work after the great dust storms out in Oklahoma and Texas chased them out of their homes. He wears shirts and overalls that are patched and worn and too big or too small, and he runs the Play Day races barefoot! Cat's refusing to run because she'd have to wear a dress instead of slacks, and that Zane Perkins runs it barefoot, like he doesn't know any better!

Cat hates that Zane Perkins. She'll hate him 'til the day she dies.

But she doesn't hate little Sammy Perkins. And when Sammy needs them, Cat just might have to team up with that Zane Perkins in a race against time itself...

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

Have you ever wanted anything so badly that you knew your heart would break if you didn't have it?

That's the way Paul and Maureen feel about the Phantom, one of the wild ponies on Assateague Island. She's a beautiful copper and silver pony with a white map of the United States over her shoulders. Every year, the people of Chincoteague Island hold a Pony Penning Day, rounding up the wild ponies, but every year the Phantom has escaped the round up.

This year, though, it's going to be different. Paul's old enough to help with the round up, and he's determined to bring the Phantom in. And when he does, the brother and sister are going to buy the Phantom and give her a good home - her and her little silver-gold colt, Misty.

The siblings have hard work and a lot to learn along the way: they have to save up the Phantom's hundred-dollar price, deal with the highs and lows of the Pony Penning Day, and then, if they're very lucky, win the trust and cooperation of an independent, tough, thoroughly untamed pony.