Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen

Day one: Your birthday. Money's a little tight in the family right now, and you're trying to figure out how to get the money so you can replace the wheel on your bike. Then your grandmother gives you your grandfather's old mower for a birthday present. While you're fiddling with it, someone asks you if you mow lawns, and offers you forty dollars to do theirs.

Day two: Somebody else asks you to mow their lawn. Then somebody else. Then somebody else. Then you meet Arnold. He'd like you to mow his lawn, but he can't pay you. He's a stockbroker, and he'll put the forty dollars into stocks for you instead. Is that okay? Sure, you say; why not?

Day four: You're doing three lawns a day, seven days a week, and you've still got people asking you to come and mow theirs. Enter Pasqual and Louis, who help out with the work, Louis mowing and Pasqual doing the edging and other finishing touches.

Day fourteen: You are now employing fifteen people to mow lawns all around the neighborhood. You're not even doing the mowing yourself anymore, you're so busy keeping track of the lawns mowed and the money paid. Oh, and Arthur just said, hey, remember that forty dollars I invested for you, you know, in the stocks? Well, a lot of stuff happened and... you now own fifty thousand dollars.

Fifty. Thousand. Dollars.

You can buy a whole lot of bike tires with that.

But what about all those people you're employing to mow lawns? And what about Rock and his buddies, who are threatening to take over your business? For that matter, what are you going to do about Joey Pow?

Oh, yeah. And how about this big question:

How are you going to tell your parents?

The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring by John Bellairs

Rose Rita Pottinger is about to have a horrible summer.

Her best friend, Lewis, is going away to boy scout camp, leaving Rose Rita (a girl, and thus not allowed to go along) alone all summer with nothing to do and no one to play with. Rose Rita feels betrayed and angry, but there's nothing she can do about it.

Then a friend offers an alternative to a boring summer: Mrs. Zimmerman has just gotten a letter informing her that her cousin has left her a farm up near Petoskey, and she invites Rose Rita to come with her to look over the farm, sign some papers, and then spend a few weeks driving around the Upper Peninsula.

But there's more to it than just a road trip, you see, for Mrs. Zimmerman is an honest-to-goodness witch, and her cousin has left her not only the farm but also a magic ring he discovered. Unfortunately, when Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman arrive at the farm, they find that it has been ransacked, practically torn to pieces, and the ring is gone.

And then strange things start happening... strange sounds, faces appearing, shadows in the night... and Mrs. Zimmerman begins to act oddly. Very oddly indeed...

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P.S. There are actually two books that take place before this one which you might want to read first: The House with a Clock in Its Walls and The Figure in the Shadows.

The Liberation of Gabriel King by K. L. Going

Gabriel is scared of many things, but mostly he is scared of starting fifth grade. Fifth and sixth graders share the same cafeteria and recess time and that will not bode well for Gabriel.

When he misses his fourth grade class graduation because some fifth grade bullies tie him up, he decides he isn’t going to move up to fifth grade. What he doesn’t count on is his best friend Frita’s determination that he will start fifth grade with her in the fall.

She decides Gabriel needs to be liberated from his fears. In order for him to be liberated, he must face and overcome each of his fears. To start with, she decides he should have a pet spider in order to overcome his fear of them.

Against the backdrop of a small Georgia town in the summer of 1976, the children find out that some things, like spiders, aren’t really that scary, while some things like grown-ups can be very frightening.

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

More slowly I wrote another note, one that would soon wing for miles via wire to be printed out by a teletype machine as:

LADY EUDORIA VERNET HOLMES MISSING SINCE YESTERDAY STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP ENOLA HOLMES

I directed this wire to Mycroft Holmes, of Pall Mall, in London.

And also, the same message, to Sherlock Holmes, of Baker Street, also in London.

My brothers.

On Enola's fourteenth birthday, her mother leaves without a word or a note, only three gifts: a fully-supplied drawing kit; a book on the meanings of flowers and other things; and a small book of ciphers.

