A GROWTH MINDSET BOOKLIST

Roz the robot discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island with no memory of where she is from or why she is there, and her only hope of survival is to try to learn about her new environment from the island's hostile inhabitants. (Grades 4 and up)

Considered by many to be mentally retarded, a brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time. (Grades 5 and up)

Twelve-year-old Wayne Kovok loses his uncle to war and his voice to a plane crash in the same year and must learn to speak up as he navigates relationships with his father, grandfather, and new friend, Denny Rosenblatt. (Grades 4 and up)

Ally's greatest fear is that everyone will find out she is as dumb as they think she is because she still doesn't know how to read.

(Grades 5 and up)

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan. (Grades 5 and up)

Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself--because maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of a woman with a future.

(Grades 6 and up)

Mexican-American Stef Soto is hoping to break free from her overprotective parents and embarrassing reputation from her family's taco truck business, but she soon learns that family, friendship, and the taco truck are important and wonderful parts of her life.

(Grades 3 and up)

Leaving her best friend and the familiarity of Seattle for the paper mill town of "Stinkville," South Carolina, twelve-year-old Alice, who lives with albinism and blindness, takes on the additional challenge of entering the StinkvilleSuccess Stories essay contest. (Grades 6 and up)

A graphic novel adventure about a girl who discovers roller derby right as she and her best friend are growing apart.

(Grades 3 and up)

Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone--a troubled fourteen year old--discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.

A story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal told from different points in time, and in separate voices, by artists Jude and her twin brother Noah

Soon after his mother's death, Matt takes a job at a funeral home in his tough Brooklyn neighborhood and, while attending and assisting with funerals, begins to accept her death and his responsibilities as a man.

Abandoned by their mother, four children begin a search for a home and an identity.

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

The March trilogy is a black and white graphic novel trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement, told through the perspective of civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis.

Describes how Dorothea Lange knew she wanted to become a photographer at an early age and pursued her dream as she focused her lens on the previously unseen victims of the Great Depression.

A celebration of the extraordinary life of Ezra Jack Keats, creator of The Snowy Day

African teenager William Kamkwamba explored science books in his village library when he was forced to drop out of school, and was able to change his family's life by creating a windmill to pump water for his family's farm.