Mrs. Malecha Reads!

by Hena Khan Genre:  Realistic Fiction, Sports Zayd Saleem wants to play basketball.  He dreams of making the top team so that he can spend more time with his best friend, Adam.  Zayd's parents want him to play violin.  They dream that he will become a top notch violinist and want him to practice all the time.  Will Zayd have the courage to speak up so that he can convince his parents to listen to the dreams he has for himself?

by Moira Young Lexile: 630 Genre:  Fantasy Davy David is all alone.  Ever since he ran away from the children's home he has been surviving by doing odd jobs for people and entertaining them with his beautiful artwork.  One day, a chance encounter with Elizabeth Flint changes his life forever.  Suddenly he is on an adventure to get her home to the sea before she dies, which she says will happen in 3 days on her 80th birthday.  Davy doesn't know what to believe, but he knows it is time for him to leave the town of Brownvale and get on with his life.

by Janet Taylor Lisle Lexile:  600 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Jessie is less than thrilled to have to spend her summer with her dad, sister, and brother in a run down cabin on Quicksand Pond.  To make matters worse there is no internet or cell service.  Jessie finds an abandoned raft that she takes out on the pond when she runs into Terri, a girl whose family seems to have a troubled past.  Jessie wants to be Terri's friend, but their lives are completely different.  They decide to fix up the raft together which leads them to the Cutting's tool shed where they encounter Miss Cuttings, an old woman who some people believe has lost her mind.  The stories of the past and present begin to intersect as Jessie and Terri work together to get the raft back on the pond.

by Wesley King Lexile:  560 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Daniel is the backup kicker for his middle school football team and he is okay with that.  he is really just on the team because his best friend Max loves football.  But when the first string kicker gets injured, suddenly Daniel is the one who can either make or break the games.  The pressure is making it harder for him to hide the strange habits that he has developed that help him get through each day.  He is trying to impress Raya, a really cool girl in his class, but it seems that Sara is the only one who really notices him.  When Sara tells him about something called OCD, he wonders if he has actually figured out what is at the root of the strange habits and routines he has developed for himself.  Should he listen to what Sara is trying to tell him or continuing hiding his true self from his friends and family?

by Jeffrey Kluger with Ruby Shamir Genre:  Informational In 1968, nothing mattered more to NASA than getting astronauts into space.  Apollo 8 was the first mission that took men to the moon and they were determined to have it be a successful mission.  The Apollo 8 crew, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders got to see and do things that no man had ever done before. This is the story of how these 3 brave men battled the odds and made history in space and returned to tell the world about it.