Dorothy's List: Sci-Fi Novel 'Last Day On Mars' Tackles Moving — To A New Planet

Each spring, upper elementary students schools in the Mt. Abraham Unified School District travel to the middle and high school library for a Jeopardy! -style trivia competition about the books nominated for Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. But before the gathered students from the five different elementary schools got to play the game, there was an announcement to be made: the 2019 winner.

For more than half a century, Vermont’s middle-grade students have been reading books on Dorothy’s List, a reading program and book award named for Arlington author Dorothy Canfield Fisher. But the author's connection to the eugenics movement, and criticism of her stereotyped portrayal of Native Americans and French Canadians in her work, are behind the Vermont Department of Libraries' decision to change the award's name.

A group of fifth- and sixth-graders are in the library of Orleans Elementary School working on making “'zines.” 'Zines are like personal mini magazines, and they're a favorite hobby of Malú, the main character in The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez .

Beyond the Bright Sea takes place in 1925 on a string of small islands called the Elizabeths, off the coast of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The novel is a work of historical fiction, but it was mystery and suspense that grabbed — and held — the attention of a group of Dorothy's List readers at Burlington's Champlain Elementary School.

Mars is a very different place from Earth. But for Liam and his friend Phoebe, the main characters in the science fiction novel Last Day on Mars, the Earth colony on Mars is the only home they have ever known.

In Ban This Book some of 9-year-old Amy Anne Ollinger’s favorite books have started to disappear off her school library's shelves, and she discovers that adults are challenging the books and the school board is banning them from the library. Dorothy’s List readers at Montpelier’s Kellogg-Hubbard Library had a lot to say about banned and challenged books — especially when they discovered some of their favorite titles have been questioned.

The historical novel Refugee weaves the stories of three refugee families fleeing their homes in different parts of the world and during different time periods: Germany in the 1930s, Cuba in the 1990s and Syria just a few years ago.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you had no arms? How would you eat? Or write? Or turn the pages of a book? Those are some of the everyday challenges facing 13-year-old Aven Green, the main character in Dusti Bowling’ s novel Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus .

The real lives of pirates are documented in Martin W. Sandler’s The Whydah: A Pirate Ship Feared, Wrecked and Found. And after reading the book — nominated for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award — a group of Dorothy’s List readers at Springfield Town Library did some pirate research of their own.

Author Mary E. Lambert was a master’s degree student in a Vermont College of Fine Arts low-residency program while she was writing Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes — now the novel is nominated for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award.