Addison 5th Grade Literature!

PAUSD 5th Grade Core Books:

Beware: Indians! Wild Animals! Strangers! Until the day his father returns to their cabin in the Maine wilderness, twelve-year-old Matt must try to survive on his own. although Matt is brave, he's not prepared for an attack by swarming bees, and he's astonished when he's rescued by an Indian chief and his grandson, Attean. As the boys come to know each other Attean learns to speak English while Matt becomes a skilled hunter. Though many months have passed, there's no sign of Matt's Family. Then Attean asks Matt to join the Beaver tribe and move north. Should Matt abandon his hopes of ever seeing his family again and move on to a new life?

At eleven, Gilly is nobody's real kid. If only she could find her beautiful mother, Courtney, and live with her instead of in the ugly foster home where she has just been placed! How could she, the great Gilly Hopkins, known throughout the county for her brilliance and unmanageability, be expected to tolerate Maime Trotter, the fat, nearly illiterate widow who is now her guardian? Or for that matter, the freaky seven-year-old boy and the shrunken blind lack man who are also considered part of the bizarre "family"? Even cool Miss Harris, her teacher, is a shock to her. Gutsy Gilly is both poignant and comic as, behind her best barracuda smile, she schemes against them and everyone else who tries to be friendly. The reader will cheer for her as she copes with the longings and terrors of always being a foster child.

The Sign of the Beaver

Elizabeth George Speare

The Great Gilly Hopkins

Katherine Paterson

Each day when Cassie opened her window, the trees whispered down a song of morning greeting. The giant old pines and hickories, beeches and walnuts in the forest surrounding the house had stood there for centuries, strong and sheltering. Cassie's trees were her friends and to her they sang a special song that others insisted was only the wind. Depression times were hard in Mississippi and jobs were scarce. Cassie's father, David, had gone to Louisiana to lay tracks for the railroad. That was when the trouble started. With David at home, Mr. Anderson would never have dared cheat Big Ma by forcing her to sell the beloved trees for practically nothing. This moving and unusual story is based on an incident that actually occurred in Mildred Taylor's family.

Kit Tyler knew, as she gazed for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home would never be like the shimmering Caribbean islands she left behind. She was like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world. And in the stern Puritan community of her relatives, she soon felt caged as well, and lonely. In the meadows, the only place where she could feel completely free, she meets another lone and mysterious figure, the old woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond. But when their friendship is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft!

The Song of the Trees

Mildred D. Taylor

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Elizabeth George Speare