BCB: Preliminary Round 21
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger
Magic Shop by Bruce Coville
Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright
The Curse of the Gloamglozer by Paul Stewart
School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari
Pillage by Obert Skye
The Blackwell Pages by K. L. Armstrong
The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
Fairy Oak by Elizabeth Gnone
see results
Summaries under the cut
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danzinger
Marcy Lewis is bored by school, she knows she's never going to be thin, and she is dead sure she'll never have a date. Life at home isn't great either, since her father bosses her and her mother around. Then along comes Ms. Finney, an English teacher who'll try anything in the classroom and actually treats kids like human beings. Now that she's found a teacher who sees Marcy as more than a name on an attendance sheet, Marcy realizes her life could mean something. When Ms. Finney is suspended, Marcy knows she's got to take a stand. But is this new independence worth the price she'll pay at school and at home?
Magic Shop by Bruce Coville
Russell Crannaker, a rather timid boy who is eager to frighten the school bully on Halloween night, acquires a magic ring and the power to change himself into a hideous monster.
Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright
When Garnet finds a silver thimble in the sand by the river, she is sure it’s magical. But is it magical enough to help her pig, Timmy, win a blue ribbon on Fair Day?
The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart
Fourteen-year-old Quint Verginix is the only remaining son of famous sky-pirate Wind Jackal. He and his father have journeyed to the city of Sanctaphrax – a great floating rock, bound to the ground below by a chain, its inhabitants living with their heads literally in the clouds.
But the city hides a dangerous secret: deep inside the great rock, something horrible lurks. With his father away, Quint may be the only one who can save Sanctaphrax from the dreaded curse of the gloamglozer . . .
School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari
Everyone is afraid of something...
Madeleine Masterson is deathly afraid of bugs, especially spiders.
Theodore Bartholomew is petrified of dying.
Lulu Punchalower is scared of confined spaces.
Garrison Feldman is terrified of deep water.
With very few options left, the parents of these four twelve year-olds send them to the highly elusive and exclusive School of Fear to help them overcome their phobias. But when their peculiar teacher, Mrs. Wellington, and her unconventional teaching methods turn out to be more frightening than even their fears, the foursome realize that this just may be the scariest summer of their lives.
Pillage by Obert Skye
Upon his mother's death, fifteen-year-old Beck Phillips is sent to live with an eccentric uncle he had never met in a remote manor house, where he learns that his family suffers from a curse that allows him to make plants grow on command and dragon eggs hatch.
The Blackwell Pages by K. L. Armstrong
In Viking times, Norse myths predicted the end of the world, an event called Ragnarok, that only the gods can stop. When this apocalypse happens, the gods must battle the monsters--wolves the size of the sun, serpents that span the seabeds, all bent on destroying the world.
The gods died a long time ago.
Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history--because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke.
However, knowing the legends and completely believing them are two different things. When the rune readers reveal that Ragnarok is coming and kids--led by Matt--will stand in for the gods in the final battle, he can hardly believe it. Matt, Laurie, and Fen's lives will never be the same as they race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world.
The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
Annika is happy living in the servants' quarters of a house owned by three eccentric professors. She adores Ellie and Sigrid, the cook and housemaid who found her as a baby, abandoned on a church doorstep. In the eleven years since, they have taught her how to bake and clean to perfection. Then one day a glamorous stranger arrives, claiming to be Annika's mother. Annika is no servant, she learns, but an aristocrat whose true home is an ancient castle. But at crumbling Spittal, Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her newfound family. . .
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
Jerry, Jimmy, and Cathy stumble upon a mysterious castle with a beautiful princess asleep in the garden. The princess is really Mabel, the housekeeper's niece, who is only pretending to be royalty. But when she shows them a secret room filled with treasure where they discover a magical ring, enchantment becomes a reality.
Fairy Oak by Elizabetta Gnone
Fairy Oak is the name of a village that grew up in the shade of a talking oak tree, an imaginary place, lost in the mists of time immemorial, overlooking a stormy sea, next to uplands covered in snow in winter, surrounded by enchanted woods, vast meadows, crystal clear rivers and lakes. A healthy and uncontaminated nature, which dominates and envelops the worlds in which the stories unfold. Within the walls of the old village there lives an equally old community, a mixed bag of funny characters, with the rituals, customs, habits and familiarity of a serene, cheerful, lively people. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent twins Vanilla and Lavender. To save their people, menaced by a cruel enemy, they go on a long journey deep into the labyrinths of their powers. Since the girls are very young, at first lots of things go wrong. Some are frightening. In short, it’s not going to be easy at all! But someone and something will help them.
