Tom Birdseye

Two thirteen-year-old cousins are trapped in a blizzard on the same treacherous mountain in the Cascades that claimed the lives of their world-famous, mountain-climber, twin fathers exactly two years earlier

Fifth-grader Patrick can't read, but when the new girl next door encourages him to overcome his fears and try, he starts believing he isn't so stupid after all Patrick Lowe has always loved imagining his own fantastic stories of brave knights and dragons. Unfortunately, every time he tries to read, his father's voice pops up in his head telling him he's stupid, and the words on the page suddenly become too blurry to see. By his fifth grade year, Patrick...

From mountain climbing to banana-eating contests, visiting a Kentucky farm to traveling to another world, these four middle-grade novels from Tom Birdseye have something for everyone. A Tough Nut to Crack: Eighth-grader Cassie Bell's father and grandfather had a falling-out years ago, so she's never met him. But when Grandpa Ruben is injured in a tractor accident, the family travels from Oregon to his Kentucky farm. From the way her dad talks about...

When Jackson Cooper is suddenly sucked into another world, he must find the courage to fight an evil monster before it destroys everything in its path! Even on his birthday, nothing is going right for Jackson Cooper. His friends think he's a wimp for not biking down a steep hill, and his father, who's always in a bad mood since he lost his job, is acting weirder than normal. To top it off, Jackson has to babysit his little sister. The year is off...

Desperate to have the right shoes to start his first day of middle school, Ryan has set his sights on the $125 Slam Dunk Sky Jumpers-but can he put together the money in time? Ryan O'Keefe can't believe his bad luck. Moving to a new state right before sixth grade is hard enough, but when he finds out that sixth grade is part of middle school in Kentucky, he realizes he may have to spend the year getting picked on by the older students. When he meets...

Deep in the mountains of North Carolina, there once lived a young boy with such a poor memory that he sometimes forgot his own name. Now, Plug Honeycut's mother loved him. So she was the only one who had enough faith in her son to send him on an errand. Leaving their hilltop cabin, he started toward the distant country store to buy some soap. As Plug trudges along the path, over the hills and streams, he also follows the erratic trail of his elusive...