It’s August already! But don’t worry – there’s still time to get in your summer reading. To help you out, we’ve pulled together a list of MG books fresh off the press this month.

♦ ADVENTURES OF OOK AND GLUK, CAVEMEN FROM THE FUTURE (The Blue Sky Press) – Dav Pilkey. Captain Underpants author brings us an all-new graphic novel about the adventures of two caveboys, Ook and Gluk. Novel features kung-fu, prehistoric humor, “the world’s cheesiest animation technology,” and a “Flip-O-Rama” in every chapter. Read here to find out what inspired Pilkey to write the book.

♦ ARTEMIS FOWL: THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX (Disney*Hyperion) – Eoin Colfer. Book 7 in the series. Criminal mastermind, Artemis Fowl, has suddenly turned nice. The fairies think he has Atlantis Complex, a personality disorder caused by dabbling in magic. And now the city of Atlantis is under attack. Can fairy ally Captain Holly Short get the real Artemis back before the city is destroyed with every fairy in it? Watch the trailer.

♦ BAD KITTY VS. UNCLE MURRAY (Roaring Brook Press) – Nick Bruel. Kitty’s owners are taking a week off and leaving Kitty and Puppy at home to be watched by Uncle Murray. Shenanigans of “epic proportions” ensue.

♦ WARRIORS SUPER EDITION: SKYCLAN’S DESTINY (HarperCollins) – Erin Hunter. Series. The return of SkyClan, a long lost clan of cat warriors who must face threats to their survival. See web site for more on the series, including videos, games, news, and extras.

♦ BALLET FOR MARTHA: MAKING APPALACHIAN SPRING  (Flash Point) – Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan tell the story behind the scenes of the collaboration that created Aaron Copland’s APPALACHIAN SPRING. The authors’ collaborator is two-time Sibert Honor winner, Brian Floca. Starred reviews from Horn, Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.

♦ BIG WHOPPER (ZIGZAG KIDS) (Wendy Lamb Books) – Patricia Reilly Giff. It’s Discovery Week at the Zigzag Afternoon Center. Everyone writes their discoveries on a big sheet of paper, but Destiny Washington can’t think of anything new to discover. Before she knows it, she has told a BIG whopper. And snooty Gina, who’s great at discovering things, knows all about it. Destiny has to find a way out of the whopper. In the end, she makes the best discovery of all.

♦ BRAINS FOR LUNCH: A ZOMBIE NOVEL IN HAIKU?! (Roaring Brook Press) – K.A. Holt. Loeb, a middle school student and zombie, manages to win a poetry competition, develop a crush on the school librarian, and wind up with a regular-kid girlfriend, all despite his taste for human brains. Told through a series of nearly 100 haiku poems.

♦ ELLIE MCDOODLE: BEST FRIENDS FUR-EVER (Bloomsbury) – Ruth McNally Barshaw. Third book in the series. Ellie agrees to look after a neighbor’s pet African gray parrot, then must use all the help she can get when the parrot escapes, all while finishing a report for school. Filled with cartoons, diagrams, lists, games, and witty asides.

♦ EYEWITNESS: ENDANGERED ANIMALS (DK Publishing) – Ben Hoare. A look at creatures around the world currently threatened with extinction, along with ways we can help them survive. Includes polar bears, sea turtles, tree frogs, river dolphins, jaguars, pandas, gibbons, and the California condor.

♦ FAKE OUT (Knopf) – Rich Wallace. The second book in the KICKERS soccer series. The Kickers soccer league is heating up, and Ben knows he can bring his team to the play-offs with his new move: the fake-out. He practices the tricky footwork every chance he gets. But every time he tries it on the field, he flubs up, loses the ball, and hurts his team. Meanwhile, everyone else is faking him out. Is Ben out of his league?

♦ FINDING FAMILY (Bloomsbury) – Tonya Bolden. Delana has never known her parents. Raised by her Aunt Tilley and a reclusive grandfather, Delana has led a sheltered existence, nurtured on her aunt’s wild family histories. But when Aunt Tilley dies, Delana embarks on a quest to unravel her aunt’s fictions and draw out her mysterious grandfather. In doing so, Delana finds herself, and a home where she never thought to look.

