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Nervy but not nuts, Buck Anderson craves adventure.  Most comfortable surrounded by rock and roots and earth, Buck’s passion is caving.  And living in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian foothills, this stubborn, risk-taker has many opportunities for discovering, exploring, and hoping to make history.  When his best friend David Weinstein moves away, thirteen-year-old Buck loses his cautious cave-exploring partner, and “the first rule of caving is never—not ever—do it alone” (2). Although Buck disobeys this rule more than once, his fascination with caves and their potential danger is only one strand of the plot in Going Where It’s Dark by Newbery Award-winning author Phyllis ReynoldsRead More →

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Seven Reasons to Read The Seventh Most Important Thing Set in Washington, D.C. in 1963, The Seventh Most Important Thing recalls a time when Looney Tunes, Bazooka bubble gum, and Mad magazines were popular and when diner tables were often cloaked with red and white checkered table cloths and it took a dime to use the pay phone. It features characters like thirteen year old Arthur Owens who struggles to stop remembering his dad who died instantly when he hit a tree while riding his motorcycle and about whom his mother often said, “Tom Owens’s biggest problem was that he never grew up” (79); like probation officerRead More →