Alison Reads

Twelve-year-old Bethany’s world is turned upside down when one day her terrified parents drop her at her aunt’s house and disappear. She discovers that she looks just like the sister she never knew about who died 20 years before at the age of 13. Bethany has to figure out how she fits into a world […]

The fourth book in a series of five. Twelve-year-old Gregor and his three-year-old sister Boots return to the Underland and help Queen Luxa find out why all the mice have suddenly disappeared. This book tackles some difficult questions, such as when war is appropriate, genocide, and how to deal with an unstable power-mad leader. Creative, […]

Hero moves to a new school and on the first day of sixth grade endures teasing about her name. (She was named for a character in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.) She is befriended by an 8th-grade boy and helps her next-door neighbor find a missing diamond. In the course of solving that mystery, she […]

Twelve-year-old Rachel has grown up in East Africa, but when her parents die of influenza in 1919, she is sent to live in England. Containing elements of A Little Princess and The Flame Trees of Thika, this book eloquently describes the life of a missionary child in colonial Africa and the adjustments she must make […]

Twelve-year-old Lily discovers that her dad’s boss, Larry, is a human-whale hybrid bent on taking over the world using robotic whales with laser eyes which walk on hydraulic stilts. It’s up to Lily and her friends Jasper and Katie to stop them. A spoof of books such as Goosebumps and turn-of-the-century boy wonder books, this […]

Somewhere in Italy, sometime in the past, a scarecrow is hit by a bolt of lightning and comes to life. A boy named Jack becomes his servant and together they go in search of fame and fortune and the scarecrow’s home, Spring Valley. They battle brigands, get shipwrecked on a desert island, and the scarecrow […]

In 1943, 10-year-old Dewey moves to New Mexico to live with her father, who is working on a top-secret military project. Dewey is a girl who loves electronics and gadgets, so she is happy being around brilliant scientists. She eventually becomes friends with Suze, another “misfit” girl. This book is a fascinating insight into what […]

Eight-year-old Paris and her older brother Malcolm are separated in foster care when their alcoholic mother can no longer take care of them. Paris spends a year adjusting to normal family life and learning to trust her foster family. Then her mother telephones and Paris must decide whether or not to live with her again. […]