The View from Saturday by E. L. KonigsburgCall Number: Fic K82v
ISBN: 068980993X
Publication Date: 1996
Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition. Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski always gave good answers. Whenever she was asked how she had selected her team for the Academic Bowl, she chose one of several good answers. Most often she said that the four members of her team had skills that balanced one another. That was reasonable. Sometimes she said that she knew her team would practice. That was accurate. To the district superintendent of schools, she gave a bad answer, but she did that only once, only to him, and if that answer was not good, her reason for giving it was. The fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and the further fact was that she didn't know that she didn't know until she did know. Of course, that is true of most things you do not know up to and including the very last second before you do. And for Mrs. Olinski that was not until Bowl Day was over and so was the work of her four sixth graders. They called themselves The Souls. They told Mrs. Olinski that they were The Souls long before they were a team, but she told them that they were a team as soon as they became The Souls. Then after a while, teacher and team agreed that they were arguing chicken-or-egg. Whichever way it began -- chicken-or-egg, team-or-The Souls -- it definitely ended with an egg. Definitely, an egg.
The View from Saturday by 
A Girl Named Disaster by
While fleeing from Mozambique to Zimbabwe to escape an unwanted marriage, Nhamo, an eleven-year-old Shona girl, struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits.
The Moorchild by
From the Publisher: Half Moorfolk and half human, and unable to shape-shift or disappear at will, Moql threatens the safety of the Band. So the Folk banish her and send her to live among humans as a changeling. Named Saaski by the couple for whose real baby she was swapped, she grows up taunted and feared by the villagers for being different, and is comfortable only on the moor, playing strange music on her bagpipes. As Saaski grows up, memories from her forgotten past with the Folk slowly emerge. But so do emotions from her human side, and she begins to realize the terrible wrong the Folk have done to the humans she calls Da and Mumma. She is determined to restore their child to them, even if it means a dangerous return to the world that has already rejected her once.
The Thief by
Gen flaunts his ingenuity as a thief and relishes the adventure which takes him to a remote temple of the gods where he will attempt to steal a precious stone.
Belle Prater's Boy by
When Woodrow's mother suddenly disappears, he moves to his grandparents' home in a small Virginia town where he befriends his cousin and together they find the strength to face the terrible losses and fears in their lives. Woodrow's cousin, Gypsy, lives next door, and the two children find they have much in common. But unlike Woodrow, who has accepted his mother's disappearance, Gypsy can't get over her father's death. That's when Woodrow tells Gypsy the truth about his mother. Twelve-year-old Gypsy struggles to understand the mystery of her Aunt Belle's sudden disappearance, and why her cousin, Woodrow, Belle's son, is acting so calm. When Woodrow finally reveals that he is keeping a secret about Belle, Gypsy begins to realize that people have different ways of facing the often painful truth of things.