Pierce County Library System
Information & Imagination

Walden and civil disobedience
(Thoreau, Henry David, )
Presents the texts of American writer Henry Thoreau's "Walden," his reflections on living alone among nature for two years on Walden Pond in Massachusetts, and "Civil Disobedience," a treatise on nonviolent resistance and protest.

Walk, The
(Evans, Richard Paul.)
What would you do if you lost everything--your job, your home, and the love of your life--all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christoffersen, he's tempted by his darkest thoughts but then decides to take a walk, heading for the farthest point on his map: Key West, Florida. The people he encounters along the way, and the lessons they share with him, will save his life

Watsons go to Birmingham--1963, The
(Christopher Paul Curtis)
Junior Fiction (210 pages) Recommended for Grades 4-12. The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African-American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963. (Newbery Honor, 1996 & Coretta Scott King Award Honor, 1996) [Kit added 09/2009]

Weslandia
(Paul Fleischman)
Easy Fiction (40 pages) Recommended for Grades PreK-4. Wesley's garden produces a crop of huge, strange plants which provide him with clothing, shelter, food, and drink, thus helping him create his own civilization and changing his life. [Kit added 11/2012]

Westing Game, The
(Ellen Raskin)
Junior Fiction (216 pages) Recommended for Grades 5-8. The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance. (Newbery Award, 1979) [Kit added 09/2009]

When the sea turned to silver
(Lin, Grace, )
Juvenile Fantasy (370 pages) Recommended for Grades 3-6. "Pinmei, a storyteller's granddaughter, must find the Luminous Stone that Lights the Night to rescue her grandmother, who has been kidnapped by the Tiger Emperor"-- Provided by publisher [Added 1/2018]

Where Lilacs Still Bloom
(Jane Kirkpatrick)
One woman, an impossible dream, and the faith it took to see it through. German immigrant and farm wife Hulda Klager possesses only an eighth-grade education--and a burning desire to create something beautiful. What begins as a hobby to create an easy-peeling apple for her pies becomes Hulda's driving purpose: a time-consuming interest in plant hybridization that puts her at odds with family and community, as she challenges the early twentieth-century expectations for a simple housewife. Through the years, seasonal floods continually threaten to erase her Woodland, Washington garden and a series of family tragedies cause even Hulda to question her focus. In a time of practicality, can one person's simple gifts of beauty make a difference? Based on the life of Hulda Klager, Where Lilacs Still Bloom is a story of triumph over an impossible dream and the power of a generous heart. 'Beauty matters... it does. God gave us flowers for a reason. Flowers remind us to put away fear, to stop our rushing and running and worrying about this and that, and for a moment, have a piece of paradise right here on earth.' [Fiction 363 Pages] [39093073280315] [Added 11/12]

Where the Red Fern Grows
(Wilson Rawls)
Junior Fiction (212 pages) Recommended for Grades 4-8. A young boy living in the Ozarks achieves his heart's desire when he becomes the owner of two redbone hounds and teaches them to be champion hunters. [Kit added 09/2009]

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail
(Strayed, Cheryl,)
Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection. A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State--and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Wonder
(R. J. Palacio)
Junior Fiction. (315 pages) Recommended for Grades 3-7. Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student. [Kit added 10/2013]

Wrinkle in Time, A
(Madeleine L'Engle)
Junior Fiction (202) Recommended for Grades 5-9. Meg and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who has disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. [Kit added 04/2011]