♦ FLAT STANLEY’S WORLDWIDE ADVENTURES: THE AMAZING MEXICAN SECRET (HarperCollins) – Jeff Brown. Stanley mails himself to Mexico. Fifth book in the series.

♦ HARDY BOYS #20: DEADLY STRATEGY (Papercutz) – Scott Lobdell. Part of the Hard Boys graphic novels. When A.T.A.C. agents across the country start getting strange and bizarre cases, it’s up to Joe and Frank Hardy to find the computer hacker responsible!

♦ JUDY MOODY, GIRL DETECTIVE (Candlewick) – Megan McDonald. Book 9 in the series. Agent Judy Drewdy sets out to solve the case of the missing puppy when a canine-cop-in-training vanishes into thin air. Watch out for red herrings and references to Nancy Drew. Read an interview with Judy Moody, and about Candlewick celebrating ten years of JUDY MOODY.

♦ KARMA BITES (SANDPIPER) – Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas. Life seems to have it in for Franny Flanders. Her best friends aren’t speaking, her parents just divorced, and her hippie grandmother has moved in. Then Franny gets her hands on a box of magic recipes that could fix all of her problems. It could even change the world! But Franny is about to learn that magic and karma aren’t to be played with. When you mess with the universe, it can bite back in unexpected ways.

♦ LITTLE JOE (Knopf) – Sandra Neil Wallace. Nine-year-old Eli raises Little Joe, a cow, to show at next fall’s country fair. In doing so, he learns some hard lessons about growing up, taking care of another living thing, and life on his family’s farm, and in the outside world.

♦ LIVVIE OWEN LIVED HERE (Feiwel & Friends) – Sarah Dooley. Olivia “Livvie” Owen feels things differently than her parents and two sisters. Livvie is autistic. Her family has had to move repeatedly because of her outbursts. When they again face eviction, Livvie is convinced she has a way to get back to a house where they were all happy, once. The problem is, Livvie burned down that house. But she’s not giving up. Here is her story.

♦ MASTERS OF DISASTER (Wendy Lamb) – Gary Paulsen. Henry Mosley decides that he and his pals need to go on some earth-shaking adventures and make a name for themselves. This includes wacky attempts to break world records, reenact scenes from books, solve a hundred-year-old murder, and carry out Henry’s other inspired ideas everywhere: into the wilderness, inside a bull-riding ring, into a haunted house, off the neighbors’ roof, and into a cataclysmic collision with explosive life-forms. Gary Paulsen is a three-time Newbery Honor recipient, and won the ALA Margaret A. Edwards for his lifetime achievement in young adult literature. Watch an interview with Paulsen.

♦ MORE SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN DARK (HarperCollins) – Alvin Schwartz. A sequel to the popular, SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, with more alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events. Books re-issued after the author’s death in 1992. Illustrations by Brett Helquist.

♦ NIGHTSHADE CITY (Holiday House) – Hilary Wagner. Deep beneath a modern metropolis lies the Catacombs, a kingdom of remarkable rats of superior intellect. When their peaceful democracy is overthrown by a dictator goverment, three young orphan rats join together to dismantle the dictatorship and create a new city – Nightshade City. Watch the trailer.

♦ SCUMBLE (Dial) – Ingrid Law. SAVVY author brings us a book about cousin, Ledge, nine years after Mib’s journey in SAVVY.

♦ MY HAVANA: MEMORIES OF A CUBAN BOYHOOD (Candlewick) – Rosemary Wells, Secundino Fernandez. When Fidel Castro and the Communist Party take over the Cuban government, Dino’s family must move to New York, where the young, lonely boy pours his heart into making a model of Havana’s archways and balconies, buildings and streets.

♦ NANCY DREW #21: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL MYSTERY II – THE LOST VERSE (Papercutz) – Stefan Petrucha. Part of the Nancy Drew graphic novels. Nancy Drew must solve a sixty-year-old mystery that’s daunted millions and discover the true identity of the person who visits Edgar Allen Poe’s grave every year, toasting the writer and leaving three roses.

