Each student will read both novels.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt
School Library Journal Review: /* Starred Review */ Gr 6-9

From the sad and shameful actual destruction of an island community in 1912, Schmidt weaves an evocative novel. When Turner Buckminster arrives in Phippsburg, ME, it takes him only a few hours to start hating his new home. Friendless and feeling the burden of being the new preacher's son, the 13-year-old is miserable until he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, the first African American he has ever met and a resident of Malaga Island, an impoverished community settled by freed or possibly escaped slaves. Despite his father's and the town's stern disapproval, Turner spends time with Lizzie, learning the wonders of the Maine coast. For some minor infraction, Turner's father makes the boy visit elderly Mrs. Cobb, reading to her and playing the organ. Lizzie joins him, and this unlikely threesome takes comfort in the music. The racist town elders, trying to attract a lucrative tourist trade, decide to destroy the shacks on Malaga and to remove the community, including 60 graves in their cemetery. The residents are sent to the Home for the Feeble-Minded in Pownal. When Mrs. Cobb dies and leaves her house to Turner, he sets off to bring Lizzie home, only to find that she died shortly after arriving at the institution. Turner stands up to the racism of the town. His father, finally proud of him, stands with hima position that results in the reverend's death. Although the story is hauntingly sad, there is much humor, too. Schmidt's writing is infused with feeling and rich in imagery. With fully developed, memorable characters and a fascinating, little-known piece of history, this novel will leave a powerful impression on readers.Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME --Connie Tyrrell Burns (Reviewed May 1, 2004) (School Library Journal, vol 50, issue 5, p157)

Where the Lillies Bloom by Vera Cleaver
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */

In her own words, Mary Call Luther has "what it takes to get along in this world. Guts." Her mother is dead and her father, expecting to die, has made her promise to bury him at home, keep the four children together without taking charity, and prevent sweet, "cloudy-headed" Devola from marrying Kiser Pease, who owns the farm they sharecrop. Providently, when Mary Call finds Kiser flattened out and feverish, she swathes him in fried onions (a mountain remedy), stands by until he comes to, and bribes/scares him into signing over the farm; then she conceives of wildcrafting -- gathering medicinal plants -- for extra income. So that when Roy Luther dies and has been laid in the grave he dug (by fourteen-Year-old Mary Call and her ten-year-old brother), the children will be secure if they can conceal the fact of his death. And if Mary Call, become "mean and ugly," can keep the others to the flinty path she's laid out. Hardest to put off is Kiser, doggedly, bumblingly determined to marry the willing, now quite competent Devola. And finally, after the roof has fallen in (literally, and in consequence of Kiser's sister's intention to evict them from the land she, not he, owned), it is the mild couple who firmly and lovingly take over from Mary Call the burden of deciding what they and the children should do. Set solidly in the Great Smokies and told without a tremor -- a sad, tough, not unfunny story of individuals who continually grow, raw in spots, morally rigorous -- altogether a special presence, a special power.
(Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1969)
Nominee, 1970 National Book Award for Children's LIterature
Notable Children's Books of 1969 (ALA)
Best Books of 1969 (SLJ)