Wringer

By Jerry Spinelli
Palmer LaRue hopes his 10th birthday never comes. Every August, at the Family Fest, the town releases 5,000 pigeons for the men to shoot. If the shot does not kill the pigeon then all the 10 year old boys go out and "wring" the necks of the pigeons. Palmer doesn't want to become a Wringer, and he doesn't want his 10th birthday to come. Before his 10th birthday he finds a pigeon, or should I say the pigeon found him, and becomes his pet. He tries to get rid of the pigeon and it keeps coming back. His buddies have figured out that he has a pigeon, and he finds a friendship with Dorthy, the neighbor across the street. Nipper, the pigeon, gets released with the 5,000 and Palmer realizes it a little too late....
Great book for boys. I highly recommend this book for a Lit. Circle.

Testing the Ice

By Sharon Robinson
Illustrated by Kadir Nelson
The pictures in this book are phenomenal. I love non fiction books, and this one is a great one. It takes place at the end of Jackie Robinson's career. He always watches his children swim from the shore, and he never goes in the water. One day his children and their friends sit around and here stories about how brave he was when he first decided he would try and play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The children decide to go outside to ice skate, Jackie bravely walks on the ice to make sure it is solid for them to skate. He shows how brave he is.

Egg Drop

By Mini Grey
My 4th grade students are assigned every year to make an apparatus that will protect an egg when its dropped off the top of the slide. This book would be a great introduction to this project. The egg in this book is very impatient and doesn't want to wait to hatch. He decides that he wants to fly. So he climbs may stairs and jumps...they try every way to put him back together and nothing works. Because he didn't wait be becomes an egg for breakfast. Even good eggs BREAK!

Spoon

Written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Illustrated by Scott Magoon
I love this book! At the beginning of the book you meet the Spoon Family, and he realizes that he is different from all of his friends. Spoon no longer wants to be a spoon. He goes through all the things that he can't do, and his friends can. Then one night after supper his mom tells him about all the things his friends can't do, and he can. He realizes how special he is, and at the end of the book the spoon family is "spooning."