Hundred Dress / Eleanor Estes 80 p.

Wanda Petronski is different from all the other girls in her class.  When they joke and carry on, she just smiles from the sidelines.  She never has much to say.  She wears the same old blue dress every day.  It is always clean, but it's the same dress every day.  When she tells about the 100 dresses hanging in her closet at home, her classmates laugh at her.  They ask her about the dresses.  They carry on about all these 100 dresses.  Wanda describes them in great detail.  But the classmates scoff-- till they learn Wanda's secret.  A wonderful story that tackles the subject of bullies and those who don't actually participate...but let it happen.

Year Down Yonder / Richard Peck 130 p.

Richard Peck, in A Year Down Yonder, continues the story about Mary Alice when, in 1937, she moves in with her grandmother Dowdell, in this story of the Depression, small town life, and the life forming events, initiated in Long Way from Chicago.

When Mary Alice's father loses his job, their children go elsewhere.  Mary Alice learns more about her grandmother's character than she first knew.  A woman who has a huge dominating personality but with a hidden soft side.  A woman for practical jokes as well as a practical life.

This Newbery Honor book is warm, witty, moving, upbeat telling of Depression era life.   Other stories in this vein are the Soup books by Robert Newton Peck.

Because of Winn-Dixie / Kate DiCamillo 182 p.

Young India Opal Buloni has just moved to Naomi, Florida with her preacher father when a large, ugly dog finds her in the produce department of Winn-Dixie.  Through her dog, Opal is introduced to a cast of quirky characters, Miss Fanny the librarian, who's family candy taste of sorrows, Gloria Dump who's tree is hung with empty liquor bottles to remind her of her mistakes, and Otis, ex-convict, musician, and pet store manager.  All come together as friends.  A heart-warming story that involves the reader so much that one doesn't want to stop until the last page is reached.

Newbery Award Honor Book

The Great Gilly Hopkins / Katherine Paterson / 148 pages

This is a 1978 Newbery Honor book about an angry foster girl named Galadrial and called "Gilly".  She is very angry and the author is able to maintain her hostile tone throughout the first half of the book.  She has an unrealistic dream that her wonderful mother will come to claim her and they will live happily ever after.  Discovering reality and adjusting to it is a theme of the book.  She lives with "Trotter" an overweight, but loving foster mother and a fragile boy W.E.  The ending where she finally meets her real mother is realistic and the story stops without saying too much of what will happen next.  The reader can speculate on that.  While this is a pretty interesting book, it is dated and I knew it was from the late '70's.
Not a lot of kids will choose this book today.

Moon Over Manifest / Clare Vanderpool / 351 pages

This is the 2011 Newbery Award winner and it certainly deserves the award. So many times I cringe when the Newbery is announced and wonder...Is it a book that kids will want to read? Is it a book that helps readers to grow? Is it a book that will retain its appeal over the years? My answer for Moon Over Manifest is yes, yes, yes! This is truly a wonderful book. Perfect for reading aloud....a dreambook for any discussion group. Abilene Tucker, an 11 year old girl, daughter of a wandering dad, is not a character you can easily forget. Manifest, Kansas is the type of town you might know. The people of Manifest are not what they seem. The book is set in 1936 in the hardtimes of the Depression but it also flashes back to 1917-1918 and what was happening during that time. It is about stories and how stories are part of all of our lives and help us to understand who we are. Well, you just have to read this. You will not be sorry and you will want to share it. Read every single word...even the author's note and the acknowlegements. This is a book that is carefully woven and makes your heart feel full.

Hatchet / Gary Paulsen 195 p.

Flying to spend his summer with his divorced father, 13 year old Brian Robeson's pilot dies from a massive heart attack. Brian's attempts at radioing for help before the plane runs out of gas fail. As the hours pass, he devises a plan to crash into a lake. Trees would carve the single engine plane to pieces. Thus starts Paulsen's story of survival in the Canadian mountains. Brian's life is stripped down to the barest essentials. He discovers truths about survival in the wilderness both mental and physical. A read-alike for this may be My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George.

Newbery Honor Book
ALA Notable Children's Book

The Midwife's Apprentice/Karen Cushman/122 pages/ Newbery Award, Notable Children's Book (ALA) , Best Book for Young Adults (ALA)

This is the story of a girl without a place or a name, who happens upon a village with one midwife.  Hungry for food and with no place to go, she become's the midwife's apprentice, helping her to gather and prepare the herbs needed for her practice, though never allowed to be present for a baby's birth, for fear the midwife would have competition if the girl were to learn all her secrets.  The girl befriends a cat, who she feeds scraps of her own meager food, and also a young boy named Edward.  After suffering bouts of feelings of inadequacy and running away, she returns to the midwife to be the apprentice once again, and in the end finding herself a place and a name.

The last chapter has facts about the age-old practice of midwifery for those who know little of the subject.

Winner of the 1996 Newbery Award, 1996 Notable Children's Book (ALA), 1996 Best Book for Young Adults (ALA), New York Public Library 1995 List of Recommended Books, Booklist Book for Youth Editor's Choice, School Library Journal Best Books of the Year 1995, and An American Bookseller Association Pick of the Lists