The Wicked Enchantment, Margaret Benary-Isbert: Books Your Kid Should Read: The Wicked Enchantment
The Thundering Prairie, M.A. Hancock. Story about one of the families that participated in the Oklahoma land rush: The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1893
The Midnight Fox, Betsy Byars: cool-reads.co.uk - books for 10-15 year old readers by 10-15 year old reviewers
Bound for Freedom, Ruth Chessman: A story of courage and friendship of two young English boys who came to Colonial New England as indentured servants.
Your picks?
One book I read over and over in sixth grade: Sir MacHinery. Been out of print forever. The story: an inventor moves to Scotland to build a robot. Some brownies (the wee magic folk, not the pre-Girl Scout kind) find the robot, believe him to be a knight in armor, call him “Sir MacHinery” because of all the crates around marked “machinery”, and take him away to an adventure involving Merlin the magician, the Loch Ness Monster, and a war between ghost armies.
I always thought The Dark is Rising would make a great live-action (with CGI) film. Unfortunately, the movie that was made of it was completely awful.
If they could get the tone right, The Phantom Tollbooth would be wonderful. I’m picturing something along the lines of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.