Valentina knows right away that morning that something is wrong. Her mother tries to make excuses for why her father didn’t come home the night before from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant where he works. But even though Valentina has been told over and over again that the plant is safe and that nothing could ever happen, she clearly sees a fire in the distance, where the plant is located. Still, her mother insists that she go to school like usual. When she gets outside, things are even stranger. There is a weird smell to the air and even the color of the sky is wrong. And where are the birds, which was her first hint something was wrong?
At school, the girl who seems to hate her the most, Oksana, appears determined to create a problem between them, yet again. Valentina is worried about her father, and she wonders if Oksana’s father returned from the plant since he works with Valentina’s father. Oksana has her own worries, as her father is missing too. But she has other reasons to be concerned about whether or not he will return.
What neither girl knows is that the plant has had a terrible disaster, one that will impact the rest of their lives forever and bring them together in ways they never could have imagined.
The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman shows how the Soviet Government controlled all aspects of their citizens lives and how two girls had to try to survive once everything changed. This was a fascinating and really good read.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
blames herself, she begins to realize that some things she always believed were safe and secure might not be. Mary is deaf and so is her father, but her older brother was hearing and so is her mother. Where they live, on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, it is very common for someone to be deaf. In fact, their whole village knows sign language so they can all talk to each other. 
Things are changing in India in 1857. But it turns out, not fast enough for Meera. She longs to learn to read and write like the boys her father teaches, but she knows that isn’t something that her father approves of for girls. In fact, Meera is getting ready to go off and be with her husband, a boy named Krishna when she turns 13 in just a few days. She has been married to him since she was a little girl, but will go join his family now that she is older. Her parents believe in a fringe practice called sati, where if a husband dies before the wife, the wife will follow him in death by sacrificing herself on his funeral pyre. Meera was young, but she still remembers when her aunt had to do that after her uncle died. Still, she is young and her husband is as well, so she isn’t worried about this.
Joe wants more for his life that what his father has. He thinks that by showing his dad he was able to save up and purchase a news stand on his own that his dad will respect him more. And then he can ask Maggie to begin planning their lives together. Or that is what he hopes as the country gets ready to celebrate Decoration Day, to honor all the soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
Richard and Millie had grown up together with their families in Central Point, Virginia. It was an unusual area for that time in Virginia – black and white families would often get together for events and to just hang out. The rest of the segregated South seemed to disappear in Central Point. When Millie was in high school, she and Richard started to date and in time fell in love.
That summer was a hot one, just like all the others in Mississippi. Yet Rose Lee was used to the heat, even if she never got USED to it. It just was. But that July, she and her brother Fred Lee got bad news, news that they should have seen coming but didn’t. Their mother, who had married a man to take care of his younger children, was moving to Chicago, without them. Not that they had seen their mother much since she’d married Mr. Pete, but still, now she was moving to Chicago, without them, and didn’t seem to have any issues with it. Of course, she’d already left them with her parents, Papa and Ma Pearl, about seven years ago, so why should she start acting like a mother now? Still Rose is terribly hurt by the fact that her mother is showing she obviously doesn’t care about either her or Fred.
Ashley lives in her nice house in the Los Angeles suburbs where the most people worry about is when the wild fires come down and houses burn. Well, that is what people think. But just like most places and with most people, it doesn’t take too long looking under the surface to see issues. Like Ashley’s older sister, Jo. Jo has become a huge source of conversation at their household, and mostly because their parents don’t know what to do with her. Ashley feels like that has taken some of the pressure off of her, but really, how much pressure can be removed considering she’s a young black girl, growing up in Los Angels in 1992?
never have dreamed of – moments of shear terror followed by hours and days of unbelievable boredom. To see the horrors of the Battle of Gettysburg, and to see friends get mowed down by bullets – to kill others – all things that Charlie realizes he wasn’t prepared for at all. How does someone survive something like that? Or do they?
When school is taken away from Joan, it seems like the worst thing ever. How can she convince her father that school is what her mom wanted for her? How can she convince him that her learning is important – as important as her work on the farm for him and her three older brothers? It isn’t until a visit from her former teacher that Joan gets an idea. If she can only earn enough money from selling eggs, she might be able to get back to school and her dream of leaving the farm and all the hard drudgery that it represents. Yet, quickly it becomes apparent, no matter what Joan says or how hard she works, her father expects her to live out her life in servitude to the farm and to him. After one horrible night of screaming and yelling, Joan makes a brave decision. She will run away and get a job in a larger city. After all, they pay girls in the city to do the work she’s doing for free on the farm. And they pay well! But she knows no one will hire a girl of only 14. So a plan forms. She will need to change her age and her name, just in case her father comes looking for her.
Okinawa is a relatively small island off the southern tip of Japan, but at the end of World War II it was the place of the last and bloodiest battle of the whole Pacific Ocean war.
Books in the Middle: Reading for Middle School 