Dorothy's List

Each spring, upper elementary students schools in the Mt. Abraham Unified School District travel to the middle and high school library for a Jeopardy! -style trivia competition about the books nominated for Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. But before the gathered students from the five different elementary schools got to play the game, there was an announcement to be made: the 2019 winner.

For more than half a century, Vermont’s middle-grade students have been reading books on Dorothy’s List, a reading program and book award named for Arlington author Dorothy Canfield Fisher. But the author's connection to the eugenics movement, and criticism of her stereotyped portrayal of Native Americans and French Canadians in her work, are behind the Vermont Department of Libraries' decision to change the award's name.

A group of fifth- and sixth-graders are in the library of Orleans Elementary School working on making “'zines.” 'Zines are like personal mini magazines, and they're a favorite hobby of Malú, the main character in The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez .

Beyond the Bright Sea takes place in 1925 on a string of small islands called the Elizabeths, off the coast of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The novel is a work of historical fiction, but it was mystery and suspense that grabbed — and held — the attention of a group of Dorothy's List readers at Burlington's Champlain Elementary School.

Mars is a very different place from Earth. But for Liam and his friend Phoebe, the main characters in the science fiction novel Last Day on Mars, the Earth colony on Mars is the only home they have ever known.