♦ 90 MILES TO HAVANA  (Roaring Brook Press) – Enrique Flores-Galbis. Julian, a young Cuban boy, experiences a violent revolution and watches mobs throw out his family’s furniture and move into their home. For his safety, his parents send him to a refugee camp in Miami, where he tries to avoid the powerful camp bullies (“the big eat the small”), waits for his parents, and parts with his two older brothers who are sent away to a harsh orphanage in Denver. Flores-Galbris draws on his own experience as a child refugee from Cuba.

♦ SAMURAI KIDS #1: WHITE CRANE (Candlewick) – Sandy Fussell. First book in a new marshal arts series. Niya Moto is the only one-legged samurai kid in Japan, famous for falling flat on his face in the dirt. The one school that will accept him is the Cockroach Ryu, led by Ki-Yaga., a man known for taking in kids that the world has judged harshly. But can the ragtag Cockroaches make the treacherous journey to the Samurai Trainee Games, never mind take on the all-conquering Dragons?

♦ SAVING SKY (HarperCollins) – Diane Stanley. Her country is at war. Terrorists strike at random, widespread rationing is in effect, and the power grid is down. But thirteen-year-old Sky Brightman is remarkably untouched by it all. Then a string of mysterious arrests begin and her new friend Kareem becomes a target. Sky is finally forced to confront the world in all its complexity.

♦ SIDE BY SIDE/LADO A LADO: THE STORY OF DOLORES HUERTA AND CESAR CHAVEZ/LA HISTORIA DE DOLORES HUERTA Y CESAR CHAVEZ (Rayo) – Monica Brown. Every day, thousands of farm workers harvested the food that ended up on kitchen tables all over the country. But at the end of the day, when the workers sat down to eat, there were only beans on their own tables. Then Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez teamed up. Together they motivated the workers to fight for their rights and, in the process, changed history. Monica Brown is the Pura BelprÉ Honor winner for My Name Is Gabito/Mi Llamo Gabito and My Name is Celia/Me llamo Celia.

♦ TALES FROM MOOMINVALLEY (MOOMINTROLLS) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Tove Jansson. Nine delightfully funny stories about the triumphs and tribulations of the citizens of Moominvalley. “A lost treasure now rediscovered . . . A surrealist masterpiece,” describes Neil Gaiman. Jansson, who grew up in Finland, won numerous awards, including the Selma Lagerlof Award and the Hans Christian Anderson Children’s Book Medal. Jansson died in 2001.

♦ THE BIG TIME: A FOOTBALL GENIUS NOVEL (HarperCollins) – Tim Green. Football star, Troy White, is flying high when his life suddenly changes one day after a stranger shows up at his door and says, “I think I’m your father.” Green, himself an adopted child and a former NFL football star, draws from his own experiences in writing this book.

♦ THE BIG STINK (Starscape/Macmillan) – David Lubar. Fourth installment in the adventures of Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie. A stinky smell in elementary school forces Nathan to investigate. Fans of Lubar’s Weenies short story collections will be sure to enjoy this series.

♦ THE BOOK OF BAD THINGS (Kingfisher) – Count Droffig. A book about – you guessed it – bad things.  The narrator of this novel, Count Droffig,  has spent a lifetime trying to uncover the dark secrets of a book with the same title, which some people believe has been present at many of the bad happenings in the world throughout history. Book is packed with cryptic puzzles and “carefully researched factual information about bad stuff, in all its manifestations!”

♦ THE CURSE OF DEADMAN’S FOREST (Delacorte) – Victoria Laurie. Second book in the Oracles of Delphi Keep series by author and psychic, Laurie.

♦ THE FABLED FIFTH GRADERS OF AESOP ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (Scwartz & Wade) – Candace Fleming. Mr. Jupiter’s rambunctious students at Aesop Elementary are fifth graders now. For their last year at Aesop, they’re hoping for the coolest class pet and end up with guinea pigs that have some very unusual traits.

♦ THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ  (Roaring Brook Press) – Laura Toffler-Corrie. Told in wry emails and brilliant little one-act plays, this laugh-out-loud debut novel offers quirky characters, a whimsical tour around New York City, and an appealing story about what it means to be a good friend.

