Adventure Books for Fifth and Sixth Graders

L = Lexile
FICTION BAUER, M.	A Bear Named Trouble by Marion Dane Bauer. (L820) In Anchorage, Alaska, two lonely boys make a connection, a brown bear injured just after his mother sends him out on his own, and a human whose father is a new keeper at the Alaska Zoo and whose mother and sister are still in Minnesota.
FICTION BERLIN, E.	The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin. Puzzle-crazy, twelve-year-old Winston and his ten-year-old sister Katie find themselves involved in a dangerous mystery involving a hidden ring. Puzzles for the reader to solve are included throughout the text.
FICTION BIRNEY, B.	Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty Birney. (L790) Eben McAllister searches his small town to see if he can find anything comparable to the real Seven Wonders of the World. Little does he know that the Wonders he’ll discover among his neighbors, friends, and family will give him the adventure of a lifetime without his ever leaving home.
FICTION CARMAN, P.	Into the Mist by Patrick Carman. Captain Roland Warvold tells Alexa and Yipes about the adventures he shared with his brother Thomas in Elyon, before the wall went up and divided the world in two.
FICTION CUSHMAN, K.	The Loud Silence of Francine Green by Karen Cushman. (L750) In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school in Los Angeles where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values.
FICTION DUBLE, K.	Bravo Zulu, Samantha! by Kathleen Benner Duble. Decidedly unenthusiastic about spending part of her summer vacation with her grandparents, twelve-year-old Samantha is particularly upset by her prickly grandfather’s secretive behavior and decides to find out what he is hiding.
FICTION DUNMORE, H.	Ingo by Helen Dunmore. (L640) As they search for their missing father near their Cornwalll home, Sapphy and her brother Conor learn about their family’s connection to the domains of air and of water.
FICTION HABER, M.	The Pluto Project by Melissa Glenn Haber. (L840) As his home life spirals downward and hope for a romance sputters out, thirteen-year-old Alan Green tries to convince his friends that their spying game has uncovered a real conspiracy to assassinate the governor.
FICTION HARLOW, J.	Blown Away! by Joan Hiatt Harlow. (L730) In 1935 on the Florida Key of Matacumbe, thirteen-year-old Jake makes new friends during an idyllic summer, only to have everything change when a hurricane threatens the island.
FICTION HORVATH, P.	The Vacation by Polly Horvath. (L1040) When his parents go to Africa to work as missionaries, twelve-year-old Henry’s eccentric aunts, Pigg and Mag, take him on a cross-country car trip, allowing him to gain insight into his family and himself.
FICTION IVES, D.	Scrib by David Ives. (L930) In 1863, a sixteen-year-old boy nicknamed Scrib travels around the West making his living writing and delivering letters, an occupation that leads to him nearly getting killed.
FICTION JACQUES, B.	Voyage of Slaves: a Tale from the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman by Brian Jacques. (L900) Continuing their adventures through space and time, Ben and his faithful dog, Ned, find themselves in the Mediterranean region in 1703, befriended by a troupe of traveling entertainers and relentlessly pursued by ruthless Barbary slave Traders.
FICTION JR-HI KEHRET, P.	Abduction! by Peg Kehret. (L760) Thirteen-year-old Bonnie has a feeling of foreboding on the very day that her six-year-old brother Matt and their dog Pookie are abducted, and she becomes involved in a major search effort as well as a frightening adventure.
FICTION LAFEVERS, R.	Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R.L. LaFevers. (L800) Twelve-year-old Theo uses arcane knowledge and her own special talent when she encounters two secret societies, one sworn to protect the world from ancient Egyptian magic and one planning to harness it to bring chaos to the world, both of which want a valuable artifact stolen from the London museum for which her parents work.
FICTION MASS, W.	Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass. (L770) Just before his thirteenth birthday, Jeremy Fink receives a keyless locked box set aside by his father before his death five years earlier that purportedly contains the meaning of life.