Ciphers are word puzzles; for example, Enola's name is a very simple cipher. When spelled backward, it spells 'alone,' as Enola has often found herself, quite content. Or, for another example, ALO NEK OOL NIY MSM UME HTN ASY RHC is the first cipher Enola solves to find the message: Enola, look in my chrysanthemums.

Armed with the information left in these gifts, Enola sets out to find her mother, ignoring the plans Mycroft has set out for her (a boarding school? Not on her life) and hopefully outsmarting the great detective Sherlock Holmes.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C O'Brien

When widowed Mrs. Frisby's youngest son Timothy comes down with pneumonia, she goes to the area herbalist, Mr. Ages, for medicine which he says will cure the sickness in three or four days. But, he adds, it will be several weeks before Timothy can go out into cold or cool air safely without falling sick again and dying.

This doesn't seem like much of a problem, does it? And it wouldn't be, for you or I. We'd be a little bored, of course, stuck in the house, bundled in blankets, a little tired and weak, but it wouldn't be that big of a thing.

But you see, Mrs. Frisby, Timothy, and the rest of her children are field mice, and even Mr. Ages is a small white mouse. They live in houses they've created on Mr. Fitzgibbon's farm. Mr. Ages lives in a hollowed-out space of a brick wall, and Mrs. Frisby lives with her four children in a concrete block - you know, one of those ones with two holes through the middle, just right to make two cozy rooms for a mouse family? - against a boulder in the middle of Mr. Fitzgibbon's big field.

Which is the biggest problem of all, for you see, every spring when Mr. Fitzgibbon begins to plow his field, Mrs. Frisby and her family have to move to a safe place in the woods. But with Timothy sick, they can't move - and the spring thaw is coming soon. Mr. Fitzgibbon has the tractor ready, with the sharp shiny plow already attached to the back.

They can't go and they can't stay, and perhaps there's only one direction Mrs. Frisby can look for help, if she can find the courage: the mysterious rats of NIMH.

Lowji Discovers America by Candace Fleming

When Lowji is upset about moving all the way from India to America, his father urges him to find the silver lining. It takes some doing, but Lowji finally thinks about having a cat - and a dog - and maybe a horse! His best friend Jamshed told him that people in America ride horses all the time.

But when they arrive in America, at their little apartment house that smells so lemony-fresh, Lowji discovers there isn't as much of a silver lining as he thought there would be. He still isn't allowed to have a pet, not even a tiny little mouse, and his family's landlady, Mrs. Crisp, keeps scolding him for making more work for her. The kids he sees around town mostly ignore him, and all-in-all Lowji is a little bored - and a lot lonely.

But he's sure he can find ways to help Mrs. Crisp with her workload. And there's the mystery of the footprints in the woods behind the apartment house. And there might not actually be any horses to ride, but there is... a pig???

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

"The land is no place for a Gribley," Sam's Dad always says, talking about the farm that Sam's Great-Grandfather built, plowed - and then left when he realized he truly wanted to be a sailor.

Dad had been a sailor too, but Sam isn't sure that means that all Gribleys are meant for the sea. As a matter of fact, he's determined to go out to the Catskill Mountains and find the old beech with the family name carved into it. And when he does... Well, he might as well stay out there and try living in the woods. All on his own. With only a knife, some string, and flint'n'steel in his pockets.

Join Sam as he learns about the wild animals of the forest, works out how to catch fish and trap animals, and figures out how to make clothes from deerskins he's cured. Worry with him as he tries to start a fire and makes a home, keeping it hidden from hikers and forest rangers. Learn with him as he raises Frightful, a young peregrine falcon, to be his friend and fellow hunter.

I think everyone dreams of running away from home at least once in their lives. For those of us who don't make it more than halfway down the block, here's the adventure we might have had.

100 Days and 99 Nights by Alan Madison

Meet Esme. At seven years old, she's already lived in Kenya, Korea, and Germany. That's because her dad, August Aloysius McCarther the Third, is a sergeant in the United States Army. That means that Esme, her little brother Ike, and their mom and dad go to live wherever the Army tells them to, whenever they are told to. It's their duty, which Esme knows means doing something that no one in the whole entire universe really wants to do.

