Recomended Book for Fifth Grade

Hint: Non-fiction is real reading, too!  Mix in magazines, cookbooks, the sports pages and biography to make reading a real-world activity and not just homework, and to keep reluctant readers in the swim.

1. King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak (Algonquin Books, 2004)A boy king attempts to run a country of children. Whether Matt is attempting a new reform involving the distribution of chocolate to all of his citizens, running to do battle on a war-torn front under a false name while a lifelike doll reigns in his stead, arranging for his population to attend summer camp or on a diplomatic mission to the land of the cannibals, every chapter ends with a cliffhanger.  In my opinion, one of the best children’s books of all time. 
2. Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (Scholastic Inc, 2002) A larger-than-life hero confronts racism while living on the street.  This story of a boy’s quest for family without a color line has amazing heart. 
3. A Drowned Maiden's Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick, 2006) Living as the daughter in a family of spinster spiritualists, Maud Flynn is being preened to play the part of a ghost child scheduled to appear in staged seances in order to bilk a bereaved millionairess of her money. Detailed, descriptive writing delivers the reader to this weird world; we can practically smell the antiquity of the room, see the dust mites floating in the light from the ragged damask curtains that shroud a place out of time, and feel the stormy turmoil of Maud's own awakening as a moral person.
4. Best Shorts:  Favorite Short Stories for Sharing by Avi and Carolyn Shute (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) The collection is just brilliant, pulse-perfect and page-turning. It includes Louis Untemeyer's "Dog of Pompeii" about a pet who gives his all to save a blind boy during a volcanic eruption, "Rogue Wave" by Theodore Taylor which will leave readers as breathless as if they were watching any movie on the big screen, ghostly stories, classic stories, multicultural stories... It's one of those rare books that makes anyone who reads it a better person, and anyone who reads it aloud a better teacher.
5. The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois (Puffin Books, 2001) Professor William Waterman Sherman plans to spend his retirement crossing the Pacific in his hot-air balloon, but instead comes down on a volcanic island inhabited by inventors and gourmets.  A truly imaginative story that will have children’s senses of possibility flying high.

Authors: Eva Ibbotson, Lois Lowry, Brian Jacques, Karen Cushman, Pam Munoz Ryan

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