After reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I wanted to re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 
Twain is such a great humorist! I especially enjoyed the last part, with Tom Sawyer insisting that Jim and Huck go along with his elaborate plans for making an adventure out of freeing Jim. Oh, and the king and the duke are just too funny!
It's such a shame that this book has been so controversial. It seems to me that Twain, speaking through Huck's wise beyond his years, no-nonsense point of view, could not have made it clearer that Jim is a much better human being than just about anyone else in the book. Huck, too, sees beyond people's false fronts to their true character -- he quickly and easily sees the "king" and the "duke" for the frauds they really are. I think this is one of the best stories ever written.
Monkey Town: the Summer of the Scopes Trial, by Ronald Kidd, took me by surprise in how good it was. It is a fictional account of the famous Scopes Trial held in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. 
At this time, Tennessee had recently passed legislation making it illegal to teach the theory of evolution in public schools. High school teacher John Scopes was put on trial for breaking this law. Dayton earned the name "Monkey Town" because people thought evolution was the idea that humans descended from monkeys.
Kidd researched the book in part by talking with people who were involved with the real trial, and he used Frances Robinson, who was 8 years old at the time and knew John Scopes, as the narrator for his story (she is 15 years old in the book). Other famous people who are characters in this story include H. L. Mencken, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan. This is a fast moving yet thoughtful and challenging story about a topic that is every bit as controversial today as in 1925, and I highly recommend it!
In The Hideout, by Peg Kehret, 13-year-old Jeremy Holland's parents have recently died, and his grandmother sends him to live with his rich uncle in Chicago. Understandably, Jeremy is in a pretty rough emotional state.
Before he reaches his new home, his train crashes and he is left alone in the wilderness. Instead of waiting for help to arrive at the crash site, Jeremy decides to try living on his own in an abandoned cabin he finds. Jeremy has some money with him, so he goes to a small store near the cabin to buy supplies. At the store he meets and befriends Bonnie, a girl his age who lives nearby. One night when he is alone at the cabin, Jeremy hears gunshots, and later he discovers the body of a bear that was killed by poachers. Jeremy is afraid that if he reports the crime, his planned summer alone at the cabin will be ruined, so he asks Bonnie to help him. The two kids are soon over their heads trying to deal with the poachers on their own. Although the story's lessons could have been more subtly conveyed, I enjoyed this fast moving and exciting story.
