Get ready to have some great reading adventures! These books are good places to start. And don’t forget, your librarian can help you with additional suggestions of books to read by these and other authors.
| Fiction |
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Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.
YA F AVI
Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle leaves England a pampered girl who wants to be a lady, and arrives in America a sailor and resourceful young woman. |
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Bauer, Joan. Backwater.
YA F BAU
Sixteen-year old Ivy’s courage is tested when she treks into the mountain wilderness to visit her reclusive aunt. |
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Cooney, Caroline B. Flight #116 Is Down.
YA F COO
When a 747 crashes on her family's estate, Heidi and the teen paramedic first to answer her 911 call work desperately to save as many lives as they can. |
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Fama, Elizabeth. Overboard.
YA F FAM
When fourteen-year-old Emily runs away from Sumatra to meet her uncle on a nearby island, the ferry she takes sinks, leaving her to try to swim to shore without a life jacket. |
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George, Jean Craighead. Julie of the Wolves.
YA F GEO
Running from an arranged marriage, thirteen-year-old Julie survives on the North Slope of Alaska by joining a wolf pack. |
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Hobbs, Will. Downriver.
YA F HOB
Jessie and the other teens in her Outward Bound group dump their adult leader and try to run the white water of the Grand Canyon alone. |
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Holm, Jennifer L. Boston Jane: an adventure.
YA F HOL
Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest and while living among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory. |
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Horowitz, Anthony. Stormbreaker.
YA F HOR
YA AB/CD HOR
Fourteen-year-old Alex had no idea his guardian, Uncle Ian, was a spy, but when threatened with life in an orphanage, Alex takes over his murdered uncle’s Stormbreaker mission. Further Alex Ryder adventures include Point Blank, Skeleton Key, Eagle Strike, and Scorpia. |
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Lee, Tanith. Piratica: being a daring tale of a singular girl’s adventure upon the high seas.
YA F LEE
A bump on the head restores Art’s memories of her mother and the exciting life they led, so the sixteen-year-old leaves school, and seeks out the pirates who were her family before her mother’s death, and leads them back to adventure on the high seas. |
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Marsden, John. Tomorrow When the War Began.
YA F MAR
Seven Australian teens return from a week camping in the bush to discover their families imprisoned and their country occupied by invading foreign troops. Will Ellie and her friends surrender, hole up in the bush, or fight back? |
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Meyer, L.A. Bloody Jack: being an account of the curious adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy.
YA F MEY
YA AB/CD MEY
Reduced to begging and thievery in the streets of London, a thirteen-year-old orphan disguises herself as a boy and connives her way onto a British warship set for high sea adventure in search of pirates. |
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Pullman, Phillip. Ruby in the Smoke.
YA F PUL
In nineteenth-century London, sixteen-year-old Sally, a recent orphan, becomes involved in a deadly search for a mysterious ruby. |
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Rees, Celia. Pirates! The true and remarkable adventures of Minerva Sharpe and Nancy Kington, girl pirates.
YA F REE
In 1722, after arriving with her brother at the family’s Jamaican plantation where she is to be married off, sixteen-year-old Nancy Kington escapes with her friend, Minerva Sharpe, and together they become pirates traveling the world in search of treasure. |
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Sachar, Louis. Holes.
YA F SAC
Stanley Yelnats, wrongly sentenced to a term digging holes under cruel tyranny at Camp Green Lake, breaks the family curse when he finally finds the reason for all the digging. |
 | Smith, Roland. Peak.
YA F Smi
A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.
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| Nonfiction |
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Pfetzer, Mark. Within Reach: my Everest story.
YA 796.52 Pfe
In May 1996 the media scrambled to document the gripping story of sixteen-year-old Mark Pfetzer’s expedition to Mount Everest. Not only was he the youngest climber ever to attempt the summit, he also witnessed the tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, in which eight climbers perished in a sudden storm. Within Reach is Mark’s extraordinary account of this experience and of his triumphs over several other challenging peaks. At once triumphant and tragic, this story will be an inspiration to climbers, athletes, and armchair enthusiasts alike. |
