Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll Amelia Bedelia is a maid who interprets her duties literally. When she is asked to dust the furniture, she douses it with talcum powder! To change the towels, she cuts holes in them! Her confusion makes us see how many ways there are to interpret ordinary statements. Amelia Bedelia series, by Peggy Parish Whether she’s stirring up trouble or using her imagination and sense of humor to get out of yet another predicament, Anastasia is refreshingly real. It’s easy to relate to her challenges at school, with family, and in an ever-changing world. In the Anastasia Krupnik series, by Lois Lowry Cranky teenager Annabel Andrews gets herself into the strangest situations. When we first meet her, she has switched bodies with her mother. Later, she begins to organize her life around a television that shows tomorrow’s news. In Freaky Friday and A Billion for Boris, by Mary Rodgers When Claudia Kincaid is sick of being told what to do at home, she runs away to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Her brother, Jamie, joins her on an adventure that leads them to the home of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, where Claudia unravels a mystery. In From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg Harriet M. Welsch, age 11, wants to see and know everything in her quest to become a famous writer. Notebook in hand, she spies on her friends, trying to trap them in wrongdoings. But what happens when her notes accidentally fall into her friends’ hands? In Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh The very clever Hermione Granger is probably the most talented student in her year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry-and, some days, probably the most annoying. But she’s also a brave adventurer and loyal friend. In the Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling The central character is really the author, who started to write about her childhood in 1932, when she was 63 years old. These memoirs tell the story of Laura, a girl who moves with her family from a log cabin in Wisconsin across the prairie states. The books recall her life from her young tomboy days to her adulthood. In the Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder Ramona Geraldine Quimby lives in an American town with her older sister, Beezus. Ramona is a lively, naughty girl whose parents think she is adorable and forgive all her inventive, crazy ideas (which usually misfire). In the Ramona series, by Beverly Cleary Rose Rita Pottinger has an outdoorsy spirit, a gift for tall tales, and a keen interest in magic. Fortunately, she also has a cool head when confronting evil sorcerers or going on impromptu time-travel journeys. In The Ghost in the Mirror and other books by John Bellairs