But on the other hand, traveling all over the world has given her the chance to collect her bedzoo: thirty-one stuffed animals running the length of the alphabet (Aardvark to Zebra, with the eXception of X, because there are no animals that start with X) that remind her of all the places she's been and all the people she loves.

Besides, their family is always together, with their everyday routines that make life so good. Like making pancakes on Saturday morning, or movie nights on Fridays. Esme's Dad always has silly words or strange sayings - what does "than you can shake a stick at" really have to do with anything? - and he is, Esme knows, the strongest, bravest person alive.

But then one Saturday Dad tells them he has to go away for a tour of duty - one hundred days and ninety-nine nights in a faraway place. And gradually Esme learns that her Dad isn't the only strong, brave person in the family.

The Secret of the Attic by Sheri Cooper Sinykin

Blue-eyed Alison is the ultimate tomboy, who loves sports and playing outside. Red-haired Megan is a reader and a writer, imitating her journalist father. Keisha is African-American and loves to sing and play with animals, while dark-haired Heather is an artist who just moved into town a few months ago.

What do these four different girls have in common? Well, besides their fast friendship, they all have a secret: a magic attic that transports them to different times, places, and adventures!

The girls' plans to go sledding on Christmas Eve are interrupted when they meet Allison's next-door neighbor. Ms. Goodwin has long silver hair and eyes as blue as the heart of a flame, and always wears colorful clothing. When the girls return a golden key to her, she invites them in to explore the attic the key belongs to - just for a few minutes before they go sledding.

But the discovery of a trunk full of beautiful dresses leads the girls into a very different sort of adventure - when they look into the mirror they find themselves in a very different house, in the middle of nowhere. Why do the newspapers have headlines about President Roosevelt? How does a stranger know their names? And who is the young girl who seems so upset about her Christmas party?

Join Alison, Heather, Keisha, and Megan in this first book of the Magic Attic Club series!

Cinderellis and the Glass Hill by Gail Carson Levine

The author of Ella Enchanted brings a unique mixture of two classic fairytales into one funny adventure!

Ellis (always called Cinderellis) lives on a farm with his two brothers. Burt and Ralph are the best of friends, but they never include Cinderellis in anything that they do. Not even when Cinderellis shows them all the amazing inventions he's perfected - growing powder to make things grow, shrinking powder to make them shrink, flying powder to make them fly, and so many more! Even when Cinderellis stops their hay from mysteriously disappearing once a year, his brothers don't pay any attention to him. He's got one last chance: the King has just announced a contest. If Cinderellis can win, his brothers will be sure to start including him!

Princess Marigold is widely known to be the sweetest, kindest, least uppity, and prettiest of princesses. Which is wonderful. Truly. But Marigold is also the lonliest of princesses. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father spends all of his time off on quests, bringing back really rather foolish things to put into the Royal Museum of Quest Souvenirs. The only good thing he ever brought back was a tiny orange-and-yellow kitten who promptly became Marigold's best and only friend. But now, the King has decided to hold a contest to find Marigold the perfect husband. Marigold is hoping that maybe - just maybe - the person who wins the contest will be funny and polite and nice to animals... but it could just as easily be: a monster?!?!

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville

Aren't dragons just about the coolest things ever?

Jeremy Thatcher has always thought so. He likes to draw them, read about them, daydream about them - sometimes he even wishes that his dad's vet practice had a few dragons to take care of, instead of Fat Pete, who hisses and scratches at everybody.

Then one day, trying to escape Mary Lou Hutton (who for some reason, as the whole school knows, wants to kiss him - Yuuuuuuck!), Jeremy hides inside a store he's never seen before. A store with all sorts of magical things. A store with a grouchy old storekeeper who very reluctantly sells Jeremy the most amazing thing he's ever seen - a real, live, softly glowing dragon's egg.

But as cool as a dragon's egg is, imagine how neat it will be when it hatches! Dragons are just so much... trouble???

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PS: If you enjoy Jeremy's adventure, there are lots of other books associated with the very magic shop for you to explore.

