BOOKS TAKE KIDS ON A SUMMER GETAWAY.

Byline: Catherine Keefe Orange County Register

So many books. So little time.

And we're pretty sure you're not the kind of kid who wants to get stuck reading any stinky old books this summer.

So we poked our noses between hundreds of pages. We bothered librarians, teachers and people who work in bookstores.

Then we came up with a list of books that are so good that if you started reading one in the car on the way home from the beach, you'd want to stay in the car and finish it in the garage, but your mom would yell at you to come in out of that hot car and put your sandy towel away.

Oh well. We can't do anything about your mom. Just blame us.

But don't blame us for leaving off some of your favorite books. This list wouldn't be good for anything but swatting flies that sneak in before you slam the screen door if we didn't put some surprises on it.

And there is news.

Many writers have created new chew-your-lip, twirl-your-hair adventures for beginning readers, and they wrote more than one about the same characters. Check out ``The Danger Guys'' and ``The Magic Tree House'' books.

Another hot tip comes from the movie theaters. Maybe you've seen ``James and the Giant Peach'' or the previews for ``Matilda.'' Both films were based on books written by Roald Dahl. All of Dahl's books are popular.

Finally, we changed our mind, like you do after you look over the edge of the high diving board and decide not to jump. We added a few classics to our list, such as ``The Cay'' and ``Hatchet.'' They're too good to grow up without reading.

If you like this list, pass it to a friend. If not, don't call us, just read something this summer.

The books are listed in order of reading difficulty, last being most challenging.

THE NEW: For grades 1-5: 1. ``Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthday,'' by Barbara Park. Junie B. is the only person in Room Nine not invited to Jim's party (85 pages).

2. ``Danger Guys,'' by Tony Abbott. Best friends Noodle and Zeek discover danger in an adventure store (69 pages).

3. ``Halmoni and the Picnic,'' by Sook Nyul Choi. Halmoni's grandmother just arrived from Korea, and she's not sure she'll like America (32 pages).

4. ``Tar Beach,'' by Faith Ringold. Cassie lives in Harlem, but dreams of soaring above her neighborhood (32 pages).

5. ``Knights of the Kitchen Table,'' by Jon Scieszka. Joe and his two friends open a magic book and land in the Middle Ages battling an armored knight (55 pages).

6. ``The Cat's Meow,'' by Gary Soto. Graciela discovers her cat speaks Spanish, but no one else can hear it (76 pages).

7. ``Stonewords: A Ghost Story,'' by Pam Conrad. Eleven-year-old Zoe travels back to 1870 to try to stop the death of the girl whose ghost is living in Zoe's house (130 pages).

8. ``Ace: The Very Important Pig,'' by Dick King-Smith, author of ``Babe.'' Ace the pig is trying to win his way into Farmer Tubb's house (134 pages).

OLD FAVORITES: grades 1-5: Some of these have been sitting on shelves since before you were born.

1. ``Nate the Great,'' by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat. Nate, a pancake-loving detective, tries to solve the neighborhood's mysteries (62 pages).

2. ``Chang's Paper Pony,'' by Eleanor Coerr. Chang lives in San Francisco during the 1850s Gold Rush and wants a horse more than anything (64 pages).

3. ``Hank the Cowdog,'' by John R. Erickson. Hank the Cowdog's specialty is solving mysteries with a humorous flair (135 pages).

4. ``Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!'' by Stephen Manes. Milo thinks he has discovered the plan to become perfect (76 pages).

5. ``The Mouse and the Motorcycle,'' by Beverly Cleary. Keith is saved from boredom on the family vacation when he discovers Ralph, the daredevil mouse, living in his hotel room (158 pages).

6. ``How to Eat Fried Worms,'' by Thomas Rockwell. Billy has to eat 15 worms in 15 days or lose a $50 bet to his friend Alan (116 pages).

7. ``The Egypt Game,'' by Zilpha Keatly Snyder. Melanie and April find a deserted storage yard behind an antique shop and set up an ancient Egyptian temple (215 pages).

8. ``Where the Red Fern Grows,'' by Wilson Rawl. Ten-year-old Billy saves forever to buy a pair of hounds, then turns them into first-class hunting dogs and beloved pets (212 pages).

