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Vermont Books • Book Reviews • Author Interview • Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award

High School- Grades 8-12
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Armstrong, Jennifer. Steal Away.
Orchard, 1992. Gr. 6-9.
In 1855, two thirteen-year-old girls, one white and one black, run away from a southern farm and make the difficult journey north to freedom, living to recount their story forty-one years later to two similar young girls.

Bacon, Katharine Jay. Shadow and Light.
McElderry, 1987. Gr. 6-9.
Fifteen-year-old Emma looks forward to spending the summer on her beloved grandmother's Vermont farm, but is devastated to learn that her grandmother is fatally ill and wants Emma to help her live her last months in peace and dignity.

Conly, Jane. The Rudest Alien on Earth.
Holt, 2002. Gr. 5-8.
Having landed on a dairy farm in Vermont, an alien from another galaxy befriends two human children and uses her ability to change into animals to learn about Earth society.

Cooney, Caroline B. Family Reunion.
Bantam, 1989. Gr. 6 up.
At a family reunion, Shelley comes to terms with her parents' divorce, her mother's absence, her new stepmother, and being the "stable" member of her colorful family.

Crompton, Anne Eliot. The Ice Trail.
Methuen, 1980. Gr. 6 up.
Persistent memories of his earlier life compel 15-year-old Tanial to flee from his Abenaki Indian captors and journey during the winter from the northern shores of Lake Champlain to the English settlements.

Doyle, Eugenie. Stray Voltage.
Front St., 2002. Gr. 6 up.
After his mother leaves to start a new life elsewhere, eleven-year-old Ian sees changes in his father and in their failing Vermont farm, changes that cannot be ignored.

Gauthier, Gail. Saving the Planet and Stuff.
Penguin, 2003. Gr. 7 up.
After losing his summer job with his uncle, sixteen-year-old Michael agrees to work for an environmentalist magazine in Vermont run by his grandparents' friends.

Graff, Nancy Price. The Long Way Home.
Clarion, 2001. Gr. 6-8.
After moving to his mother's hometown in Vermont, twelve-year-old Riley must reconsider his feelings about war and heroes after he meets a man who refused to fight in Vietnam and makes a discovery about one of his own relatives.

Haas, Jessie. A Horse Like Barney.
Greenwillow, 1993. Gr. 4-8.
Finally given permission to have a horse of her own, Sarah looks at a series of Morgans and finds herself being scared, being bored, and falling in love with too many horses.

Haas, Jessie. Keeping Barney.
Greenwillow, 1982. Gr. 4-8.
When Sarah moves to a small Vermont farm, all she wants is a horse of her own.

Haas, Jessie. Shaper.
Greenwillow, 2002. Gr. 6 up.
While recovering from the loss of his dog, fourteen-year-old Chad tries to learn how to control the family dog Queenie with the help of a friendly new neighbor, an animal trainer.

Haas, Jessie. The Sixth Sense and Other Stories.
Greenwillow, 1988. Gr. 7 up.
An interwoven collection of short stories focusing on the relationship between humans and animals. One set of stories features James, who first appeared in Working Trot.

Haas, Jessie. Skipping School.
Greenwillow, 1992. Gr. 7-10.
Fifteen-year-old Philip feels isolated and confused as he tries to cope with his father's terminal illness and his family's recent move from their farm to a home in the suburbs.

Haas, Jessie. Unbroken.
Greenwillow, 1999. Gr. 5-8.
Following her mother's death in the early 1900's, thirteen-year-old Harry lives on aunt Sarah's farm where an accident with her spirited colt leaves her a changed young woman.

Haas, Jessie. Westminster West.
Greenwillow, 1997. Gr. 5-8.
Two sisters struggle with their roles as women within the family and within society as an arsonist threatens their post-Civil War Vermont community.

Haas, Jessie. Will You, Won't You.
Greenwillow, 2001. Gr. 5-9.
Spending the summer with her strong-willed political grandmother, fourteen-year-old Mad achieves breakthroughs in both her horseback riding and her Scottish dancing and begins to develop the self-confidence she has always lacked.

