The Books of 2008

I love lists and categorizing, (surprise, surprise, eh?) so I've categorized my list of the books I read in 2008. I read a total of 110 books, but there is a lot of children/youth books included--as you will see. Books typed in green (for GO!) are some of my favorites, while those typed in red (for STOP!) are my least favorites (black is neutral).

Classic Children’s Fiction:
Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfield
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
The Sleeping Beauty, retold by C.S. Evans
Jack the Giant Killer, retold by Richard Doyle
Cinderella, retold by C.S. Evans
The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Historical Children’s Fiction:
A Lion to Guard Us, Robert Bulla
Pocahontas and the Strangers, Robert Bulla
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain, Alice Dalgliesh
The Courage of Sarah Noble, Alice Dalgliesh
Squanto-Friend of the Pilgrims, Robert Bulla
The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare
Pedro’s Journal, Pam Conrad
Skippack School, Marguerite de Angeli
The Matchlock Gun, Walter Edmonds
The Sign of the Beaver, Elizabeth George Speare
Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson
Toliver’s Secret, Esther Wood Brady
Mr. Revere and I, Robert Lawson
Stone Fox, John Reynolds Gardiner
The Great Turkey Walk, Kathleen Karr
By the Great Horn Spoon! , Sid Fleischman
Sing Down the Moon, Scott O’Dell
Moccasin Trail, Eloise Jarvis McGraw
The Perilous Road, William O. Steele
Turn Homeward Hannalee, Patricia Beatty
The Great Wheel, Robert Lawson
Shades of Gray, Carolyn Reeder
Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt
Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink
Little Britches, Ralph Moody
The Midwife’s Apprentice, Karen Cushman
Hero Over Here, Kathleen Kudlinski
All-of-a-Kind Family, Sydney Taylor
Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes
A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt, C. Coco DeYoung
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, Bette Bao Lord
Twenty and Ten, Claire Huchet Bishop
Bandit’s Moon, Sid Fleischman
Nory Ryan’s Song, Patricia Reilly Giff
Plain Girl, Virginia Sorensen
Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse
The Drummer Boy’s Battle, Dave and Neta Jackson
Thimble Summer, Elizabeth Enright
The Shadows of Ghadames, Joelle Stolz
The Well, Mildred Taylor
The Ballad of Lucy Whipple

Other Children’s Fiction:
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
Rules of the Road, Joan Bauer
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White
The Seventeenth Swap, Eloise McGraw
Ramona and Her Father, Beverly Cleary
The Indian in the Cupboard, Lynne Reid Banks
Dragon’s Keep, Janet Lee Carey
The Boxcar Children: The Yellow House Mystery, Gertrude Chandler Warner
Everything on a Waffle, Polly Horvath

Children’s Non-Fiction:
Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia, Margaret Cousins
Meet George Washington, Joan Heilbroner
Phoebe the Spy, Judith Berry Griffin
What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?, Jean Fritz
George Washington, Our First Leader, Augusta Stevenson
Meet Thomas Jefferson, Marvin Barrett
Helen Keller: A Light for the blind, Kathleen V. Kudlinski
Helen Keller, Margaret Davidson
Freedom Train, Dorothy Sterling
The Story of Thomas Alva Edison, Margaret Davidson
The Terrible Wave, Marden Dahlstedt
The Wright Brothers, Quentin Reynolds
George Washington Carver, David Collins
At Her Majesty’s Request, Walter Myers
Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Cheaper by the Dozen, Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth

Historical Non-fiction:
Incans Aztecs and Mayans, John Holzmann
Eating the Plates, Lucille Recht Penner
The Lost Colony of Roanoke, Jean Fritz and Hudson Talbott
Nelson Point: …Northern Gold Rush Town, David Matuszak
Riders of the Pony Express, Ralph Moody
In the Wake of the Plague, Norman Cantor

Other Non-fiction:
The Abs Diet for Women, David Zinczenko
Preparing Him for the Other Woman: A Mother’s Guide, Shepherd
Life Without Limits, Clifford Goldstein
The Well-Trained Mind, Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer
For the Children’s Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Douglas Wilson
Understanding Girls with ADHD, Kathleen G. Nadeau
Plato and Platypus Walk into a Bar, Cathcart & Klein

Modern Fiction:
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
Austenland, Shannon Hale
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, Fannie Flagg
The Star Garden, Nancy Turner
Levi’s Will, Dale Cramer
Tallgrass, Sandra Dallas
A Woman Named Damaris, Janette Oke
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie Viera Rigler
Back Roads, Tawni O’Dell
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

Classics:
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Cranford, Mrs. Gaskell
Jane Eyre, Charlottle Bronte
The Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne
Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne
Beowulf, translated by Samus Heaney