10th Grade Summer Reading
Summer is a great time to relax, spend time with friends and family, go on adventures, work a summer job, and READ! Make a plan to read at least five (5) books over the summer to keep your reading muscles in shape. Four of the books are your choice, and one book is a “guided choice” book from the Raider Reading list below. The books listed below will support what you will be learning in the IS program during 10th grade and used in class during the first full week of school.
The summer reading assignment you will be graded on in the fall is:
· Select ONE of the books from the list below.
· Finish reading the book BEFORE the first day of school.
· During the first full week of school in the fall, complete an in-class writing assignment that demonstrates your knowledge of the book’s plot, characters, and main ideas and, create a visual that promotes the book as a “must read” to your peers.
Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. New York : Ballantine Books, 1995, c1980.Seconds before Earth is demolished to make room for a galactic freeway, an earthman is saved by his friend. Together they journey through the galaxy. [1000]
Allende, Isabella. Eva Luna. New York : Bantam Books, 1989,c1987. Against a background of South American history and revolution, this love story portrays the relationship between a headstrong orphan and a German adventurer.
Anderson, Laurie. Speak. New York : Speak, 2006, c1999. A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school. Includes bonus material and a new forward by the author. [680]
Asimov, Isaac. Foundation. New York : Bantam Books, 1991. As the Galactic Empire declines, psycho-historian Hari Seldon and his band of psycho-biologists form the Foundation; designed to form the nucleus of an eventual ideal universal ruling corporation. [830]
Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker. New York : Little, Brown, 2010. In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl. [690]
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. They called themselves the K.K.K.: the birth of an American terrorist group. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Documents the history and origin of the Ku Klux Klan from its beginning in Pulaski, Tennessee, and provides personal accounts, congressional documents, diaries, and more. [1180]
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York : Ballantine Books, [1982] A book burner in a future fascist state finds out books are a vital part of a culture he never knew. He clandestinely pursues reading, until he is betrayed. [890]
Christopher, Lucy. Stolen. New York : Chicken House, 2010. Sixteen-year-old Gemma, a British city-dweller, is abducted while on vacation with her parents and taken to the Australian outback, where she soon realizes that escape attempts are futile, and in time she learns that her captor is not as despicable as she first believed. [570]
Cooney, Caroline B. What Janie Found. New York : Dell Laurel-Leaf, [2002], c2000.While still adjusting to the reality of having two families, her birth family and the family into which she was kidnapped as a small child, seventeen-year-old Janie makes a shocking discovery about her long-gone kidnapper. [600]
Coy, John. Box Out. New York : Scholastic, [2010], c2008. High school sophomore Liam jeopardizes his new position on the varsity basketball team when he decides to take a stand against his coach who is leading prayers before games and enforcing team wide participation. [530]
Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York – Viking, 2005.What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? As in Guns, Germs, and Steel , Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c1997. Traces the development of primitive societies showing why some groups advanced more rapidly than others and how this progression explains why various populations stabilize at specific phases of development while others continue to evolve. []
Dowd, Siobhan. Bog Child. New York : David Fickling Books, 2008. In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog. [530]
Green, John. An Abundance of Katherines. New York : Dutton Books, c2006. Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships. [890]
Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York : Dutton Books, c2012. Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life. [850]
Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York : Speak, 2007, c2005. Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash. [930]
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 2004, c2003. Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically- gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. [1180]
Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith. New York : Holt,A biography of English naturalist Charles Darwin that provides an account of the personality behind evolutionary theory and the effect of his work on his personal life, such as his relationship with his religious wife. [1020]
Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land. New York : Ace Books, 1987, c1961. After his arrival on Earth from his home on Mars, Valentine Michael Smith becomes the founder and pastor of a new religious sect. [940]
Jaramillo, Ann. La Linea. New York : RB/Square Fish, 2008, c2006. When fifteen-year-old Miguel's time finally comes to leave his poor Mexican village, cross the border illegally, and join his parents in California, his younger sister's determination to join him soon imperils them both. [650]
Johnson, Charles, Middle Passage. New York : Atheneum, 1990. In 1830, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave leading a dissolute life in New Orleans, finds himself forced into marriage. [1150]
Jones, Diana W. Howl’s Moving Castle. Greenwillow/Eos, p2008, c1986 Eldest of three sisters in a land where it is considered to be a misfortune, Sophie is resigned to her fate as a hat shop apprentice until a witch turns her into an old woman and she finds herself in the castle of the greatly feared wizard Howl.
Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains. New York : Random House Trade
Paperbacks, 2004, c2003. Traces the efforts of Dr. Paul Farmer to transform healthcare on a global scale, documenting his visits to some of the world's most impoverished regions and the unconventional methods that enabled him to improve and save lives. [1080]
Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Scribner., Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. [1110]
L’ Engle, Madeleine. A Ring of Endless Light. During the summer her grandfather is dying of leukemia and death seems all around, 15- year-old Vicky finds comfort with the pod of dolphins with which she has been doing research.
London, Jack. The Call of the Wild. New York : Tor, 1990, c1986.The story of the sled dog, Buck, who was mistreated by his master and broke free to roam the Alaskan wilderness. [1120]
Magoon, Kekla. The Rock and The River. New York : Aladdin, 2009. In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African-Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party. [550]
Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy: the true story of a Black youth's coming of age in Apartheid South Africa . New York : New American Library, 1987, c1986.
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. [1040]
McDonald, Janet. Spellbound. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Raven, a teenage mother and high school dropout living in a housing project, decides, with the help and sometime interference of her best friend Aisha, to study for a spelling bee which could lead to a college preparatory program and four-year scholarship. [580]
Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. New York : Wendy Lamb Books, c2009. Fourteen-year-old Calogero Scalise and his Sicilian uncles and cousin live in small-town Louisiana in 1898, when Jim Crow laws rule and anti-immigration sentiment is strong, so despite his attempts to be polite and to follow American customs, disaster dogs his family at every turn. [430]
Pratchett, Terry. Nation. New York : HarperCollins, c2008. Horn Book; Printz. After a devastating tsunami destroys all that they have ever known, Mau, an island boy, and Daphne, an aristocratic English girl, together with a small band of refugees, set about rebuilding their community and all the things that are important in their lives. [790]
Quammen, David. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. New York - WW Norton & Co, 2012. A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.
Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia : Quirk Books, c2011. (Trilogy) Sixteen-year-old Jacob, having traveled to a remote island after a family tragedy, discovers an abandoned orphanage, and, after some investigating, he learns the children who lived there may have been dangerous and quarantined and may also still be alive. [890]
Rossi, Veronica. Under the Never Sky. New York : Harper, c2012. YALSA Best Fiction 2013.When Aria, a sheltered and fragile Dweller, is exiled from her home in Reverie, she must face The Death Shop, a land filled with cannibals and dangerous energy storms, and her only hope for staying alive depends on Outsider Perry, a savage hunter. [580]
Saenz, Benjamin Alire. Last Night I Sang To The Monster: A Novel. El Paso, TX : Cinco Puntos Press, c2009. Eighteen-year-old Zach does not remember how he came to be in a treatment center for alcoholics, but through therapy and caring friends, his amnesia fades and he learns to face his past while working toward a better future. [490]
Sepetys, Ruta. Between Shades of Gray. New York : Speak, 2012, c2011. In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note. [490]
Sheinkin, Steve. The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, & Treachery. New York - Roaring Brook Press, 2010. Most people know that Benedict Arnold was America's first, most notorious traitor. Few know that he was also one of its greatest war heroes. Stone, Tanya Lee.
Almost Astronauts: 13 women who dared to dream. Somerville, Mass. : Candlewick Press, 2009. Profiles thirteen women who challenged social norms and government policies to prove they could be exceptional astronauts. [980]
Stratt Stratton, Allan. Chanda’s Secrets. Toronto ; New York : Annick Press ; Buffalo, NY), c2004. Chandra Kabelo, a sixteen-year-old in a small South African town, faces down shame and stigma in her efforts to help friends and family members who are dying of AIDS. [590]
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings (series). Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [2004], c1954. Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; The Return of the King. [860]
Werlin, Nancy. The Rules of Survival. New York : Speak, 2008, c2006. Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
Williams-Garcia, Rita. Jumped. New York : HarperTeen, c2009. The lives of Leticia, Dominique, and Trina are irrevocably intertwined through the course of one day in an urban high school after Leticia overhears Dominique's plans to beat up Trina and must decide whether or not to get involved. [600]
Wittlinger, Ellen. Hard Love. New York : Aladdin Paperbacks, 2001, c1999. Printz Honor. After starting to publish a magazine in which he writes his secret feelings about his lonely life and his parents' divorce, sixteen-year-old John meets an unusual girl and begins to develop a healthier personality. [680]
Wright, Richard. Right of Passage. When fifteen-year-old Johnny Gibbs is told that he is really a foster child, he runs off into the streets of Harlem and meets up with a gang that wants him to participate in a mugging. [600]
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York : Knopf, 2007. Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. [730]
The summer reading assignment you will be graded on in the fall is:
· Select ONE of the books from the list below.
