Lone Star Reading List

When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She's alone--left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten. As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. But Maddie's most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. Can Maddie's stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life?

Thirteen-year-old Amari, a poor Black girl from the projects, gets an invitation from her missing brother to join the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and join in the fight against an evil magician.

On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work, Chernobyl, has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person. Oksana must face the lies her parents told her all her life. Valentina must keep her grandmother's secret, one that could put all their lives in danger. And both of them discover something they've wished for: a best friend.

MJ knows what it means to hurt. Bruises from gymnastics heal, but big hurts, like her dad not being around anymore, don't go away. Now her mom needs to work two jobs, and MJ doesn't have friends at school to lean on. There is only one thing MJ loves: the world of professional wrestling. She especially idolizes the luchadores and the stories they tell in the ring. When MJ learns that her neighbor, Mr. Arellano, runs a wrestling school, she has a new mission in life: join the school, train hard, and become a wrestler. But trouble lies ahead. After wrestling in a showcase event, MJ attracts the attention of Mr. Arellano's enemy at the State Athletic Commission. There are threats to shut the school down, putting MJ's new home and the community that welcomed her at risk. What can MJ do to save her new family?

Living in the remote town of Tierra del Sol is dangerous, especially in the criatura months, when powerful spirits roam the desert and threaten humankind. But Cecelia Rios has always believed there was more to the criaturas, much to her family's disapproval. After all, only brujas--humans who capture and control criaturas--consort with the spirits, and brujeria is a terrible crime. When her older sister, Juana, is kidnapped by El Sombrerón, a powerful dark criatura, Cece is determined to bring Juana back. To get into Devil's Alley, though, she'll have to become a bruja herself--while hiding her quest from her parents, her town, and the other brujas. Thankfully, the legendary criatura Coyote has a soft spot for humans and agrees to help her on her journey. With him at her side, Cece sets out to reunite her family--and maybe even change what it means to be a bruja along the way.

Thirteen-year-old Sikander Aziz has to team up with the hero Gilgamesh in order to stop Nergal, the ancient god of plagues, from wiping out the population of Manhattan in this adventure based on Mesopotamian mythology.

Merit Cravan refused to fulfill her obligation to marry a prince, leading to a fairy godling's curse. She will be forced to live as a beast forever, unless she agrees to marry a man of her mother's choosing before her eighteenth birthday. Tevin Dumont has always been a pawn in his family's cons: tempting naïve rich girls to abandon their engagements, unless their parents agree to pay him off. After his mother runs afoul of the beast, he takes her place to keep his siblings safe. He hopes to off his mother's debt by using his con-artist skills to help Merit find the best match. Can Tevin help her break the curse, or is she doomed to be a beast forever?

Avid baker Zoe Washington receives a letter on her twelfth birthday from her biological father, who is in prison for a terrible crime.

Regan Fitz and Elliot Mason have been enemies since they started training to become Glitchers--people who travel through time to preserve important historical events. But everything changes when they find a letter from Regan's future self, warning them about an impending disaster that threatens them and everyone they know. Will they be able to set aside their past in order to save the future?

Born into the middle of World War II, Gary Paulsen's turbulent childhood provided plenty of subject matter for his bestselling novels, and the librarians in his life gave him the inspiration and support to explore the world through books. As a soldier himself, his storytelling technique developed, and for the first time he shares his own.

Jo Linden lives in a world where there are no atomic weapons, and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is played out in the Pax Games, fought with powerful robotic mecha war machines operated by young pilots; Jo needs the prize money to save her father's mecha repair shop, and keep what is left of her family together, but when competing pilots start dying from poisoning, Jo finds herself caught up in Cold War politics and political conspiracy and she discovers that it is not only her family's survival at stake--she may have to prevent World War III.

Brandon is visiting his dad on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 when the attack comes; Reshmina is a girl in Afghanistan who has grown up in the aftermath of that attack but dreams of peace, becoming a teacher and escaping her village and the narrow role that the Taliban believes is appropriate for women--both are struggling to survive, both changed forever by the events of 9/11.

Something is wrong with twelve-year-old Zee, who has returned after a year's absence; nobody knows where he was or what happened to him, but now he is distracted and violent, freaking out when he sees his friends, Justin, Nia, and Lyric, playing an odd game of hide-and-seek, and talking wildly about some danger that is approaching--and soon his friends are pulled into a shadowy world ruled by a monstrous, shape-shifting Seeker, forced to play a terrifying game of hide-and-seek where they will have to confront their worst nightmares in order to find their way home.

