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Alison DeCamp

Alison DeCamp is the author of My Near-Death Adventures (99% True!), as well as a former teacher and current booksller at Between the Covers bookstore in Harbor Springs, Michigan. 

“I have a daughter and a son, I’ve taught middle school and high school and worked at a bookstore. These are all books I love, can sell, and that my children loved as well.”

  • Across the Nightingale Floor, Tales of the Otori, Book 1
  • Lian Hearn

  • Kind of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fantasy set in an alternate Japan where people can have superpowers. It’s really well-done fantasy.

  • Knucklehead
  • Jon Scieszka

  • A fantastic graphic novel about Jon’s boyhood in Flint, Michigan, where my husband is also from. It’s funny and real and mostly funny.

  • Out from Boneville, Boneville Series, #1
  • Jeff Smith

  • These are so imaginative, innocent, and creative. I am a big fan of smart graphic novels and how they make us think.

  • The Eddie Dickens Trilogy
  • Philip Ardagh

  • There’s a stuffed stoat in these books. I’m not even sure what that is, but do I really need to say more?

  • The Willoughbys
  • Lois Lowry

  • Same Lois Lowry as THE GIVER, but a completely different kind of story, one where the kids are super smart and the adults need to get a clue.

  • Winger
  • Andrew Smith

  • My 16 y.o. has read and reread this book about a 14 y.o. rugby player. It’s a story about all the confusion that’s part and parcel of growing up while simultaneously injecting humor and love and redemption into the entire mix.

  • Nicholas
  • Jean-Jacques Sempe

  • Nicholas is irreverent and slightly naughty and a bit clueless but always funny.

  • How They Croaked, The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous
  • Georgia Bragg

  • (by Georgia Bragg & Kevin O’Malley)

    Just like the title says, this is a book about how famous people died. But really it’s a history book.

  • We Were Liars
  • E.Lockhart

  • I read this book in three hours. Granted, I told my family I wasn’t feeling well so they actually left me alone for that amount of time, but I devoured this book. There’s an unreliable narrator and a shocking ending and a slew of open-ended questions that we still argue about in our house.