THE NEW: For grades 6-9: 1. ``Flip-Flop Girl,'' by Katherine Paterson. Life is miserable for Vinnie, taking care of her little brother, Mason, who refuses to speak, until she meets the mysterious flip-flop girl (120 pages).

2. ``The Original Freddie Ackerman,'' by Hadley Irwin. Trevor Frederick Ackerman is a miserable 12-year-old stuck with two odd great-aunts for the summer (183 pages).

3. ``Crazy Lady!'' by Jane Leslie Conly. Vernon discovers that Maxine Flooter, the neighborhood crazy lady, and her retarded son, Ronald, are not as strange as everyone thinks (180 pages).

4. ``Heads or Tails: Stories From the 6th Grade,'' by Jack Gantos. Diary of a sixth-grade boy attending his fifth school in six years (141 pages).

5. ``Rescue Josh McGuire,'' by Ben Mikaelsen. Life has turned upside down for Josh since his brother, Tye, died and his father started drinking too much. So he runs away with a bear cub (265 pages).

6. ``Downriver,'' by Will Hobbs. Jessie and a group of teen-agers ditch their camp leaders, hijack boats and try to run whitewater rapids through the Grand Canyon (204 pages).

7. ``Martin the Warrior,'' by Brian Jacques. ``If you like ``The Hobbit,'' you might enjoy this tale of Martin, a warrior mouse captured by an evil beast (376 pages).

8. ``The Last Command,'' by Timothy Zahn. In this novel from the ``Star Wars'' series, Luke Skywalker is back, battling the clone soldiers of Grand Admiral Thrawn (467 pages).

OLD FAVORITES: For grades 6-9: 1. ``Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret,'' by Judy Blume. Margaret desperately needs someone to talk to about growing up (149 pages).

2. ``The Cay,'' by Theodore Taylor. Phillip, a blind boy, is shipwrecked on an island with Timothy, an old man (144 pages).

3. ``Something Upstairs,'' by Avi. ``This is the strangest story I've ever heard ... I think it's true'' begins the book about a ghost wandering rooms of every old house in town (120 pages).

4. ``Hatchet,'' by Gary Paulsen. Brian's plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness, and he's left alone with only his clothes and a hatchet (195 pages).

5. ``Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,'' by Mildred Taylor. Cassie fights the prejudice of being African-American and living in Mississippi during the Depression (210 pages).

6. ``The Summer of the Swans,'' by Betsy Byars. Sara is 14 and trying to make sense of life with a gorgeous older sister and a younger brother who's mentally retarded (142 pages).

7. ``The Chocolate War,'' by Robert Cormier. Jerry's mom just died, his father is numb, and Jerry wonders: ``Do I dare disturb the universe?'' He discovers the answer when he refuses to sell chocolate for a school fund-raiser (191 pages).

8. ``The Yearling,'' by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The Florida backwoods dialect makes this book hard to read, but the story of Jody and the fawn he befriends is full of adventure and worth the struggle (428 pages).

BOOKS TO READ ALOUD: ``My Father's Dragon,'' first in the dragon trilogy by Ruth Stiles Gannett. A young boy's adventures in the jungles of a wild island (87 pages).

``Charlotte's Web,'' by E.B. White. Fern and a very smart spider set out to save Wilbur the pig from becoming a ham (184 pages).

``Indian in the Cupboard,'' by Lynne Reid Banks. Few children like the movie better than this classic book about a magic cupboard (181 pages).

``The Giver,'' by Lois Lowry. Jonas and his family live in a perfectly controlled community, and Jonas is chosen as an apprentice to the Giver, the only community member who understands true pleasure and pain (180 pages).

``Baby,'' by Patricia MacLachlan. Sophie, a baby, is left on the beach for a family who recently lost their own infant (132 pages).

``The Sign of the Beaver,'' by Elizabeth George Speare. Twelve-year-old Matt is trying to survive on his own in the Maine wilderness when he is rescued by Attean, a young Indian boy (135 pages).

``The Stinky Cheese Man,'' by Jon Scieszka. If you know your fairy tales and have a weird sense of humor, this might be the funniest parody collection written (48 pages).

``A Bad Case of the Giggles,'' a compilation of silly, silly poems about everyday life selected by Bruce Lansky (106 pages).

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Photo: Spice up your summer by reading a new book - or a ti me-tested classic.