Haas, Jessie. Working Trot.
Greenwillow, 1983. Gr. 5-8.
Instead of going to college as his parents wish, James goes to his uncle's horse farm to study dressage.

Hayes, Sheila. Tinker's Daughter.
Lodestar, 1995. Gr. 5-8.
Holly wishes that she had a "normal" mother instead of a fugitive from the Sixties who runs an antique shop filled with what most people think is junk.

Hayford, James. Gridley Firing.
New England Press, 1987. Gr. 4-8.
Martin Patch, with the help of a pet skunk and his music teacher helps his family fight off the bank foreclosure on their Vermont farm.

Henry, Marguerite. Justin Morgan had a Horse.
Macmillan, 1954. Gr. 4-8.
Authentic story of the first Morgan horse, with background of early Vermont.

Hesse, Karen. Phoenix Rising.
Holt, 1994. Gr. 6-9.
Thirteen-year-old Nyle learns about relationships and death when fifteen-year-old Ezra, who was exposed to radiation leaked from a nearby nuclear plant, comes to stay at her grandmother's Vermont farmhouse.

Hesse, Karen. Time of Angels.
Hyperion, 1995. Gr. 6-9.
Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.

Hesse, Karen. Witness.
Scholastic, 2001. Gr. 6 up.
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the 1920's when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.

Hilgartner, Beth. Colors in the Dreamweaver's Loom.
Houghton, 1989. Gr. 5-9.
Distraught over her father's death, Zan wanders into the forest and into a fantasy world where she becomes involved in the Orathi's fight to save their homeland from invaders.

Hilgartner, Beth. The Feast of the Trickster.
Houghton, 1991. Gr. 6 up.
Five companions from another world visit earth on a mission to return a woman, earlier woven into their world, back to her home.

Hill, Ralph Nading. The Voyages of Brian Seaworthy, an Historical Adventure on Lake Champlain.
Vermont Life & Vermont Historical Society, 1971. Gr. 5-8.
With his father's death, fifteen-year-old Brian becomes owner of a steam boat company suddenly beset with problems.

Hurwitz, Johanna. Dear Emma.
HarperCollins, 2002. Gr. 5-8
In letters to a Vermont friend, Dossi, a Russian, Jewish immigrant living in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1910 shares her thoughts about her new brother-in-law, the diptheria epidemic, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Sequel to Faraway Summer.

Jackson, Edgar N. Green Mountain Hero.
Lantern, 1961. New England Press, 1988. Gr. 5-8.
Based on the lives of Ann Story, "The Mother of the Green Mountain Boys," and her son Solomon, this describes the Storys' settling in Vermont and their involvement with the Green Mountain Boys.

Keizer, Garret. God of Beer.
HarperCollins, 2002. Gr. 8 up.
To complete a class assignment at his high school in rural Vermont, Kyle and his friends Quake and Diana do a social protest project involving alcohol.

Kinsey-Warnock, Natalie. In the Language of Loons.
Cobblehill, 1998. Gr. 5-8.
During the summer that Arlis spends with his grandparents in Vermont, his grandfather teaches him about loons, cross-country running, and responsibility, and when he returns home everyone finds out how much he has changed.

Klass, Sheila Solomon. Next Stop, Nowhere.
Scholastic, 1995. Gr. 6-9.
When her mother remarries, fourteen-year-old Beth has to leave her familiar life in New York City and her new friend Josef to go live with her artisan father in Vermont.

Littlefield, Bill. Circus in the Woods.
Houghton, 2001. Gr. 6-9.
Molly, her parents and her sister, spend most summer vacations at a camp in the Vermont mountains, and as the years pass, Molly is led to find a mysterious circus within the woods nearby.

Murphy, Rita. Night Flying.
Delacorte, 2000. Gr. 7 up.
As the time for her solo flight on the sixteenth birthday approaches, Georgia begins to question the course of her life and her relationship with the other women in her unusual family.

Murrow, Liza Ketchum. Fire in the Heart.
Holiday, 1989. Gr. 6-9.
Fourteen-year-old Vermonter Molly O'Connor tries to uncover the mystery surrounding her mother's death ten years before in California.

