Library Media Center

Text Box: Blue Grass Elementary School 226 W Sycamore St. Blue Grass, IA 52726 Phone: (563) 381-1712 Fax: (563)381-9027

Library Media Center (LMC)

Please contact Webmaster Kristy Seamer or Sherry Roberts with comments or questions by clicking on her name.

Click the icon to the right to view the Blue Grass library catalog.

2008 Summer Reading List:

Click here to view the summer reading lists for kindergarten through eighth grade.

Battle of the Books

Fourth and Fifth Grade students in the district are selected to participate in the annual book battles for each grade. Here are the lists for the books they will be questioned on:

Grade 5:

Because of Anya, by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

The Boy Who Saved Baseball, by John H. Ritter

Chevrolet Saturdays, by Candy Dawson Boyd

Passage to Freedom, by Ken Mochizuki

Pictures of Hollis Woods, by Patricia Reilly Giff

Saving Lilly, by Peg Kehret

The View from Saturday, by E.L. Konigsburg

A Week in the Woods, by Andrew Clemens

When the Soldiers Were Gone, by Vera W. Propp

A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck

4^th Grade 2008

Battle of the Books List

1). Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco. 1994. {Say Curtis describes his meeting with Pinkus Aylee, a black soldier, during the Civil War, and their capture by Southern troops.} 48 pages

2). Lilly’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff. 1997. (During a summer spent at Rockaway Beach in 1944, Lily's friendship with a young Hungarian refugee causes her to see the war and her own world differently.) 180 pages

3). Love, Ruby Lavender by Debbie Wiles. 2001. {When her quirky grandmother goes to Hawaii for the summer, nine-year-old Ruby learns to survive on her own in Mississippi by writing letters, befriending chickens as well as the new girl in town, and finally coping with her grandfather's death.} 216 pages

4). Riding Freedom by Pam Munoz Ryan. 1998. {A fictionalized account of Charley (Charlotte) Parkhurst who was raised in an orphanage. She had a special way with horses and dreamed of owning her own ranch, training horses, and driving a stagecoach someday, but in the 1880’s girls were not allowed to do these things. But Charlotte did do these things with a plan so clever and secret- almost no one figured it out.} 138 pages

5). Ghost in Room 11 by Betty Ren Wright. 1998. {When his family moves to a small town near Milwaukee, Matt's efforts to fit into his new fourth-grade class are complicated by his poor spelling and his encounter with the ghost of one of the school's former teachers.} 112 pages

6). Frindle by Andrew Clements. 1996. {When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control.} 105 pages

7). My Chimp Friday: The Nana Banana Chronicles by Hester Mundis. 2002.

{When an old friend of her father's drops off an unusually intelligent chimpanzee at their apartment in the middle of the night with strict orders to keep the chimp a secret, twelve-year-old Rachel wants to know what the big mystery is all about.} 168 pages

8). A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie “Peanut” Johnson by Michelle Y. Green. 2002. {A biography of Mamie Johnson, one of three women to play in the professional Negro League, discussing the challenges she faced as a black woman to make her way into professional baseball.} 111 pages

9). Eye of the Great Bear by Bill Wallace. 1999. {Eleven-year-old Bailey Trumbull is driven to confront his reputation as a coward, when his father's illness forces his family to move to Montana, an Indian medicine man's prophecy comes true, and Bailey must make a choice that risks his life.} 161 pages

10). Escape the Giant Wave by Peg Kehret. 2003. ( When an earthquake creates a tsunami while 13-year-old Kyle is babysitting his sister during a family vacation at a Pacific Coast resort, he tries to save himself, his sister, and a boy who has bullied him for years.) 151 pages