Rebecca Caudill Titles 2009
Penny From Heaven
It's 1953, and eleven-year-old Penny's summer is turning out to be full of
unpleasant surprises. Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice
cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that simple. For
starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch
polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living
in a car. Her nonny cries every time her father's name is mentioned.
And the two sides of her family aren't speaking to each other!
On top of it all, Penny's mother is dating the milkman.
When it rains it sure does rain, but Penny's learning that, like the song
says. . . even the darkest clouds may contain pennies from heaven.
288 pages paperback ages 9-12
Alabama Moon
Moon Blake is ten years old when his father dies, but
Moon is sure he can survive on his own. After all, for his entire life
he and Pap had been hiding from the government in the forest of Alabama, and
he knows everything there is to know about wilderness survival. Moon
can grow and trap his own food, make his own clothes, navigate by the stars,
and build a fire in the rain. Now he needs to follow Pap's final
request to go to Alaska and find others living off the land just like them,
and then he'll be fine.
Moon's determination to live free and isolated the way
his father taught him soon brings him into contact with more people than
he's ever met in his life. He becomes property of the state and must
live at a boy's home. When Moon escapes to return to the forest, he
takes along a couple of friends, his first ever. But the law is after
him, and as Moon discovers the outside world--both the good and the bad--he
begins to wonder if what Pap told him was really true at all.
Alabama Moon is the story of a young boy who
understands absolutely everything about the wilderness, but has much to
learn about humanity, love, and friendship.
304 pages Hardcover ages 9-12
Blood on the River
400 years ago, a boy fought to survive in
James Town. . .
Samuel Collier came from nothing. A
street urchin, an orphan, and even a thief, he seems headed for a life in
the alleys of London. So when he becomes the page of Captain John
Smith and boards the Susan Constant, bound for the New World, he
can't believe his good fortune. He's heard that gold washes ashore
with every tide. But beginning with the stormy journey and his first
contact with the native people, Samuel realizes that the New World is
nothing like he imagined. The lush Virginia shore where they settle is
both beautiful and forbidding, and it's hard to know who's friend or foe.
The settlers' troubles are just beginning--the summer of 1607 brings
mysterious illness, and winter brings starvation. It's soon clear to
Samuel that the ways of the English don't always work in this unfamiliar
land. The settlers need to find new ways. As he learns the
language of the Algonquian Indians and observes Captain Smith's wise
diplomacy, Samuel begins to see that he can be whomever he wants to be in
this new land.
256 pages paperback ages 9-12
Gossamer
Each night she and her teacher, Thin Elderly,
visit an old woman's home, where Littlest One softly touches beloved
objects, gathering happy memories and old scents and sounds. Littlest
One pieces these bits together and presents them to the sleeping human in
the form of pleasant dreams. But the dreaded Sinisteed--dark, fearsome
creatures that plague their victims with nightmares--are always at work
against the dream-givers.
When the old woman takes in john, an angry foster child
with a troubled past, the Sinisteeds go after him with their horrifying
nightmares. John has faced so much pain in his short life. Can
Littlest One, with her touch light as gossamer, protect John's heart and
soul from the nightmare of his dark past?
176 pages paperback ages 9-12
Hattie Big Sky
For most of her life,
sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks has been shuttled from one distant relative
to another. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she summons the
courage to leave Iowa and move all by herself to Vida, Montana, to prove up
on her late uncle's homestead claim. "At least now my letters will be
more interesting," she writes to her good friend Charlie, who is fighting
the Kaiser in France.
Under the big sky, Hattie brave heard weather, hard
times, a cantankerous cow, and her own hopeless hand at the cookstove.
Her quest to make a home is championed by new neighbors Perilee Mueller, her
German husband, and their children. For the first time in her life,
Hattie feels part of a family, finding the strength to stand up against
Traft Martin's schemes to buy her out and against increasing pressure to be
a "loyal" American at a time when anything--or anyone--German is suspect.
Despite daily trials, Hattie continues to work her uncle's claim until an
unforeseen tragedy causes her to search her soul for the real meaning of
home.
Lovingly stitched together from Kirby Larson's own
family history and the sights, sounds, and scents of homesteading life, this
young pioneer's story celebrate the true spirit of independence.
320 pages
paperback ages 9-12
Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding
school. . . again. And that's the least of his troubles. Lately,
mythological monster and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking
straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his
life. And worse, he's angered a few of them. Zeus's master
lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find
and return Zeus's stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount
Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than
catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who
abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal
by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.
392 pages
paperback ages 11-14
Buy the 2009 nominees individually below or
purchase these six together in our "Caudill Pack 1" and get one free.
