CMS Summer Reading 2012

Four mysterious letters change Miranda's world forever. By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it's safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner. But things start to unravel. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she's too late.

Although a stereotypical bully, Crash Coogan becomes more than one-dimensional in the context of his overworked, unavailable parents and the love he has for his grandfather, who comes to live with the Coogans and then suffers a stroke. It is because of his affection for Scooter that Crash comes to appreciate Penn Webb, a neighbor and classmate whom for years Crash has tormented and teased about his pacifism, vegetarianism, second-hand clothes, and social activism. Penn relentlessly offers friendship, which Crash finally accepts when he sees Penn's love for his own great-grandfather as a common bond.

Is it possible to grow up while getting younger? Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It's quiet and peaceful...Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well...How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one?

THE SUPER BOWL. America's biggest sports spectacle. More than 95 million fans will be watching, but Steve Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson know that what they'll be watching is a lie. They know that the entire offensive line of the California Dreams have failed their doping tests and that the Dreams' owner is trying to cover up the test results. These two teens are sitting on the biggest sports scandal of the decade. What they don't know -yet - is how to prove it... (John Feinstein writes many mysteries focused on major sports events)

This collection presents forty-seven poems, each exhibiting the power and grace that have become the hallmarks of Oliver's work. Includes poems on crickets, toads, trout lilies, black snakes, goldenrod, bears, greeting the morning, watching the deer and, finally, lingering in happiness. Each poem is imbued with the extraordinary perceptions of a poet who considers the everyday in our lives and the natural world around us and finds a multitude of reasons to marvel.

Find your wild, wacky, and wise side and put it to use in creative writing. Rip the Page! Adventures in Creative Writing invites children (ages eight to twelve) to pick up a pen and find out for themselves all the ways that creative writing can be their friend.

Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in his family's crowded New York City apartment. So, armed with just the bare necessities -- a penknife, a ball of cord, some flint and steel, and the clothes on his back -- he runs away to the mountains. There, Sam must rely on his own ingenuity and the resources of the great outdoors to survive -- and he discovers a side of himself he never knew existed. Newbery Honor winner.

Plain Kate's odd appearance and expertise as a woodcarver cause some to think her a witch, but friendship with a talking cat and, later, with humans help her to survive and even thrive in a world of magic, charms, and fear.