· Finish reading the book BEFORE the first day of school.
· During the first full week of school in the fall, complete an in-class writing assignment that demonstrates your knowledge of the book’s plot, characters, and main ideas and, create a visual that promotes the book as a “must read” to your peers.
Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. New York : Ballantine Books, 1995, c1980.Seconds before Earth is demolished to make room for a galactic freeway, an earthman is saved by his friend. Together they journey through the galaxy. [1000]
Allende, Isabella. Eva Luna. New York : Bantam Books, 1989,c1987. Against a background of South American history and revolution, this love story portrays the relationship between a headstrong orphan and a German adventurer.
Anderson, Laurie. Speak. New York : Speak, 2006, c1999. A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school. Includes bonus material and a new forward by the author. [680]
Asimov, Isaac. Foundation. New York : Bantam Books, 1991. As the Galactic Empire declines, psycho-historian Hari Seldon and his band of psycho-biologists form the Foundation; designed to form the nucleus of an eventual ideal universal ruling corporation. [830]
Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker. New York : Little, Brown, 2010. In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl. [690]
Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. They called themselves the K.K.K.: the birth of an American terrorist group. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Documents the history and origin of the Ku Klux Klan from its beginning in Pulaski, Tennessee, and provides personal accounts, congressional documents, diaries, and more. [1180]
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York : Ballantine Books, [1982] A book burner in a future fascist state finds out books are a vital part of a culture he never knew. He clandestinely pursues reading, until he is betrayed. [890]
Christopher, Lucy. Stolen. New York : Chicken House, 2010. Sixteen-year-old Gemma, a British city-dweller, is abducted while on vacation with her parents and taken to the Australian outback, where she soon realizes that escape attempts are futile, and in time she learns that her captor is not as despicable as she first believed. [570]
Cooney, Caroline B. What Janie Found. New York : Dell Laurel-Leaf, [2002], c2000.While still adjusting to the reality of having two families, her birth family and the family into which she was kidnapped as a small child, seventeen-year-old Janie makes a shocking discovery about her long-gone kidnapper. [600]
Coy, John. Box Out. New York : Scholastic, [2010], c2008. High school sophomore Liam jeopardizes his new position on the varsity basketball team when he decides to take a stand against his coach who is leading prayers before games and enforcing team wide participation. [530]
Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York – Viking, 2005.What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? As in Guns, Germs, and Steel , Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c1997. Traces the development of primitive societies showing why some groups advanced more rapidly than others and how this progression explains why various populations stabilize at specific phases of development while others continue to evolve. []
Dowd, Siobhan. Bog Child. New York : David Fickling Books, 2008. In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog. [530]
Green, John. An Abundance of Katherines. New York : Dutton Books, c2006. Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships. [890]
Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York : Dutton Books, c2012. Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life. [850]
Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York : Speak, 2007, c2005. Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash. [930]
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 2004, c2003. Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically- gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. [1180]
Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith. New York : Holt,A biography of English naturalist Charles Darwin that provides an account of the personality behind evolutionary theory and the effect of his work on his personal life, such as his relationship with his religious wife. [1020]
Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land. New York : Ace Books, 1987, c1961. After his arrival on Earth from his home on Mars, Valentine Michael Smith becomes the founder and pastor of a new religious sect. [940]
Jaramillo, Ann. La Linea. New York : RB/Square Fish, 2008, c2006. When fifteen-year-old Miguel's time finally comes to leave his poor Mexican village, cross the border illegally, and join his parents in California, his younger sister's determination to join him soon imperils them both. [650]
Johnson, Charles, Middle Passage. New York : Atheneum, 1990. In 1830, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave leading a dissolute life in New Orleans, finds himself forced into marriage. [1150]
Jones, Diana W. Howl’s Moving Castle. Greenwillow/Eos, p2008, c1986 Eldest of three sisters in a land where it is considered to be a misfortune, Sophie is resigned to her fate as a hat shop apprentice until a witch turns her into an old woman and she finds herself in the castle of the greatly feared wizard Howl.
