Tyler Duvall is a twelve-year-old from San Francisco.  His mother has allowed him to travel by himself to visit Jake, her brother in Alaska.  Tyler is looking forward to a month-long fishing vacation.  He thought his uncle would meet him at the airport in Anchorage, Alaska.  Instead, to his surprise, a really big guy named Duke, who is his uncle’s old army buddy, meets him. Duke is a bush pilot who flies supplies in to the remote area where Jake has a cabin. Duke is to deliver Tyler to his uncle’s place along with a planeload of supplies. 

The ride in a beat-up looking airplane with a huge wild-looking pilot was just the beginning of Tyler’s adventures. When he finally arrives at the primitive cabin, he finds that his Uncle Jake is seriously ill.  Also there are two kids living there, a boy and a girl.  The two are orphans that his uncle has taken in to care for.  The situation isn’t exactly what Tyler had expected. 

The good news is that there is a stream near-by that looks good for fishing.  As you can guess from the title of the book, the bad news is that there is a grizzly bear that also likes to fish from the stream. The real tension starts when the grizzly smells the ham baking that Tyler is preparing for a special dinner. Mr. Grizzly wants in the cabin for his dinner and he’s big enough to tear the cabin apart to get in. Once inside, he is likely to want to eat more than just the baked ham!  How would you like to be in a little cabin with an 800-pound bear gradually breaking through the walls?  You need to read the book to find out how it all works out. 

“Grizzly Attack” was written by Todd Strasser and published by Pocket Books.
 

Samantha Byrd is fourteen years old and lives in Virginia.  The story begins in 1775 when the Revolutionary War is just about to start.  Unlike most girls in her time, Samantha is an excellent shot with a musket and can sail a boat better than any boys her age.  She likes to wear breeches and shirts and hates the corsets, petticoats, and long skirts that girls of her time are expected to wear. 

Samantha’s father and older brother are both members of a group called the “Sons of Liberty.” These are colonists who want to declare their independence from England.  They have neighbors who remain loyal to England.  These “loyalists” cooperate with the English soldiers and try to see that the Sons of Liberty are caught and put in prison. 

Samantha likes her life and doesn’t want things to change.  She would like to see peace restored and Virginia go back to being a peaceful colony of England.  But bad things begin to happen to her family.  Her older brother is thrown into prison.  Loyalists burn her father’s tobacco storage shed to the ground.  So Samantha knows she has to take sides and do what she can to secure freedom for her family and her home state of Virginia.

To help save her older brother, Samantha disguises herself as her twin brother and becomes a crewmember on a sailing ship. The captain of the colonist’s ship is intent on freeing some of the Sons of Liberty who are being held as prisoners on an English ship in the harbor. Samantha’s unusual skills as a sailor and a sharpshooter turn out to be useful in the rescue attempt. 

The book provides some historical background on the Revolutionary War while it tells about a young girl’s involvement in what most would see as a man’s war.
 

Tiger Ann Parker at twelve years old has reached the age where her parents embarrass her. Her father and her mother are loving parents but both are mentally slow. Tiger’s classmates at school make cruel remarks about them.

The family leads a reasonably normal life in Saitter, Louisiana, because Tiger’s strong and smart grandmother lives with them.  Granny is the one who sees that the house is kept clean, the clothes are laundered, the meals are cooked, and the bills are paid on time. But Granny dies suddenly.  Now, what to do?

Aunt Dorie Kay, who left the small country town years before, arrives to help make arrangements for the funeral.  Dorie Kay lives in Baton Rouge, the state capitol and a large city. She works for the governor, dresses like a fashion plate, and lives in a nice apartment complex with a swimming pool. 

After the funeral, Dorie Kay takes Tiger to the big city for a visit. When she brings Tiger back to Saitter, they find things pretty much in a shambles.  Tiger’s mom and dad just can’t manage without someone to take charge.  Of course, Dorie Kay wants Tiger to come back with her to Baton Rouge and live with her in that large city.

There are a number of events that complicate the plot. Mainly, Tiger has to decide whether she wants to stay in Saitter and help her parents live like they did before or move to Baton Rouge and make a life for herself in the city, such as her aunt did. There are other characters in the story that, in one way or another, help Tiger make the right decision.
 

Fiona Fagan is a pretty good player on her middle school soccer team.  Her problem is that she has asthma and she really has to take precautions to help keep it under control.  She has to take her inhaler to practice.  When she feels that she is about to have breathing difficulty, she has to go to the sidelines to take deep breaths from the inhaler.

Fiona felt sometimes that the other girls thought she was some kind of a freak because of her problem. She really got into trouble when she foolishly convinced herself that she had outgrown her need for the inhaler. She lied to her parents and told them she was taking her medication to practice, when she wasn’t.  When she had to be rushed to the hospital emergency room, the truth came out.  Her angry parents made her quit the team. 

How the team supported her and helped convince her parents to change their minds is a big part of the story.  Fiona came to find out that her true friends respected her and wanted to see her control her asthma and be a major part of the soccer team.  Side issues included double dating with a girlfriend who felt she had to experiment with smoking cigarettes in order to impress a boy. 

If you are a girl who likes to play soccer, this might be just the book for you. It includes plenty of soccer game action.  It also has tips on how to improve your game.  Its title is “Soccer Stars, On the Sidelines.”  The author is Emily Costello.