Staff Favorites - Chapter Books

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These are some of our staff favorites! These titles are best for grades 4th through 6th.  They can all be found in the Children's Fiction section, alphabetically by the author's last name.

Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.

The Penderwicks
by Jeanne Birdsall
While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.

Superfudge
by Judy Blume
Fifth-grader Peter Hatcher's mother is pregnant, his four-year-old brother, Fudge, is a constant embarrassment to his family, and his parents want to move to New Jersey for a year, could life get any worse?

The Secret Garden 
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Ten-year-old Mary comes to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors and discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden.

The Enormous Egg
by Oliver Butterworth
One morning Nate looked in the henhouse and saw the biggest egg he’d even seen. Six weeks later, so on— not the townspeople, the scientific world, the senators from Washington—was prepared for what hatched. 

The Mouse and the Motorcycle
by Beverly Cleary
A reckless young mouse named Ralph makes friends with a boy in room 215 of the Mountain View Inn and discovers the joys of motorcycling.

Absolutely Normal Chaos
by Sharon Creech
Thirteen-year-old Mary Lou grows up considerably during the summer while learning about romance, homesickness, death, and her cousin's search for his biological father.  

The Watsons go to Birmingham
by Christopher Paul Curtis
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963. 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
by Roald Dahl
Each of five children lucky enough to discover an entry ticket into Mr. Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory takes advantage of the situation in his own way. 

The Spiderwick Chronicles series
by Tony Diterlizzi
Follow the adventures of the Grace children, twins Simon and Jared and their older sister Mallory, after they move into the Spiderwick Estate and discover a world of faeries that they never knew existed. 

The Black Stallion
by Walter Farley
Pulled to a desert island by a wild black stallion he has freed during a shipwreck at sea, seventeen-year-old Alec Ramsay befriends the horse, trains him by night, and rides him to victory in a match race.

Better Nate Than Ever
by Tim Federle
An eighth-grader who dreams of performing in a Broadway musical concocts a plan to run away to New York and audition for the role of Elliot in the musical version of "E.T." 

Harriet the Spy
by Louise Fitzhugh
Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together? 

The Ranger’s Apprentice series
by John Flanagan
Follow the adventures of Will, an orphan who is taken as an apprentice Ranger, as he strives to keep the Kingdom of Araluen safe from invaders, traitors, and threats.  

The Thief Lord
by Cornelia Funke
Escaping the aunt who wants to adopt only one of them, two orphaned brothers run away from Hamburg to Venice, finding shelter with a gang of street children and their leader, the 13 year old “Thief Lord," while also eluding the detective hired to return them to Germany. 

Coraline
by Neil Gaiman
Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own. 

The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse
by Bruce Hale
When fellow fourth grader Shirley Chameleon asks Chet Gecko to find her missing brother Billy, Chet follows a mysterious trail of clues that includes the Rat Sisters, a riddling junkyard dog, and a vicious Gila monster named Herman.

The Year of Miss Agnes
by Kirkpatrick Hill
Ten-year-old Fred narrates the story of school and village life among the Athapascans in Alaska during 1948 when Miss Agnes arrived as the new teacher.

The Fourteenth Goldfish
by Jennifer L. Holm
Ellie's scientist grandfather has discovered a way to reverse aging, and consequently has turned into a teenager--which makes for complicated relationships when he moves in with Ellie and her mother, his daughter.

Buniccula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery
by James Howe
Harold, the Monroes' dog, tells of Chester the cat's suspicions that the baby rabbit that one of the Monroe boys finds in the movie theater, takes home, and names Bunnicula is a vampire. 

Redwall
by Brian Jacques
When the peaceful life in and around ancient Redwall Abbey is shattered by the arrival of the evil rat Cluny and his villanous hordes, Matthias, a young mouse, determines to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior which, he is convinced, will help Redwell's inhabitants destroy the enemy.   

The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling
Presents the adventures of Mowgli, a boy reared by a pack of wolves, and the wild animals of the jungle. 

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
by E. L. Konigsburg
Having run away with her younger brother to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twelve-year-old Claudia strives to keep things in order in their new home and to become a changed person and a heroine to herself. 

A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L’Engle
Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. 

Saffy's Angel
by Hilary McKay
After learning that she was adopted, thirteen-year-old Saffron's relationship with her eccentric, artistic family changes, until they help her go back to Italy where she was born to find a special momento of her past.

Anne of Green Gables
by L. M. Montgomery
Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her. 

The Lightning Thief
by Rick Riordan
After learning that he is the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea, twelve-year-old Percy is sent to a summer camp for demigods like himself, and joins his new friends on a quest to prevent a war between the gods. 

Harry Potter series
by J. K. Rowling
A fantasy-filled series that chronicles the adventures of a young wizard named Harry Potter and his friends who all attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 

Holes
by Louis Sachar
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Sideways Stories From Wayside School
by Louis Sachar
High atop Wayside School's sideways school, mean Mrs. Gorf is changed into an apple and replaced by Mrs. Jewls, who has her own special way of teaching arithmetic, while pretty Maurecia offers to beat up the school bully. 

Black Beauty
by Anna Sewell
A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with both good and bad masters. 

Counting by 7’s
by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Twelve-year-old genius and outsider Willow Chance must figure out how to connect with other people and find a surrogate family for herself after her parents are killed in a car accident.

Charlotte's Web
by E. B. White
When he discovers that he is destined to be someone's dinner, Wilbur the pig is desolate until his spider friend Charlotte decides to help him.

Little House on the Prairie
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire. Very dated view of Native Americans but a lovely family story.

While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.
While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.
While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.
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