Lois Lowry

Mouse Mistress Hildegarde musters all her ingenuity to keep a large colony of church mice safe from the exterminator and to see that they make it through the dangerous Blessing of the Animals.

Gooney Bird Greene, an entertaining second grader who introduces challenging vocabulary words and tells "absolutely true" stories, finds a surprise room mother to bring cupcakes for the Thanksgiving pageant.

Gooney Bird Greene: A most unusual new student who loves to be the center of attention entertains her teacher and fellow second graders by telling absolutely true stories about herself, including how she got her name. Gooney Bird and the room mother: Gooney Bird Greene, an entertaining second grader who introduces challenging vocabulary words and tells "absolutely true" stories, finds a surprise room mother to bring cupcakes for the Thanksgiving...

The story centers on Jonas, young man who lives in a supposedly ideal world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with the elder, who is the sole keeper of all the community's memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community's secret past. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all; a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before.