Since there wasn't enough proof to convict Alva's father for the murder of her mother, she's been forced to live in his house in Ormscaula, Scotland, being raised by the man she holds responsible for her motherlessness. His family has been called guardians of the loch for generations, and now it falls to her to monitor the water levels, despite not knowing what she's watching for -- or what may be watching her back.

Cooper is lost. Ever since his father left their family three years ago, he has become distant from his friends, constantly annoyed by his little sister, Jess, and completely fed up with the pale, creepy rich girl who moved in next door, who won't stop staring at him. So when Cooper learns of an unsolved mystery his sister has discovered online, he welcomes the distraction. It's the tale of a deadly train crash that occurred a hundred years ago in which one young boy among the dead was never identified. The only distinguishing mark on him was a strange insignia on his suit coat, a symbol no one had seen before or since. Jess is fascinated by the mystery of the unknown child -- because she's seen the insignia. And, she tells Cooper, he has too. It's the symbol on the jacket of the girl next door. As they uncover more information -- and mounting evidence of the girl's seemingly impossible connection to the tragedy -- Cooper and Jess begin to wonder if a similar disaster could be heading to their hometown.

After thirteen-year-old Hattie Oh casts a dangerous spell so her adopted sister, Riley, will get a share of her inherited magic, Riley must undertake a near-impossible quest to save Hattie from death.

In 1938, eleven-year-old Esther joins her father in tropical, multicultural Cuba, where they toil together to rescue the rest of their Jewish family from persecution in Poland. Includes notes about the author's grandmother, on whom the story is based.

Lupe Wong is going to be the first female pitcher in the Major Leagues. She's also championed causes her whole young life. Some worthy ... like expanding the options for race on school tests beyond just a few bubbles. And some not so much...like complaining to the BBC about the length between Doctor Who seasons. Lupe needs an A in all her classes in order to meet her favorite pitcher, Fu Li Hernandez, who's Chinacan/Mexinese just like her. So when the horror that is square dancing rears its head in gym? Obviously she's not gonna let that slide.

After seventh graders Benji and Felix 'borrow' $20 from a lost wallet, the billionaire owner challenges them to spend over $5 million dollars in thirty days in order to learn life lessons about money.

Haunted after helping her father on his ghost-themed Chicago bus tour, twelve-year-old Claire must discover what the spectral boy from the bus wants before it is too late.

Told in their alternating voices, twelve-year-old neighbors and former best friends Cora Hamed and Quinn McCauley begin working together to open a wormhole so they can travel through time to prevent the school shooting that resulted in the deaths of Cora's sister and Quinn's brother.

Bullied and shamed her whole life for being fat, twelve-year-old Ellie finally gains the confidence to stand up for herself, with the help of some wonderful new allies.

Both high school senior Liza Yang and her mother share a love and talent for baking but disagree on the subject of dating, especially when Mrs. Yang turns her annual baking contest into a matchmaking scheme.

Twelve-year-old Golden Maroni starts eighth grade determined to be master of his universe, but learns he cannot control everything on the soccer field, in his friendships, and especially in facing his father's incurable disease.

When sixth-grader Rosie begins to see magic, she learns that her mother's dwindling memory is tied to an age-old battle between the light of the moon and the darkness of witches.

When a homework assignment and a magic table summon real and fictional people from history, including the bloodthirsty pirate Blackbeard, sixth-grader Javi, his brawny younger sister Brady, and his brainy best friend Wiki join forces to save the world.

Seventh grade is not going well for Will Levine. Kids at school bully him because of his funny-looking chin. His science teacher finds out about the turtles he spent his summer collecting from the marsh behind school an dorders him to release them back into the wild. And for his Bar Mitzvah community service project, he has to go to the hospital to visit RJ, an older boy struggling with an incurable disease. Unfortunately, Will hates hospitals. At first, the boys don't get along, but then RJ shares his bucket list with Will. Among the things he wants to do: ride a roller coaster, go to a concert and a school dance, swim in the ocean. To Will, happiness is hanging out in his room, alone, preferably with his turtles. But as RJ's disease worsens, Will realizes he needs to tackle the bucket list on his new friend's behalf before it's too late. It seems like an impossible mission, way outside Will's comfort zone. But as he completes each task with RJ's guidance, Will learns that life is too short to live in a shell.

Vienna. 1936. Three young friends--Leo, Elsa, and Max--spend a perfect day together, unaware that around them Europe is descending into a growing darkness and that events will soon mean that they are ripped apart from each other as their lives take very different directions... Inspired by a true story, this is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking and shows the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.