2009 DCF Winner
Congratulations to Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, winner of the 2009 DCF Children’s Book Award! Over 5,400 Vermont kids voted for their favorites from the DCF List. That means that those kids read a minimum of 27,000 books! Great job, everyone! Check the DCF Site for details on the upcoming DCF Award Ceremony, as well as a list of the top ten vote-getters from this year’s tally.
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Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
When his father is arrested as a debtor in 1849 London, fourteen-year-old John Huffman must take on unexpected responsibilities, from asking a distant relative for help to determining why people are spying on him and his family.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
Pirate Jack Plank is unable to get a job and he spends his evenings telling stories to the other boarders at Mrs. DeFresno boarding house.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
A memoir of a Palestinian woman’s childhood experiences during the Six-Day War and its aftermath.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Describes the work of a man who tracks trash as it travels great distances by way of ocean currents.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
The noisy fifth-grade boys of Laketon Elementary School challenge the equally loud fifth-grade girls to a “no talking” contest.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
In 1860, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family’s freedom.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Examines the debate over who really discovered America, looking at Columbus, the Vikings, the Chinese and the native peoples who came many thousands of years earlier.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
A teenaged girl named Jessie voices typical and not so typical teenage concerns in this unique, hilarious collection of concrete poems.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
In the coal mining region of mid- nineteenth-century eastern Pennsylvania, Phin witnesses a murder and runs for his life, pursued by a mysterious man and a horse with the instincts of a bloodhound.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren’s years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both Dashti and Saren must hide their identities as they work as kitchen maids.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
When Deet’s father is jailed for using drugs, Deet learns that prison is not what he expected, nor are other people necessarily the way he thought they were.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Ginny’s first year of middle school is told through “stuff”: IMs, notes, appointment cards, cartoons and report cards.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
When twelve-year-old Becker Drane is recruited by The Seems, a parallel universe that runs everything in The World, he must fix a disastrous glitch in the Department of Sleep that threatens the ability of everyone to ever fall asleep again.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
When Emmy discovers that she and her formerly loving parents are being drugged by their evil nanny, who has access to rodent potions that can change people in frightening ways, she and some new friends must try everything possible to return things to normal.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
A young soldier in Vietnam bonds with his German Shepherd whom he trains to sniff out booby traps.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Greg records his experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive, but when Rowley grows more popular Greg must take drastic measures to save their friendship.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
Home schooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, tasted a pizza, or even heard of a wedgie. But when his grandmother lands in the hospital, Cap is forced to move in with a social worker and attend the local middle school. While Cap knows a lot about tie-dyeing and Zen Buddhism, no education could prepare him for the politics of public school.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
When her mother is abducted by aliens on Christmas Eve (or “Smekday” Eve since the Boov invasion), 11
year-old Tip hops in the family car and heads south to find her and meets an alien Boov mechanic who agrees to help her and save the planet from disaster.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
An illustrated retelling of the exploits of the Anglo-Saxon warrior, Beowulf, and how he came to defeat the monster Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon that threatened the kingdom.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
A collection of short one-person plays featuring characters between ten and fifteen years old who live in or near a thirteenth-century English manor.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker’s classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in
1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
Nick endures servitude, beatings, and more after his British father’s plantation in Burma is invaded by the Japanese in 1941, and when his father and others are taken prisoner and Nick is stranded with his friend Mya, they plan a daring escape on elephants, risking their lives to save Nick’s father and Mya’s brother from a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
A graphic novel telling of how Satchel Paige, one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived, inspired other African Americans to believe they could make a difference.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
Mella, a young girl trained as a dragon keeper, learns that the legends of old are true when she is entrusted with carrying a dragon’s egg to the fabled Hatching Grounds, a dangerous journey on which she is assisted by a knight’s squire.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
Ten-year-old Zoe Elias, who longs to play the piano but must resign herself to learning the organ, instead, finds that her musicianship has a positive impact on her workaholic mother, her jittery father, and her school social life.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
A dog and a robot search for friendship in this wordless graphic novel.
Recommended for grades 4 and up.
As the Civil War breaks out, India, a young Southern girl, summons her sharp intelligence and the courage she didn’t know she had to survive the war that threatens to destroy her family, her Virginia home, and the only life she has ever known.
Recommended for grades 6 and up.
In the West Virginia town of Way Down Deep in the 1950s, a foundling called Ruby June is happily living with Miss Arbutus at the local boarding house when suddenly, after the arrival of a family of outsiders, the mystery of Ruby’s past begins to unravel.
Recommended for grades 5 and up.
