One Kid's Trash by Jamie Sumner

One Kid's Trash by Jamie Sumner 225 pages Hugo is not happy about being dragged halfway across the state of Colorado just because his dad had a midlife crisis and decided to become a ski instructor. It'd be different if Hugo weren't so tiny, if girls didn't think he was adorable like a puppy in a purse and guys didn't call him 'leprechaun' and rub his head for luck. But here he is, the tiny new kid on his first day of middle school. When his fellow students discover his remarkable talent for garbology, the science of studying trash to tell you anything you could ever want to know about a person, Hugo becomes the cool kid for the first time in his life. But what happens when it all goes to his head? Great middle school book about bullying and trying to fit in at a new school. Hugo is small and tried to steer away from bullies, then he finds he has a hidden talent, garbology. When his world is turned upside down, he finds his true friends and to stand up for himself.

War Stories by Gordon Korman

War Stories by Gordon Korman 231 pages Twelve-year-old Trevor Firestone loves playing war-based video games and he idolizes his great-grandfather Jacob who came home from World War II a celebrated hero; now ninety-three-year-old Jacob wants to retrace his journey in memory and reality and return to the small French village that his unit liberated, and Trevor is going with him -- but not everyone in the town wants Jacob to come, and Trevor is going to learn an important lesson: real war is not a video game, and valor and heroism can be very murky concepts. I was not a fan of this book. It is a Mark Twain nominee for 4-6 graders but I feel like it was appropriate for that age. I felt it was too graphic with the violent details for elementary students. It did tell a neat story about the connection between a young boy and his great-grandfather and the boy learns a valuable lesson that video games are not the same as real war.