Growing up is hard to do, especially if you are Verbana Colter, stuck between fifth and sixth grade.  First of all, she’s just learned her parents are not her parents–or so she believes.  Her mother was an alcoholic who nearly pickled her during pregnancy.  The effects of fetal alcohol syndrome have given her a scrawny body and struggles in school.  Her father is in prison for killing a man.  Now Verbie is convinced that she is bound to be nothing but trouble.  The evidence?  Her best friend Annie is spending more and more time with Heather.  She is constantly saying mean things to her mother, no matter how hard she tries to bottle up the meanness that seems to be sprouting out everywhere.

Then Pooch shows up in the abandoned house next door, and Verbie sees her chance to be someone else–the ghost of the girl from the house next door who drowned years before.  What starts as a game leads Verbie on a journey to find courage and strength she didn’t know she had.

I loved this unique twist on a “ghost” story.  Verbie is a delightfully funny ghost, making up the rules as she goes along to get Pooch to do what she wants.  She is tied up in knots as she worries about the anger that keeps erupting from her.  I think my students will relate to her shifting feelings and desperate attempt to be someone else for a short while.  In the end, they will rejoice as Verbie learns to trust in herself and her place in her family.

Fans of So B. It will also enjoy As Simple as It Seems (Scholastic 2010) by Sarah Weeks.

I first got my glasses when I was in the third grade.  I was thrilled to be able to see again in clear, crisp colors rather than blurry edges.  Every year when I visited the optometrist and he told me I needed new glasses because my eyes were worse, I secretly worried that one day glasses would not be enough to correct my vision.  What would I do then if I couldn’t see?  It had happened to a friend of my mother’s.  She had some sight, but she was legally blind because glasses or contacts could no longer correct her vision well.

Priscilla Cummings explores this horrible possibility in Blindsided.   Natalie has struggled with her vision since about age eight, but once she turns fourteen, her doctor has bad news.  She will lose all of her vision, sooner rather than later.  Rather than returning to high school with her friends (and a cute boy who just might be interested in her), she is forced to move away to the school for the blind where she can learn the skills she needs to survive a world without sight.

Outwardly, she is a good daughter and student, saying what the adults want to hear.  Inwardly, she hangs on desperately to the hope that she will continue to see–something at least.  She resists learning to read Braille or to walk with her cane.  She’s reluctant to open up to her new classmates because she’s not like them.  She’s impressed by her teachers–blind themselves–who take buses and walk to school or travel the world, but terrified she would never be able to learn how to survive independently herself.  Ultimately, though, she must choose how she will live her life as darkness threatens to overcome her.

I liked Natalie.  She is a good girl with a sometimes bad attitude.  Who wouldn’t have a bad attitude when faced with losing all your vision?  She also learns that she has more strength than she ever dreamed as she faces challenges that would leave most sighted people cowering in the dark.  She is at times stubborn, resentful, angry, discouraged, and persistent as she navigates relationships that strain old friendships and new relationships that present different challenges and opportunities.  In addition to taking on the challenges of blindness, this book presents plenty of drama and a couple of action-packed scenes that kept me on the edge of my seat.