Back of Book: 

First published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟  

Back of Book: 

Ten years ago, an impossible thing a flock of pigeons picked up a human baby who had been abandoned in an empty lot and carried her, bundled in blankets, to their roof. Coo has lived her entire life on the rooftop with the pigeons who saved her. It’s the only home she’s ever known. But then a hungry hawk nearly kills Burr, the pigeon she loves most, and leaves him gravely hurt. Coo must make a perilous trip to the ground for the first time to find Tully, a retired postal worker who occasionally feeds Coo’s flock, and who can heal injured birds. Tully mends Burr’s broken wing and coaxes Coo from her isolated life. Living with Tully, Coo experiences warmth, safety, and human relationships for the first time. But just as Coo is beginning to blossom, she learns the human world is infinitely more complex?and cruel?than she could have imagined. This remarkable debut novel will captivate readers from the very first line.  

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟

Back of Book: 

From his seat in the tiny airplane, Fred watches the mysteries of the Amazon jungle pass by below him. He has always dreamed of becoming an explorer, of reading his name among the lists of great adventurers. If only he could land and look about him. 

As he plane smashes into the canopy, Fred is suddenly left without a choice. He and three other children may be alive, but the jungle is a vast, untamed place. With no hope of rescue, the chance of getting home feels terrifyingly small. 

Except, it seems, someone has been there before them. . . 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

From award-winning author Katherine Rundell comes a fast-paced and utterly thrilling adventure driven by the loyalty and love between a grandfather and his granddaughter.

When Vita’s grandfather’s mansion is taken from him by a powerful real estate tycoon, Vita knows it’s up to her to make things right.

With the help of a pickpocket and her new circus friends, Vita creates the plan: Break into the mansion. Steal back what’s rightfully her grandfather’s. Expose the real estate tycoon for the crook he truly is.

But 1920s Manhattan is ever-changing and full of secrets. It might take more than Vita’s ragtag gang of misfits to outsmart the city that never sleeps.

Award-winning author Katherine Rundell has created an utterly gripping tour de-force about loyalty, trust, and the lengths to which we’ll go for the ones we love.  

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

Hans doesn't know who he is or where he came from. When he was a baby, he washed ashore in a wooden box and was adopted by the conniving grave robber Knobbe the Bent. Now fate has thrown him together with Angela von Schwanenberg, a young countess fleeing for her life from the evil Archduke Arnulf and his dreaded necromancer. Together, these friends are on a daring quest to discover Hans' true identity and to save Angela's parents from the archduke. In this world, anything is possible with luck and imagination—even for a grave robber's apprentice. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Note: The Jungle Book is a collection of short stories all wrote by Rudyard Kipling. Many editions these days include both the first and second book. Each edition contains slightly different stories. I've included the stories that were included in the edition that I read. 

Back of Book:

 "Look—look well, O Wolves!" 

And thus is the human infant Mowgli pushed into the council ring to be recognized as one of the wolf pack. Growing up in the jungle, Mowgli has powerful friends and teachers to help him, from the big old brown bear Baloo to the clever black panther Bagheera. But he has a formidable enemy as well, the deceitful- and man eating- tiger Shere Khan. This edition collects all the Mowgli stories, originally published in two volumes, and adds the popular "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." 

This Edition Includes: 

"Mowgli's Brothers" 

"Kaa's Hunting" 

"How Fear Came" 

"Tiger-Tiger" 

"Letting in the Jungle" 

"The King's Ankus" 

"Red Dog" 

"The Spring Running" 

"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" 

Book Number: One and Two (Note: This edition included both the stories from the Jungle Book books one and two.) 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure | Short Stories 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Back of Book: 

Cats and kangaroos, crabs and camels, whales and jaguars, hedgehogs and leopards, magicians and little children, and many other beings are brought to life in an exotic Eastern landscape during "the High and Far-Off Times." Drawn from the wondrous tales told to Kipling as a child by his Indian nurses, Just So Stories creates the magical enchantment of the dawn of the world, when animals could talk and think like people. The laziness of the Camel, the curiosity of the Elephant's Child, the cleverness of the Hedgehog, the confusion of the Painted Jaguar, and all the rest of Kipling's delightful menagerie make Just So Stories unforgettable reading for generations to come. 

