The recent reads were fresh in my mind, but as a teacher my absolute personal favorites are The View from the Cherry Tree and Christmas Spurs.
I am a fan of Willo Davis Roberts for kids. She seemed to have a way of pulling kids in that many authors miss. Don't Hurt Laurie was another in which she seemed to grip the subject of child abuse in a way that kids could relate to and make them want to reach out to help the main character, Laurie.
Bill Wallace is also great for a fun read (yet in Christmas Spurs very serious).
I have read these to my kids in the past. They can't wait for the next chapter. Christmas Spurs has a young brother who dies after a battle from cancer. (I cry every year when I read it to the kids.) It is so touching the way it is dealt with though. I passed on reading it to this class because I have a student whose brother is fighting a battle with lymphoma for the second time in the past year. I did recommend it to several students and they said it was one of the best books they have ever read.
These books are very emotional reads. They are definitely topics that exist, but that most of us would prefer to push under the rug. I just thought these books were well written and approached the subjects in tactful ways. They were encouraging in some ways, because I knew that one of two things was happening. The kids were either seeing a world that they were sheltered from and this gave them some compassion for others or it opened the door for someone hurting to talk realizing that if there was a book about the subject they were not the only ones experiencing such pain.