Gypsy Rizka by Lloyd Alexander

Rizka lives on her own in a vardo, or gypsy wagon, outside the town of Greater Dunista. She's skinny as a smoked herring, generous with all she has (which in truth is nothing at all), and can whistle every birdsong she's ever heard. She wears a pair of homeless breeches she rescued; boots cracked and split, hardly a memory of their former selves; and an old army coat so outnumbered by patches the original garment surrendered. She lives by her wits (and those being very quick wits, she makes rather a good living) and she unofficially manages the entire town.

After all, someone has to keep Chief Councilor Sharpnack too occupied to think of ways to increase his power or make trouble for Rizka herself. Then there's Mayor Pumpa and Merchant Podskalny, who are forever quarreling; someone has to keep their squabbles from causing trouble for the rest of the town. And if it weren't for Rizka, at least two beautiful romances in the little town would be doomed before they even began.

It's a good thing she has the able assistance of her big mustard-colored cat, Petzel; her apprentice, Sofiya; and the amiable town blacksmith, Big Franco. Dealing with General Hatvan's need for intelligence or soothing the effects of the Zipple - a yearly soft, cajoling breeze with uncomfortable effects - could easily become too big of a job for one person, even one so clever as Rizka herself.

And besides, Rizka won't stay there forever: she's half gypsy, after all. When the chiriklos birds return, so will the gypsies - and Rizka's father. And then Rizka will be able to spend the rest of her life with her true family.

The Barn by Avi

It's 1855, and nine-year-old Ben is called home from school to find that his father had suffered a 'fit of palsy' as Dr. Flanagan diagnoses it. Ben isn't sure what a palsy is; all he knows is that his father - always tall and broad and strong, with a joke or a story for every minute of the day - is now lying on the bed limp and small, not moving or speaking or even seeming to recognize his children.

Ben's older sister Nettie - 15 years old and ready to marry - and brother Harrison - 13 and nearly a man himself - are almost sunk with despair. Since their mother had died several years earlier, there are only the three of them now to work their claim and care for their father. And neither of the older children are convinced that their father will long live.

Only Ben believes stubbornly that their father can and will recover - and he believes that the thing that will cure his father is building the barn Father always said he would build one day. It will be long hard work, just the three of them, but Ben is convinced that they can do it - and that they can have their father back.

The Mystery of the Yellow Hands by Jake & Luke Thoene

When children are being kidnapped from their homes in London, who do you ask to solve the case? Why, Sherlock Holmes, of course! And who does Holmes ask for help when he's just the tiniest bit busy? The Baker Street Brigade!

Danny (thirteen and the leader), Peachy (an Irish redhead), and Duff (tall and cheerful) are three newspaper boys who work together for the Daily Telegraph and live together at the Waterloo Road Ragged School. They are incredibly excited to have the chance to help the great Sherlock Holmes and to be detectives - especially when a friend of theirs is the next one to be kidnapped...

The first of four books about these young detectives.

Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton

This is one of those books that you read once, as a child or an adult - and then you keep coming back to it the rest of your life. Of course, for me that could just be because I have a sister named Katie who has the same grit, determination, and just plain stubbornness to get the job done as Katy does. But I think that's only part of it.

You see, Katy of our story is a big strong crawler tractor - a beautiful red crawler tractor - who works for the city of Geoppolis in their Highway Department. She has a bulldozer attachment for helping with road construction, and a big smooth snow plow for in the winter.

During the summer, Katy is always busy helping with the road construction and upkeep projects around the city. The bigger the task, the more she loves it and the harder she works - and she never gives up until the job is done.

But then during the winter, Katy mostly sits in her barn with her shiny snow plow and has nothing to do. The little bit of snow on the ground can be handled by the trucks - Katy's too strong for this job!

But then it begins to snow... and snow... and snow... and snow... When the whole town is snowed in and unable to move, who do you think can save the day?

Children will enjoy exploring the pen-and-ink drawings of construction equipment, town landmarks, and Katy's quest to clear the city.