“ENGAGE YOUR MIND 24 / 7!
READ, READ, READ IN 2011!”

Maryland Black-Eyed Susan award nominee books for school year 2011 – 2012, grades 6 – 9

• Cottrell Boyce, Frank, COSMIC

  Liam enters the Greatest Dad Ever Contest and soon after finds himself on a rocket ship off-course 200,000 miles above the earth.

• Draper, Sharon M., OUT OF MY MIND

  11-year-old Melody is the smartest kid in the school, but no one knows it. Why? Melody can’t talk, can’t walk, and can’t write.

• Hahn, Mary Downing, CLOSED FOR THE SEASON: A MYSTERY STORY

  Logan learns that a murder took place in his family’s new home, and the murderer has not been caught. Arthur, the kid next door, encourages Logan to help him solve the mystery.

• Gosselink, John, THE DEFENSE OF THADDEUS A. LEDBETTER

  Thaddeus gets himself into a lot of trouble staging an unauthorized safety drill at his middle school and finds himself sentenced to a yearlong in-school suspension.

• Grabenstein, Chris, THE SMOKY CORRIDOR

  In this latest book in the Haunted Places Mystery, Zack Jennings, a boy who can see and talk to ghosts, finds himself entering 6th grade in a school built by an eccentric Civil War steamboat Captain and haunted by ghosts and zombies.

• Mone, Gregory, FISH

  Reidy works for his uncle in an Irish city. When someone steals one of his deliveries, he jumps into the water and swims after the thief, only to find himself pulled aboard the Scurvy Mistress with treasure-seeking Captain Cobb and his crew.

• Mulligan, Andy, TRASH

  Living in a garbage dump in an unnamed Third World city, Rat, Raphael, and Gardo find themselves caught in a sobering mystery as they search the refuse for a valuable item lost by an important person.

• Oppel, Kenneth, HALF BROTHER

  On his 13th birthday, Ben’s research scientist parents introduce him to his new sibling: a hairy baby chimp, Zan, who will be raised as part of the family.

• Preller, James, BYSTANDER

  When Eric Hayes encounters serious bullying at his new middle school, he tries to remain a bystander and not get involved, but eventually he must choose whether to do the right thing.

• Williams-Garcia, Rita, ONE CRAZY SUMMER

  In 1968, Delphine’s father sends her and her two younger sisters off to California to spend a month with their mother, a poet and a member of the Black Panther movement, who had abandoned the family in Brooklyn shortly after the birth of her youngest daughter.