Grade: 4

Sabuda and Reinhart Studios have created another spectacular pop-up book for George Lucas’s epic STAR WARS movies! Bestselling pop-up artist and engineer Matthew Reinhart has designed a thirtieth anniversary commemorative edition that comes packed with a variety of novelty features — pop-ups, working light sabers, pull tabs, and other interactive looks at the exciting and popular movies. This beautiful book will impress all fans of STAR WARS and gives a whole new perspective to the films.

Despite the danger of capture and punishment, a brave young slave creates a quilt with a map stitched into it to guide herself and others to freedom.

Rosemary Wells’s mother was a ballerina who believed that Maria Tallchief was America’s greatest dancer. So it made sense for Wells to seek out this famous ballerina to collaborate on a picture biography. Wells does a marvelous job telling Tallchief’s story, from her early years on an Osage Indian reservation in Oklahoma to the stages of New York. Young readers will see that persistence and practice pay off.

Patricia Polacco is now one of America’s most loved children’s book writers and illustrators, but once upon a time, she was a little girl named Trisha starting school. Trisha could paint and draw beautifully, but when she looked at words on a page, all she could see was jumble. It took a very special teacher to recognize little Trisha’s dyslexia: Mr. Falker, who encouraged her to overcome her reading disability. Patricia Polacco will never forget him, and neither will we.

“We said there was no home like a raft. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery…but you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” Sail down the Mississippi with Huck Finn and the runaway slave, Jim. Twain’s beloved tale, with its folksy language, creates an indelible image of antebellum America with its sleepy river towns, con men, family feuds, and a variety of colorful characters.

Colonial America comes to life in this short novel inspired by an actual meeting in 1777 between Quakers and Native Americans. To Stands Straight, a young Abenaki Indian scouting for British soldiers, all Americans are enemies; Americans killed his mother and brother. Then Stands Straight and his scouting party come upon a Quaker meetinghouse, where they encounter Americans who carry no weapons, value peace, and greet them as friends. The result? The Abenaki decide to remain neutral in the clash between the British and the colonists who are fighting for independence. Bruchac skillfully develops his characters and wins sympathy for the conflicts they face by telling the story from alternating viewpoints–Stands Straight and that of fourteen-year-old Quaker Samuel Russell. An afterward by the author provides more historical information along with personal anecdotes about how the writer became interested in this story and his surprise in learning that the Indians described in his research were probably Abenaki–his own native heritage.

Still far from their homeland after escaping slavery in the icebound land of Skandia, Will and Evanlyn’s plans to return to Araluen are spoiled when Evanlyn is taken captive by a Temujai warrior. Though still weakened by the warmweed’s toxic effects, Will employs his Ranger training to locate his friend, but an enemy scouting party has him fatally outnumbered. Will is certain death is close at hand, until Halt and Horace make a daring, last-minute rescue. The reunion is cut short, however, when Halt makes a horrifying discovery: Skandia’s borders have been breached by the entire Temujai army. And Araluen is next in their sights. If two kingdoms are to be saved, an unlikely union must be made. Will it hold long enough to vanquish a ruthless new enemy? Or will past tensions spell doom for all?

Ben Hunter received two oddly connected gifts for his 12th birthday. One was a room given to him by his parents — to use as an art studio — and the other was a letter from his uncle inviting him to visit. The last time he and his Uncle Ian (also an artist) were together, Ben was injured in a woodworking accident and lost his little finger. When Ben and his mother arrive at Uncle Ian’s home in Oregon, the relatives work hard at reconstructing relationships and crafting new ones with Uncle Ian’s pregnant wife and some local kids. When Ben feels responsible for one child’s accidental fall, he builds him a tree house as a gift (inspired by one of his uncle’s sketches). After he returns home, Ben starts renovating his “birthday room” into a guest room as a “gift” to his reconciled relatives.