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Brixton Brothers: It Happened on a Train
Mac Barnett

Brixton Brothers: It Happened on a Train

Genre:
Fiction, Mystery / Crime
Age Level:
Middle Grade

Retired private detective and current seventh grader Steve Brixton has a new job: He takes out the trash for five bucks a week. But it’s hard to leave the old game behind, and on a train trip down the California coast, Steve and his best chum, Dana, are pulled into a mystery involving a fleet of stolen automobiles, a vanishing girl, and a phantom train car. Oh, and there might just be some romance…

Brixton Brothers: The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity
Mac Barnett

Brixton Brothers: The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity

Genre:
Fiction, Mystery / Crime
Age Level:
Middle Grade

Seventh-grader Steve Brixton is an avid reader of the Bailey Brothers series, and he’s about to get a chance to put the detective tactics he’s read so much about into practice. He’s out to solve a mystery being investigated by America’s most secret crime solving agency: the United States Department of Library Sciences. It will take all of Steve’s skills to navigate this story of intrigue and crime as he tracks down the missing quilt (yes, quilt) containing all of America’s secrets.

Brixton Brothers: The Ghostwriter Secret
Mac Barnett

Brixton Brothers: The Ghostwriter Secret

Genre:
Fiction, Mystery / Crime
Age Level:
Middle Grade

After saving the United States of America in The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, he has opened his own agency. Steve gets a call to solve the case of the Fairview diamond but it turns into an even bigger mystery. MacArthur Bart, author of Steve’s beloved Bailey Brothers series, has been kidnapped!! And there is only one 12-year-old detective who can find him. But not without the help of his best chum Dana and The Bailey Brothers Detective Handbook.

Bronx Masquerade
Nikki Grimes

Bronx Masquerade

Genre:
Poetry
Age Level:
Middle Grade

When a high school class starts having Friday afternoon open-mike poetry, the kids tell their life stories and worries in the poems included in this book. This is a great introduction to spoken word poetry and an inspiration to budding poets.

Brother’s Keeper
Julie Lee

Brother's Keeper

Genre:
Historical Fiction
Age Level:
Middle Grade

Twelve-year-old Sora and her eight-year-old brother, Youngsoo, must try to escape North Korea’s oppressive Communist regime and survive three hundred miles of warzone in winter in 1950.

 

Assessment & Evaluation, Background Knowledge, Content-Area Literacy, Motivation and Engagement

Brown Bag Exams: A Creative Way to Assess Learning

Brown Bag Exams use found objects and images to help students activate prior knowledge and create a framework for students to express what they’ve learned.

Photo of woman and child sitting in front of the Supreme Court holding newspaper after Brown v. Board of Education ruling
Susan Goldman Rubin

Brown V. Board of Education: A Fight for Simple Justice

Genre:
Nonfiction
Age Level:
Middle Grade

In 1954, one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the twentieth Century aimed to end school segregation in the United States. The ruling was the culmination of work by many people who stood up to racial inequality, some risking significant danger and hardship, and of careful strategizing by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Award-winning author Susan Goldman Rubin tells the stories behind the ruling and the people responsible for it. Illustrated with historical photographs, this well-researched narrative account is a perfect introduction to the history of school segregation in the United States and the long struggle to end it. An epilogue looks at the far-reaching effects of this landmark decision, and shows how our country still grapples today with a public school system not yet fully desegregated. Detailed backmatter includes a timeline, primary source texts, and summaries of all mentioned court cases. An ALA Notable Children’s Book.

Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming

Genre:
Autobiography and Memoir, Poetry
Age Level:
Middle Grade

The early years of a girl who grows into a writer has been recreated from family stories combined with memory and presented in verse. Born in February 1963 in Ohio, Woodson’s family soon moves to the South during turbulent years. The history of the writer, her family and a nation combine in rich, metaphorical language.