Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

by Judi Barrett

If food dropped like rain from the sky, wouldn't it be marvelous! Or would it? It could, after all, be messy. And you'd have no choice. What if you didn't like what fell? Or what if too much came? Have you ever thought of what it might be like to be squashed flat by a pancake?

Red Midnight

by Ben Mikaelsen

When guerrilla soldiers strike Santiago's village, they destroy everything in their path -- including his home and family. Santiago and his four-year-old sister escape, running for their lives. But the only way they can be truly safe is to leave Guatemala behind forever. So Santiago and Angelina set sail in a sea kayak their Uncle Ramos built while dreaming of his own escape. Sailing through narrow channels... (more)

Home of the Brave

by K. A. Applegate

A man I helped to settle here taught me a saying from Africa. I’ll bet you would like it: A cow is God with a wet nose. Kek comes from Africa where he lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived. Now she’s missing, and Kek has been sent to a new home. In America, he sees snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like... (more)

The Relatives Came

by Cynthia Rylant

In a rainbow-colored station wagon that smelled like a real car, the relatives came. When they arrived, they hugged and hugged from the kitchen to the front room. All summer they tended the garden and ate up all the strawberries and melons. They plucked banjos and strummed guitars. When they finally had to leave, they were sad, but not for long. They all knew they would be together next summer.

Description & Setting (Write Great Fiction)

Description & Setting (Write Great Fiction)

by Ron Rozelle

For a story to be successful, it must come alive on the page. With Description & Setting, writers learn how to make every detail count as they create believable people, places and events. Another book in the popular Write Great Fiction series, this valuable reference: -Shows writers how to master the challenging--and often overlooked--subjects of description and setting -Offers hands-on action-and-results... (more)

Listening for Lions

by Gloria Whelan

Historical fiction with a wicked twist. Listening for Lions is a breathtaking story of tragedy, deception, and triumph against all odds. National Book Award–winning author Gloria Whelan sets this richly historical coming–of–age adventure in British East Africa in the year 1918. This irresistible novel entangles an orphaned girl in a deceit filled plot. Young Rachel Sheridan is made to leave her beloved Africa... (more)

Out of Bounds (New Windmills)

by Beverley Naidoo

We are the young people, We will not be broken! For almost fifty years, apartheid forced the young people of South Africa to live apart as Blacks, Whites, Indians, and "Coloreds." This unique and dramatic collection of stories—by native South African and Carnegie Medalist Beverley Naidoo—is about young people's choices in a beautiful country made ugly by injustice. Each story is set in a different decade... (more)

The Phantom Isles

by Stephen Alter

The book is called The Compleat Necromancer , and when Ming, Orion, and Courtney read an incantation from its pages, they have no way of knowing they are about to conjure up the ghosts of an entire nation. Because the ghosts that the three friends summon aren’t just any ghosts. They were captured from an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean—the Ilhas dos Fantasmas—a place where the living and the dead once... (more)

Canoe Days

by Gary Paulsen

Opening this book is like sitting down in a canoe, taking up a paddle, and gliding out into the summer beauty of a hidden lake. In this picture book that is as refreshing and inviting as a perfect canoe day, a fawn peeks out from the trees as ducklings fan out behind their mother. Butterflies pause and fish laze beneath the lily pads. Ruth Wright Paulsen’s sunlit paintings and Gary Paulsen’s poetic text capture... (more)

Pandora Gets Jealous (Mythic Misadventures)

Pandoras Adventures

Pandora Gets Jealous (Mythic Misadventures)

by Carolyn Hennesy

13-year-old Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena (or Pandy, for short) has no idea what she’ll bring for her school project. By accident she discovers a simple box, said to contain something so terrifying and horrible that no one must ever, ever touch it for fear of inflicting all of mankind with the wrath of the Gods and Goddesses. This, of course, makes the box the perfect thing for Pandora to bring for her... (more)

S .T. O. R. M. - The Viper Club

by E. L. Young

S. T. O. R. M. are: Will Knight, an inventive genius, who creates cutting-edge gadgets; Andrew Minkel, a software millionaire, who is the founder of S. T. O. R. M.; and, Gaia, a brilliant chemist with a habit of blowing stuff up. The boss of the Shanghai criminal underworld has issued a deadly challenge to the members of his Viper Club - to create three undetectable methods of murder. At stake is a $100 million... (more)

Burn My Heart

by Beverley Naidoo

What does it mean to be loyal? Mathew and Mugo, two boys—one white, one black—share an uneasy friendship in Kenya in the 1950s. They're friends even though Mathew's dad owns the land and everything on it. They're friends despite the difference in their skin color. And they're friends in the face of the growing Mau Mau rebellion, which threatens British settlers with violence as black Kenyans struggle to win... (more)

The Way to Sattin ShorePhilippa Pearce

The Way to Sattin Shore

by Philippa Pearce

When a tombstone with her father's name suddenly disappears from the graveyard, Kate, an English school girl, witnesses the unraveling of a mystery surrounding the death of her father.

Dolphin Song

by Lauren St. John

Dark Lover/lover Eternal[exclusive 2-in-1 Hardcover] (black dagger, 2&3)j r ward

Dark Lover/lover Eternal[exclusive 2-in-1 Hardcover] (black dagger, 2&3)

by j r ward

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

Double trouble squared

by Kathryn Lasky

<shared copy> The Starbuck family is anything but ordinary. There are two sets of Starbuck twins: preteens Liberty and July, and their little sisters Charly and Molly. But even more extraordinary is the fact that all four children have the ability to teleflash—they can talk to each other without saying a word! It's a power that comes in handy whenever these adventurous kids are on the trail of a villian. ... (more)

by Ann Campbell Keller

Scientists often bring issues to the policy agenda, translating scientific questions into everyday language and political terms. When Roger Revelle characterized Earth as a spaceship in testimony to Congress in 1957, his evocative language framed the issue of our planet's climate vulnerability in a way that technical discourse could not. In this book, Ann Campbell Keller examines the influence of scientists on... (more)

The Lorax

by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel

Illus. in full color. "The big, colorful pictures and the fun images, word plays and rhymes make this an amusing exposition of the ecology crisis."-- School Library Journal.

Into the Wild

by Jon Krakauer

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: setting

by Judi Barrett

by Ben Mikaelsen

by K. A. Applegate

by Cynthia Rylant

by Ron Rozelle

by Gloria Whelan

by Beverley Naidoo

by Stephen Alter

by Gary Paulsen

by Carolyn Hennesy

by E. L. Young

by Beverley Naidoo

by Philippa Pearce

by Lauren St. John

by j r ward

by Shirley Jackson

by Kathryn Lasky

by Ann Campbell Keller

by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel

by Jon Krakauer