Putnam, 1999
While compiling a genealogy of her family of successful attorneys, sixteen-year-old history buff Ivy Breedlove treks into the mountain wilderness to interview a reclusive aunt with whom she identifies and who in turn helps her to truly know herself and her family. Reading Level: YA, Accelerated Reader: 5.1
Greenwillow, 1998
Twelve-year-old Annyrose, left behind when her brother joins the Gold Rush, escapes the unscrupulous woman she is staying with and sets out on a grand adventure with the notorious bandit Joaquin Murieta and his band of outlaws.
Reading Level: 4.5
Accelerated Reader: 4.2
Bantam Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 1977, c1967
Newbery Medal Honor, 1968
In claiming as his own the magnificent black pearl he finds, a sixteen-year-old youth enrages the sea devil who legend says is its owner. Reading Level: 5.2; Accelerated Reader: 5.4
Atheneum, 1982
1983 Newbery Medal Honor
Sequel to: Homecoming. Now that the four abandoned Tillerman children are settled in with their grandmother, Dicey finds that their new beginnings require love, trust, humor, and courage. Reading Level: 5.2; Accelerated Reader: 5.0
Morrow Junior Books, 1997
Fourteen-year-old Nathan, fishing with the Makah in the Pacific Northwest, finds himself holding a vital clue when a mysterious stranger comes to town looking for Spanish treasure. Reading Level: 5.5; Accelerated Reader: 5.9
See also: Bearstone, 1991
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1987
1988 Newbery Medal Honor
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce. Reading Level:: 6.3; Accelerated Reader: 5.7
Houghton Mifflin, 2001
Tells the dramatic story of the Canadian Arctic Expedition that set off in 1913 to explore the high north. Reading Level: 3.4; Accelerated Reader: 4.9
Roaring Brook Press, 2003
A lyrical evocation of Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers.
Reading Level: 4.6
Puffin, 2001, c1959 1960 Newbery Medal Honor
A young boy relates his adventures during the year he spends living alone in the Catskill Mountains, including his struggle for survival, his dependence on nature, his animal friends, and his ultimate realization that he needs human companionship Reading Level: 6.7; Accelerated Reader: 5.2
Delacorte Press, 2000
When a terrible blight attacks Ireland's potato crop in 1845, twelve-year-old Nory Ryan's courage and ingenuity helps her family and neighbors survive. Reading Level: 5.5; Accelerated Reader: 4.3
G.P. Putnam, 2002
Adapted for young people from In the heart of the sea by Nathaniel Philbrick"--Recounts the 1820 sinking of the whaleship "Essex" by an enraged sperm whale and how the crew of young men survived against impossible odds. Based on the author's adult book "In the Heart of the Sea." Reading Level: 5.5
In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States. Reading Level: 7.8; Accelerated Reader: 7.4
Delacorte Press, 1999
In eighteenth-century England, after his father buys a schooner called the Dragon, sixteen-year-old John sets out to sail it from Kent to London and becomes involved in a dangerous smuggling scheme.Reading Level: 4.2; Accelerated Reader: 4.7
Delacorte, 1998
"Being the story of the enlistment and due service of the boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers." Eager to enlist, fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat. Reading Level: YA; Accelerated Reader: 5.7. See also Tracker, Brian's Winter, Voyage of the Frog, Winter Room, Woodsong...
Avon, 1994, c1993
Having survived being blinded and shipwrecked on a tiny Caribbean island with the old black man Timothy, twelve-year-old white Phillip is rescued and hopes to regain his sight with an operation. Reading Level: 6.1; Accelerated Reader: 5.0. Sequel to The Cay, 1969
