Anokaberry 2009 Short List #3

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
Where the Steps Were by Andrea Cheng
Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls
The Walls of Cartagena by Julia Durango
The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
Trouble by Gary D. Schmidt
Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris by R.L. LaFevers
Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
Storyteller by Edward Myers
Skin Deep by E.M. Crane
Six Innings by James Preller
Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial by Jen Bryant
Rex Zero, King of Nothing by Tim Wynne-Jones
The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy and Snowcap
by H.M. Bouwman
Princess Ben by Catherine Murdock
Porcupine Year by Louise Erdrich
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Little Audrey by Ruth White
Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka
Keeping the Night Watch by Hope Anita Smith
Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park
Jimmy's Stars by Mary Ann Rodman
Jeremy Cabbage and the Living Museum of Human Oddballs and Quadruped Delights
by David Elliott
I Am Apache by Tanya Landman
Hip Hop Speaks to Children with CD: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat
by Nikki Giovanni
Grow: A Novel in Verse by Juanita Havill
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Floating Circus by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
The Facttracker by Jason Carter Eaton
The Dragon's Child: A Story of Angel Island by Laurence Yep
A Difficult Boy by M.P. Barker
Deep Down Popular by Phoebe Stone
Diamond Willow by Helen Frost
The Comeback Season by Jennifer E. Smith
Black Box: A Novel by Julie Schumacher
Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Weatherford
Along Came Spider by James Preller
42 Miles by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg

The Unnameables

The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem
On an island in whose strict society only useful objects are named and the unnamed are ignored or forbidden, thirteen-year-old Medford encounters an unusual and powerful creature, half-man, half-goat, and together they attempt to bring some changes to the community.

The Walls of Cartagena

The Walls of Cartagena by Julia Durango, illustrated by Tom Pohrt
Thirteen-year-old Calepino, an African slave in the seventeenth-century Caribbean city of Cartagena, works as a translator for a Jesuit priest who tends to newly-arrived slaves and, after working for a Jewish doctor in a leper colony and helping an Angolan boy and his mother escape, he realizes his true calling.

Ways to Live Forever

Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls
Eleven-year-old Sam McQueen, who has leukemia, writes a book during the last three months of his life, in which he tells about what he would like to accomplish, how he feels, and things that have happened to him.

A Difficult Boy

A Difficult Boy by M.P. Barker

It is 1839 and nine-year-old Ethan finds himself an indentured servant working for Mr. Lyman, a mean-spirited shopkeeper in Massachusetts. When Ethan and another young servant are beaten by Mr. Lyman, the two boys find out what it takes to be a friend.

The Underneath

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small
When fate separates them, an old hound dog and two foster kittens survive the dangers of the bayou to find one another. Seeking shelter, a homeless pregnant cat responds to the "bluesy" baying of a hound named Ranger who lives chained under the porch of a shack in the woods of the East Texas bayou. He happily shares the Underneath with the cat and her two kittens, Sabine and Puck. The kittens are safe from Ranger's evil master Gar Face as long as they remain hidden, but Puck ventures out "straight into the terrible hands of Gar Face," who does his best to drown both the curious kitten and his mother. Somehow Puck escapes after promising his dying mother he will find Sabine and free Ranger, but he's on his own in a bayou teeming with mysterious creatures.