♦ THE MAGNIFICENT 12: THE CALL  (Katherine Tegen Book) – Michael Grant. Twelve-year-old Mack MacAvoy feels seriously average until one day, a three-thousand-year-old man appears in the boys’ bathroom at school to deliver some startling news: Mack is one of the Magnificent Twelve. An evil force is on its way, and it’s up to Mack to track down eleven other twelve-year-olds in order to stop it.

♦ THE NIGHTMARYS (Random House) – Dan Poblocki. Timothy July has a secret.  And it’s giving him nightmares.  Abigail Tremens has a problem.  Her nightmares are haunting her…while she is awake. When they team up for a school project, they don’t realize that Abigail’s past and Timothy’s present are making them the target of a terrible curse.  A curse that turns their worst fears to reality.  But their fears are just the beginning.  The curse stems from a strange artifact that gains strength by devouring a human soul.  And it needs to feed again.

♦ THE POISONS OF CAUX: THE TASTERS GUILD (Knopf) – Susannah Appelbaum. The dark reign of the Nightshades is over at last, and a new day has arrived in Caux. But fear still grips the people of Caux, who live in the shadow of the powerful, poisonous Tasters’ Guild. Second in the Poisons of Caux trilogy.

♦ THE RED BLAZER GIRLS: THE VANISHING VIOLIN (Knopf) – Michael D. Beil. Mystery series. This time the girls must follow a trail of cryptic clues, involving everything from logic to literature, to trace a rare violin gone missing.

♦ THE SMOKY CORRIDOR (Random House) – Chris Grabenstein. This third book in the HAUNTED PLACES series continues the adventures of Zach Jennings, who has the uncanny ability to see and talk with ghosts.

♦ THE WOLF TREE (Random House) – John Claude Bemis. Book 2 in the fantasy adventure series, The CLOCKWORK DARK. Ray leads his friends on a mission into the heart of darkness. Vital to their success is tracking down the legendary Wolf Tree, rumored to be a pathway to the spirit world. The search for the Wolf Tree grows desperate as the Darkness spreads, threatening Ray, his friends, and all of humanity.

♦ THE WONDER OF CHARLIE ANNE (Knopf) – Kimberly Newton Fusco. Charlie Anne is devastated when her father must go north to build roads after the Depression hits. Then her neighbor Old Mr. Jolly brings home a new wife, Rosalyn, and Phoebe, a young African-American girl, who like Charlie Anne, has lost her mother. The girls soon forge a friendship. And when hatred turns their town ugly, it’s up to Charlie Anne and Phoebe to prove that our hearts are always able to expand.

♦ TOBY AND THE SECRETS OF THE TREE (Candlewick) – Timothee de Fombelle. An eco-adventure about Toby’s high-stakes quest to save the miniature world of the Tree and reunite loved ones lost. Sequel to French playwright Fombelle’s first novel, TOBY ALONE.

♦ TOUCH BLUE (Scholastic) – Cynthia Lord. “Touch Blue and your wish will come true.” But eleven-year-old Tess Brooks knows that it’s not always that simple. The state of Maine plans to shut down her island’s schoolhouse, which would force Tess’s family to move to the mainland and leave the only home Tess has ever known. Fortunately, the islanders have a plan too: increase the numbers of students by having several families take in foster children. So now Tess and her family are taking a chance on Aaron, a thirteen-year-old trumpet player who has been bounced from home to home. And Tess needs a plan of her own–and all the luck she can muster. Lord’s first novel, RULES, won an Newbery Honor award.

♦ VORDAK THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE: HOW TO GROW UP AND RULE THE WORLD (Egmont) – Vordak T. Incomprehensible. Bad guy, Vordak, instructs readers on villainy, from selecting the most dastardly name, to choosing the ideal henchmen, to engaging in witty repartee with disgustingly chipper superheroes. All done with intent to reach the ultimate goal: world domination.

♦ WILDFIRE RUN (HarperCollins) – Dee Garretson. The president’s retreat, Camp David, is one of the safest places in the United States. So why can’t the President’s son, Luke, and his friends Theo and Callie stay there without Secret Service agents constantly hovering over them, watching their every move? And yet, when an earthquake sets off a raging wildfire, causing a chain reaction that wreaks havoc at Camp David, they are suddenly on their own, fighting to survive.

Please note that this list has been created as a resource for those searching for new titles and doesn’t represent our endorsement of any one book.

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