This Edition Includes: 

How the Whale Got His Throat 

How the Camel Got His Hump 

How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin 

How the Leopard Got His Spots

The Elephant's Child 

The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo 

The Beginning of the Armadillos 

How the First Letter Was Written 

How the Alphabet Was Made 

The Crab That Played with the Sea 

The Cat That Walked by Himself 

The Butterfly That Stamped 

Book Number: Stand Alone Stories 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure | Short Stories 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

Maximiliano Córdoba loves stories, especially the legend Buelo tells him about a mythical gatekeeper who can guide brave travelers on a journey into tomorrow.

If Max could see tomorrow, he would know if he'd make Santa Maria's celebrated fútbol team and whether he'd ever meet his mother, who disappeared when he was a baby. He longs to know more about her, but Papá won't talk. So when Max uncovers a buried family secret—involving an underground network of guardians who lead people fleeing a neighboring country to safety—he decides to seek answers on his own.

With a treasured compass, a mysterious stone rubbing, and Buelo's legend as his only guides, he sets out on a perilous quest to discover if he is true of heart and what the future holds. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal—a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph and loss. Written in 1952, the hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Peace Prize for literature. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he's got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends—true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up on “greasers” like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect—until the night someone takes things too far.

The Outsiders is a dramatic and enduring work of fiction that laid the groundwork for the YA genre. S. E. Hinton's classic story of a boy who finds himself on the outskirts of regular society remains as powerful today as it was the day it was first published. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

When young Jim Hawkins meets Billy Bones, he quickly becomes intrigued by the mysterious former pirate. But little does Jim know that their meeting will soon send him on a path of swash-buckling adventure across the ocean in the attempt to track down the treasure marked on a pirate's map... 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

This acclaimed bestselling Newbery Honor Book from multi-award-winning author Sharon Creech is a classic and moving story of adventure, self-discovery, and one girl's independence.

Thirteen-year-old Sophie hears the sea calling, promising adventure and a chance for discovery as she sets sail for England with her three uncles and two cousins. Sophie’s cousin Cody isn’t so sure he has the strength to prove himself to the crew and to his father.

Through Sophie’s and Cody’s travel logs, we hear stories of the past and the daily challenges of surviving at sea as The Wanderer sails toward its destination—and its passengers search for their places in the world. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

Still there was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

Born in the wild, a young wolf-dog cub is the sole survivor of a litter birthed by a she-wolf. Together Mother and cub fight for survival in the harsh Klondike wilderness. Forging forward with their natural instincts as their guides, the two come across a group of aboriginal humans. One human named Grey Beaver recognizes the she-wolf as his brother’s wolf-dog he had lost many years ago. With this knowledge, Grey Beaver adopts both the Mother and her cub, which he christens with the name White Fang. 

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟 

Back of Book: 

It is an ordinary Tuesday morning in April when bored, lonely Charlie Fisher witnesses something incredible. Right before his eyes, in a busy square in Marseille, a group of pickpockets pulls off an amazing robbery. As the young bandits appear to melt into the crowd, Charlie realizes with a start that he himself was one of their marks.

Yet Charlie is less alarmed than intrigued. This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened to him since he came to France with his father, an American diplomat. So instead of reporting the thieves, Charlie defends one of their cannons, Amir, to the police, under one condition: he teach Charlie the tricks of the trade.

What starts off as a lesson on pinches, kicks, and chumps soon turns into an invitation for Charlie to join the secret world of the whiz mob, an international band of child thieves who trained at the mysterious School of Seven Bells. The whiz mob are independent and incredibly skilled and make their own way in the world—they are everything Charlie yearns to be. But what at first seemed like a (relatively) harmless new pastime draws him into a dangerous adventure with global stakes greater than he could have ever imagined.  

Book Number: Stand Alone 

Genre: Middle Grade | Adventure 

Review: 🌟🌟🌟🌟