* The View From Saturday   E.L. Konigsburg


This is an excellent realistic fiction novel about coming of age for four very different middle school young adults, who all join the quiz bowl team with the encouragement of a very special teacher.  Mrs. Olinski is a teacher who is left parapeligic who comes back to school to teach.  In her class are 4 very different students.  Nadia who is in the middle of divorcing parents, Noah who spent the summer with his grandfather, Julian who has just moved into a bed and breakfast, and Ethan who lives on a farm and has a very different family.  They come together and compliment eachother nicely, and over tea become "The Souls."  These 6th graders soon take the quiz bowl world by storm and win the acedmic bowl, which is un heard of because this group is younger than everyone else on the teams they compete against.  This is a great story of coming of age and learning to be comfortable in your identity.  It is easily relateable because some of the kids are bullied by the big mean kids in the school, and others are sensative and are learning to cope with it.  This story is best for 5th grade and up do to the content of the story, love, understanding and identity.  It is also a novel and can be long, with some mature content.