Kidder, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains. New York : Random House Trade
Paperbacks, 2004, c2003. Traces the efforts of Dr. Paul Farmer to transform healthcare on a global scale, documenting his visits to some of the world's most impoverished regions and the unconventional methods that enabled him to improve and save lives. [1080]
Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Scribner., Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. [1110]
L’ Engle, Madeleine. A Ring of Endless Light. During the summer her grandfather is dying of leukemia and death seems all around, 15- year-old Vicky finds comfort with the pod of dolphins with which she has been doing research.
London, Jack. The Call of the Wild. New York : Tor, 1990, c1986.The story of the sled dog, Buck, who was mistreated by his master and broke free to roam the Alaskan wilderness. [1120]
Magoon, Kekla. The Rock and The River. New York : Aladdin, 2009. In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African-Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party. [550]
Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy: the true story of a Black youth's coming of age in Apartheid South Africa . New York : New American Library, 1987, c1986.
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. [1040]
McDonald, Janet. Spellbound. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Raven, a teenage mother and high school dropout living in a housing project, decides, with the help and sometime interference of her best friend Aisha, to study for a spelling bee which could lead to a college preparatory program and four-year scholarship. [580]
Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. New York : Wendy Lamb Books, c2009. Fourteen-year-old Calogero Scalise and his Sicilian uncles and cousin live in small-town Louisiana in 1898, when Jim Crow laws rule and anti-immigration sentiment is strong, so despite his attempts to be polite and to follow American customs, disaster dogs his family at every turn. [430]
Pratchett, Terry. Nation. New York : HarperCollins, c2008. Horn Book; Printz. After a devastating tsunami destroys all that they have ever known, Mau, an island boy, and Daphne, an aristocratic English girl, together with a small band of refugees, set about rebuilding their community and all the things that are important in their lives. [790]
Quammen, David. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. New York - WW Norton & Co, 2012. A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.
Riggs, Ransom. Miss Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia : Quirk Books, c2011. (Trilogy) Sixteen-year-old Jacob, having traveled to a remote island after a family tragedy, discovers an abandoned orphanage, and, after some investigating, he learns the children who lived there may have been dangerous and quarantined and may also still be alive. [890]
Rossi, Veronica. Under the Never Sky. New York : Harper, c2012. YALSA Best Fiction 2013.When Aria, a sheltered and fragile Dweller, is exiled from her home in Reverie, she must face The Death Shop, a land filled with cannibals and dangerous energy storms, and her only hope for staying alive depends on Outsider Perry, a savage hunter. [580]
Saenz, Benjamin Alire. Last Night I Sang To The Monster: A Novel. El Paso, TX : Cinco Puntos Press, c2009. Eighteen-year-old Zach does not remember how he came to be in a treatment center for alcoholics, but through therapy and caring friends, his amnesia fades and he learns to face his past while working toward a better future. [490]
Sepetys, Ruta. Between Shades of Gray. New York : Speak, 2012, c2011. In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note. [490]
Sheinkin, Steve. The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, & Treachery. New York - Roaring Brook Press, 2010. Most people know that Benedict Arnold was America's first, most notorious traitor. Few know that he was also one of its greatest war heroes. Stone, Tanya Lee.
Almost Astronauts: 13 women who dared to dream. Somerville, Mass. : Candlewick Press, 2009. Profiles thirteen women who challenged social norms and government policies to prove they could be exceptional astronauts. [980]
Stratt Stratton, Allan. Chanda’s Secrets. Toronto ; New York : Annick Press ; Buffalo, NY), c2004. Chandra Kabelo, a sixteen-year-old in a small South African town, faces down shame and stigma in her efforts to help friends and family members who are dying of AIDS. [590]
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings (series). Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [2004], c1954. Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; The Return of the King. [860]
Werlin, Nancy. The Rules of Survival. New York : Speak, 2008, c2006. Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
Williams-Garcia, Rita. Jumped. New York : HarperTeen, c2009. The lives of Leticia, Dominique, and Trina are irrevocably intertwined through the course of one day in an urban high school after Leticia overhears Dominique's plans to beat up Trina and must decide whether or not to get involved. [600]
Wittlinger, Ellen. Hard Love. New York : Aladdin Paperbacks, 2001, c1999. Printz Honor. After starting to publish a magazine in which he writes his secret feelings about his lonely life and his parents' divorce, sixteen-year-old John meets an unusual girl and begins to develop a healthier personality. [680]
Wright, Richard. Right of Passage. When fifteen-year-old Johnny Gibbs is told that he is really a foster child, he runs off into the streets of Harlem and meets up with a gang that wants him to participate in a mugging. [600]
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York : Knopf, 2007. Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. [730]