Springfield-Greene County Library District Mark Twain Readers Award
Find these books and more online at http://catalog.coolcat.org
Mark Twain Award Winners
2024
Rosie and Baker need to keep up the illusion that their Great Grammy is alive before the Grim Hesper takes away the only home they have ever known.
2023
After seventh graders Benji and Felix borrow $20 from a lost wallet, the billionaire owner challenges them to spend over $5 million dollars in thirty days in order to learn life lessons about money--|cProvided by publisher.
2022
Tells the story of Julian's Grandmére's childhood as she, a Jewish girl, was hidden by a family in a Nazi-occupied French village during World War II and how the boy she once shunned became her savior and best friend.
2021
Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.
2020
When unlikeable Elsie dies in the influenza pandemic of 1918, she comes back to haunt Annie to make sure she'll be Annie's best--and only--friend soon.
2019
In Washington, D.C., twelve-year-old Florian Bates, a consulting detective for the FBI, and his best friend Margaret help thwart the biggest art heist in United States history.
2018
A young disabled girl and her brother are evacuated from London to the English countryside during World War II, where they find life to be much sweeter away from their abusive mother.
2017
When her grandmother and guardian suffers a stroke, twelve-year-old Poppy Parker's life turns upside down--but when she witnesses a murder and has to go into witness protection with Detective Brannigan's mother it becomes hard to believe she will ever find a way home, let alone save Gunner, a beautiful German shepherd with an uncertain future.
2016
Twelve-year-old Kyle gets to stay overnight in the new town library, designed by his hero (the famous gamemaker Luigi Lemoncello), with other students but finds that come morning he must work with friends to solve puzzles in order to escape.
2015
Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.
2014
In a society that purges thirteen-year-olds who are creative, identical twins Aaron and Alex are separated, one to attend University while the other, supposedly Eliminated, finds himself in a wondrous place where youths hone their abilities and learn magic.
2013
Considered by many to be mentally retarded, a brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time.
2012
Thirteen-year-old Sunny, accompanied by a stray dog, takes advantage of a windfall to travel from her Nebraska foster home to Enumclaw, Washington, to find the twin sister from whom she was separated at age three.
2011
Fourteen-year-old Amy's excitement over her first babysitting job ends when she and her three-year-old charge are kidnapped, but a daily videorecording sent to little Kendra's parents allows Amy to send clues, in hopes of being rescued before the kidnappers decide they no longer need her.
2010
When thirteen-year-old Ali spends the summer with her aunt and cousin at the family's vacation home, she stumbles upon a secret that her mother and aunt have been hiding for over thirty years.
2009
Demi-god Percy Jackson and his friends must journey into the Sea of Monsters to save their camp. But first Percy will discover a secret that makes him wonder whether being claimed as Poseidon's son is an honor or a cruel joke.
2008
Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson learns he is a demigod, the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea. His mother sends him to a summer camp for demigods where he and his new friends set out on a quest to prevent a war between the gods. (Film title: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief)
2007
Thirteen-year-old Bonnie has a feeling of foreboding on the very day that her six-year-old brother Matt and their dog Pookie are abducted, and she becomes involved in a major search effort as well as a frightening adventure. Matt is missing. Bonnie's brother left his classroom to use the bathroom --and disappeared. A police dog traces his scent to the curb, where he apparently got into a vehicle. But why would Matt go anywhere with a stranger? Overwhelmed with fear, Bonnie discovers that her dog is gone, too. Was Pookie used as a lure for Matt? Bonnie makes one big mistake in her attempt to find her brother. In a chilling climax on a Washington State ferry, Bonnie and Matt must outsmart their abductor or pay with their lives.
2006
In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in her decaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.
2005
After having a near-death experience in the accident that killed his younger sister, Wenny, eleven-year-old Will copes by writing her letters.
2004
When Jack Osborne is befriended by his school's custodian and a Basque girl, he begins to adjust to his family's sudden move to Elko, Nevada, after entering the Witness Security Program, but the drug cartel against which his father will testify is determined to track them down.
2003
Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.
2002
Starting middle school in a new town, brainy Jerry Flack changes his image from "dork" to "cool kid," only to discover that he'd rather be himself.
2001
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
2000
The author describes her battle against polio and her efforts to overcome its debilitating effects.
1999
Sixth-grader Marty and his family try to help their rough neighbor, Judd Travers, change his mean ways, even though their West Virginia community continues to expect the worst of him.
1998
In 1912, thirteen-year-old Albert considers his younger sister a pest, but things change when they travel with their mother and uncle aboard the Titanic and are caught up in its tragic sinking.
1997
When he goes to spend the summer with his great-aunt in the family's old house, eleven-year-old Drew is drawn eighty years into the past to trade places with his great-great-uncle who is dying of diptheria.
1996
Twelve-year-old Gwen, an orphan who comes to live with the Mercy family, discovers that the house is haunted by the ghost of a sad-looking young girl and is determined to solve the mystery behind her appearances.
1995
Thirteen-year-old Delrita, whose unhappy life has caused her to hide from the world, loves her uncle Punky but sometimes feels ashamed of his behavior because he has Down syndrome.
1994
When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
1993
After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries.
1992
After Ashley and Kristi find an antique doll buried in old Miss Cooper's garden, they discover that they can enter a ghostly turn-of-the-century world by going through a hole in the hedge.
1991
The adventures of Sam, Anastasia Krupnik's younger brother, from his first day as a newborn through his mischievous times as a toddler.
1990
An unmanageable, but lovable, eleven-year-old misfit learns to believe in himself when he gets to know the new school counselor, who is a sort of misfit, too.
1989
Janey worries that the sixth grade Rabbit Reading Club's all-night sleepover will expose her fear of the dark, but it turns out that she is not the only member with a secret.
1988
A baby sitter and her three willful charges make a formidable team to outwit their surprised kidnappers.
1987
Upset that he has to give up the room he loves to his grandfather, Pete decides to declare war in an attempt to get it back.
1986
A dollhouse filled with a ghostly light in the middle of the night and dolls that have moved from where she last left them lead Amy and her mentally challenged sister to unravel the mystery surrounding grisly murders that took place years ago.
1985
The frequent target of a bully, eleven-year-old Ben gets sick at the thought of fighting back until his father insists he take a self-defense course, and Ben learns that it is okay to be himself.
1984
Ten-year-old Larry is "discovered" on the street and asked to appear in a television commercial. Only later does he find out what he is advertising.
1983
A 10-year-old girl, who has always looked different from other children, discovers that she not only has unusual powers but that there are others like her.
1982
A ten-year-old boy, placed once again with new foster parents, becomes involved in a search for Bigfoot.
1981
Rob manages Soup's campaign for class president in their small Vermont town.
1979
The discovery of a bike-riding mouse in the bathtub is just the beginning of a series of humorous communications for the Berryfield family.
1977
When Professor Pepper gives Opie tickets to a ghost-raising instead of a nickel in payment for being guided through the dense fog, Opie manages to make money anyway by helping to thwart a bank robbery.
1976
The Panthers try desperately to convincingly lose a baseball game when they find out the winners must play a girls' team.
1974
A shy undersized sixteen-year-old finds himself suddenly popular when he becomes star of the track team.
1973
Having no one to help her with her problems, a widowed mouse visits the rats whose former imprisonment in a laboratory made them wise and long lived.
1972
Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and with the help of the devoted dog Sounder.