Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, by Kate Messner

Summary:  Gianna has less than one week to complete her leaf project if she wants to compete in the upcoming cross-country sectionals, but issues like procrastination, disorganization–and her grandmother’s declining health–seem destined to keep her from finishing.

Walker

Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom, by Tim Byrd

Summary:  Twelve-year-old Brian, ten-year-old Wren, and their father, Doc Wilde, risk their lives in a South American rainforest as they seek the eldest member of their famous family of adventurers, Grandpa, amidst a throng of alien frogs.

Putnam

Green Dragon Codex by R. D. Henham

Summary: Thirteen-year-old Scamp, his older brother Mather, and friend Dannika, pursued by evil-doers, set out to find someone who can protect the mysterious globe and tablet Scamp found next to the corpse of a dreaded green dragon. 247 p., Mirrorstone/Wizards of the Coast.

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Watersmeet, by Ellen Jensen Abbott

Summary:  Fourteen-year-old Abisina escapes the escalating violence, prejudice, and religious fervor of her home town, Vranille, and sets out with a dwarf, Haret, to seek the father she has never met in a place called Watersmeet.

Marshall Cavendish

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Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man Mcginty Told Me, by Nan Marino

Summary: Tamara dreams of the day when ten-year-old Muscle Man McGinty’s constant lies catch up to him, but when an incredible event takes place in the summer of 1969, her outlook on life is altered in the most surprising way.

Roaring Book Press

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A Templar’s Apprentice

Book of Tormod #1

Summary: While trying to harness his power for prophetic visions, a fourteenth-century Scottish boy joins a Templar knight on his sacred quest to unearth an ancient relic.

Scholastic

Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies by Erin Dionne

Summary: Overweight thirteen-year-old Celeste begins a campaign to lose weight in order to make sure she does not win the Miss HuskeyPeach modeling challenge, in which her mother and aunt have entered her–against her wishes.

Dial

Winnie’s War by Jenny Moss

Summary:Living in the shadow of a Texas cemetery, twelve-year-old Winnie Grace struggles to keep the Spanish influenza of 1918 from touching her family–her coffin-building father, her troubled mother, and her two baby sisters.

Walker & Co

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Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder

Summary:  In the middle of an Iowa cornfield, four children find a magic wall that enables them to travel through time and space.

Random House

Taste for Red by Lewis Harris

Summary: When some of her classmates disappear, sixth-grader Svetlana, along with her new friends go in search of the missing students using her newfound ability as an Olfactive, one who has heightened smell, hearing, and the ability to detect vampires.

Clarion

Lifting the Sky by Mackie D’Arge

Summary: Twelve-year-old Blue, always on the move with her ranch-hand mother, yearns for a real home where her father can find them, and on a remote ranch on a Wyoming reservation she finds that and more, including a mystical ability to heal injuries.

310 pages, Bloomsbury

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

Summary: Ignatius “Brother” Alderman, nearly twelve, promises to help his grandparents keep the family’s Oregon ranch the same while his brothers are away and his father is deployed to Iraq, but as he comes to accept the inevitability of change, he also sees the man he is meant to be.

161 pages, Random House

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Jane in Bloom by Deborah Lytton

Summary: Devastated when her beautiful, older sister dies from anorexia, twelve-year-old Jane recovers slowly from the tragedy, with help from unexpected sources.

Dutton