At my library, and as the YA Librarian, this is a hard request to come up with -- and it comes up often! I have had moms come in and say that their 10yo daughter is an excellent reader so now she is reading YA but wants no romance in the YAs.
NO romance at ALL in YA is hard, so what I usually tell the parent is that if her 10yo is a good reader, that is excellent! Then I explain that one of the main differences between the YA and (upper) MG sections of the lib is not the vocabulary or difficulty in reading of the books, but instead is based on the age of the characters in the books and what they are dealing with in their lives, which skew older and tend to deal with an aspect of romance. So if what she wants are just more good books for a good 10yo reader, I'll recommend some upper-MGs, such as RULES, WHEN YOU REACH ME, etc, like you said, Debbie.
(And Debbie, I also know you know this yourself, but it comes up fairly often at the lib so I thought I'd elaborate here on how us librarians tend to work with the parents on it.
)
That said, some other upper-MG goodies that I've read lately:
THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY by Adam Rex
WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON by Grace Lin
THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE by Jacqueline Kelly
THE IMPORTANCE OF WINGS by Robin Friedman
HAVEN by Beverly Patt