Murrow, Liza Ketchum. Twelve Days in August.
Holiday, 1993. Gr. 7 up.
Twelve days in August change a sixteen-year-old soccer player's perceptions of himself, his family, girls, and gays.

Paterson, Katherine. Jip.
Lodestar, 1996. Gr. 5-9.
While living on a Vermont poor farm during 1855 and 1856, Jip learns his identity and that of his mother and comes to understand how he arrived at this place.

Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie.
Dutton, 1991. Gr. 6-9.
Impoverished Vermont farm girl Lyddie Worthen is determined to gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840's.

Paterson, Katherine. Preacher's Boy.
Clarion, 1999. Gr. 5-8.
In 1899, ten-year-old Robbie, son of a preacher in a small Vermont town, gets himself into all kinds of trouble when he decides to give up being Christian in order to make the most of his life before the end of the world.

Paterson, Katherine. The Same Stuff as Stars.
Clarion, 2002. Gr. 6 up.
When Angel's self-absorbed mother leaves her and her younger brother with their poor great-grandmother, the eleven-year-old girl worries not only about her mother and brother, her imprisoned father, the frail old woman, but also about a mysterious man who begins sharing with her the wonder of the stars.

Peck, Robert Newton. A Day No Pigs Would Die.
Knopf, 1972. Gr. 6 up.
A young Shaker boy learns what manhood is all about through observing birth and slaughter on a Vermont farm.

Peck, Robert Newton. A Part of the Sky.
Random, 1997. Gr. 6 up.
Sequel to A Day No Pigs Would Die.

Peck, Robert Newton. Justice Lion.
Little, Brown, 1981. Gr. 7 up.
Fifteen-year-old Muncie Bolt thinks he's lost Hem Lion's friendship forever when his father prosecutes Hem's father for operating a still in Liberty, Vermont during the days of prohibition.

Peck, Robert Newton. Kirk's Law.
Doubleday, 1981. Gr. 8 up
A rugged life-style in Vermont woods with a feisty old hunter called Wishbone Kirk develops the character of a 15-year-old boy.

Peck, Robert Newton. Millie's Boy.
Knopf, 1973. Gr. 8 up.
Hair-raising experiences of a boy who travels from Cornwall, Vermont to Ticonderoga to learn the identity of his father whom he suspects of murdering his mother.

Peck, Robert Newton. Rabbits & Redcoats.
Walker, 1976. Gr. 3-5.
Two young boys secretly mix in with the Green Mountain boys to fight at Ticonderoga.

Thompson, Julian F. Ghost Story.
Holt, 1997. Gr. 7 up.
Fourteen-year-old Anna's friendship with ghostly Roxy, who died in 1818, helps her discover the truth behind a handsome New York photographer staying at her parents' inn in Vermont and using her as a model.

Thompson, Julian F. Shepherd.
Holt, 1993. Gr. 8 up.
Thinking that he is destined to save her life, literally or figuratively, seventeen-year-old Shep starts an exciting relationship with fourteen-year-old Mary and finds his faith in people profoundly challenged.

Thompson, Julian F. Trials of Molly Sheldon.
Holt, 1995. Gr. 7-10.
When sixteen-year-old Molly Sheldon of Saphouse Junction, Vermont, discovers she has psychic healing powers and befriends newcomer Eben Wheeler, she finds her father's general store being picketed and herself suspected of witchcraft.

Wilson, Nancy Hope. Mountain Pose.
FSG, 2001. Gr. 5 up.
When twelve-year-old Ellie inherits an old Vermont farm from her cruel and heartless grandmother Aurelia, she reads a set of diaries written by an ancestor and discovers secrets from the past.

Wright, Nancy Means. Down the Strings.
Lodestar, 1982. Gr. 6 up.
After her mother goes off to Europe with her lover, Drusie copes with life in her puppeteer father's haphazard household and later at the New Hampshire boarding school her mother and grandmother attended before her.

Zindel, Paul. Loch.
HarperCollins, 1994. Gr. 6 up.
Fifteen-year-old Loch and his younger sister join their father on a scientific expedition searching for enormous prehistoric creatures sighted in a Vermont lake, but it soon becomes obvious that the expedition's leaders aren't interested in preserving the creatures.