Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox     PRINTZ HONOR BOOK "Laura, daughter of Tziga Hame, the original dreamhunter who went missing in the first book, is determined to reenact a dream for the upper echelons of society that will reveal how the government is manipulating dreams in order to brainwash its citizens. But in so doing, she opens up a war for control of the Place, the source of dreams. "  Publisher's Weekly, 3/12/07
Tales From the Farm Part I  by Jeff Lemire  ALEX AWARD WINNER  "After losing his mother to cancer, 10-year-old Lester moves in with his Uncle Ken, a gruff and solitary bachelor who owns a small farm in rural Ontario. Ken tries his best to reach out to his nephew but can't relate to this boy who wears a superhero cape and prefers reading comics to watching hockey on television. Lester spends most of his time by himself until he makes a friend with the least likely of characters: Jimmy, a disgraced pro hockey player who now runs the convenience store at the local gas station. Jimmy enters Lester's imaginary world by helping him build a fort to stave off an alien invasion and encouraging him to write and draw his own comic book. The bond that grows between the two helps both Lester and Jimmy move beyond the tragedies life gave them." School Library Journal, 11/1/07
A Long Way Gone, Memories of a Boy Soldier by Ishmeal Beah  ALEX AWARD WINNER "This gripping story by a children's-rights advocate recounts his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy equally thrilled by causing mischief as by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip-hop videos, was a typical precocious 12-year-old. But rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving him to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels." School Library Journal, 4/1/07
One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke  PRINTZ HONOR BOOK "Lily feels both love for and embarrassment about her eccentric family: a grandmother with an imaginary friend, an ax-brandishing grandfather, a mother who brings home patients from the elder-care facility where she works, and an estranged older brother, Lonnie, who still can't seem to get his life together. In a series of coincidental events, all of the family members, and many with whom they come into contact, reach new understanding about themselves and their lives, and all make both small and large changes for the better. In the end, Lily realizes her dream: one 'whole and perfect day,' in which her entire family comes together and finds happiness." Booklist, May 1,2007
Your Own, Sylvia:  A Verse Portriat of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Helphill  PRINTZ HONOR BOOK "Like legions of teenage girls, author Hemphill identified with the brilliant, beautiful, vulnerable, incandescent Sylvia Plath. In this fictionalized biography in verse, Hemphill channels that Sylvia, the romantic version teenage girls want: the one who gets both her art and the "big, dark, hunky boy" (as Plath described poet Ted Hughes in her diary). Things don't work out that way, as everyone knows, and the story ends tragically, with Plath gassing herself in her oven with her children asleep in the next room. Hemphill's verse possesses the same crystalline clarity as Plath's, the same relentless attempt to get to the heart of the matter-with all the words exactly right."  Horn Book, March/April, 2007