FICTION MATTHEWS, L.	A Dog for Life by L.S. Matthews. (L910) When John, who has a special ability to communicate with animals, finds that his dog, Mouse is scheduled to go to the pound, he and Mouse decide to run away and find his uncle who may be able to help them.
FICTION MORRIS, G.	The Quest of the Fair Unknown by Gerald Morris. (L840) Having grown up in an isolated forest, Beaufils sets off for Camelot to find his father and winds up undertaking quests with Sirs Gawain and Galahad, visiting various hermits, and traveling to the fairy world.
FICTION NAPOLI, D.	North by Donna Jo Napoli. (L600) Tired of his mother’s over-protectiveness and intrigued by the life of African- American explorer Matthew Henson, twelve-year-old Alvin travels north and spends a season with a trapper near the Arctic Circle.
FICTION NAYLOR, P.	Who Won the War? by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. (L820) As the end of summer approaches, the Malloy girls decide they will really try to get along with the Hatford boys before moving back to Ohio, but after all the practical jokes and competitions of the previous year, the boys just do not trust the girls.
FICTION PORTER, T.	Billy Creekmore by Tracey Porter. In 1905, ten-year-old Billy is taken from an orphanage to live with an aunt and uncle he never knew he had, and he enjoys his first taste of family life until his work in a coal mine and involvement with a union brings trouble, then he joins a circus in hopes of finding his father.
FICTION REICHE, D.	Ghost Ship: a Novel by Dietlof Reiche. (L740) An eighteenth-century figurehead, the journal of a ship’s quartermaster, and supernatural occurrences at a seaside resort lead twelve-year-old Vicki and her friend Peter on a quest to lift a curse and set right a horrible deed committed two hundred and thirty years in the past.
FICTION ROSOFF, M.	Just in Case by Meg Rosoff. (L880) Convinced that Fate is out to get him, fifteen-year-old David Case assumes a new identity in the hope of avoiding what he believes is certain doom.
FICTION SCHWARTZ, V.	4 Kids, 5-E, 1 Crazy Year by Virginia Frances Schwartz. (L610) Family, school, and life in general are seen through the writings of four fifth graders who have been taken out of an overcrowded New York City classroom and placed with a teacher who shows them how to write and how to believe in themselves.
FICTION SMELCER, J.	The Trap by John Smelcer. (L1100) In alternating chapters, seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel, who is better known for brains than brawn, worries about his missing grandfather, and the grandfather, Albert Least-Weasel, struggles to survive, caught in his own steel trap in the Alaskan winter.
FICTION TAYLOR, T.	Ice Drift by Theodore Taylor. (L890) Two Inuit brothers must fend for themselves while stranded on an ice floe that is adrift in the Greenland Strait.
FICTION TRIPP, J.	Pete and Fremont by Jenny Tripp. When circus owner Mike decides Pete the poodle has grown too old to continue as the starring act, Pete forms an unlikely alliance with a young grizzly bear, who only wants to go home to the woods.
FICTION UMANSKY, K.	Solomon Snow and the Stolen Jewel by Kaye Umansky. (L640) While trying to rescue Prudence’s father from prison, Solomon, Prudence, the Infant Prodigy, and Mr. Skippy the rabbit find themselves caught up in the mad plans of the villainous Dr. Calimari to steal a fabulous and cursed ruby.
FICTION WILSON, N.	Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson. While his widowed mother continues to search for him, eleven-year-old Tom, presumed dead after drifting away down a river, finds himself trapped in a series of underground caves with another survivor and a dog, and pursued by murderous treasure-hunters.
FICTION YLVISAKER, A.	Little Klein by Anne Ylvisaker. Harold “Little” Klein is so much smaller than his three older brothers, a boisterous gang held together by bighearted Mother Klein, that he often feels small and left out but when disaster strikes, it is up to Harold and LeRoy, the stray dog he has adopted, to save the day.
MYSTERY COX, J.	The Mystery of the Burmese Bandicoot by Judy Cox. Two rats escape from their comfortable life in an elementary school classroom and survive many dangerous adventures as they stow away on a pirate ship in search of a valuable statue.