Summer Reading Suggestions for 2015

Summer Reading Suggestions for 2015

…for what to readafter completing the required titles

(Recommended by Springton Lake Middle School Library)

Fantasy and Supernatural

/ Collins, Suzanne.Gregor the Overlander
When eleven-year-old Gregor and his two-year-old sister are pulled into a strange underground world, they trigger an epic battle involving humans, bats, rats, cockroaches, and spiders while on a quest foretold by ancient prophecy.
Reading Level:6.0Interest Level:3-6
/ Gaiman, Neil.The Graveyard Book
The orphan Bod, short for Nobody, is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard as a child of eighteen months and raised lovingly and carefully to the age of eighteen years by the community of ghosts and otherworldly creatures.
Reading Level:5.1Interest Level:5-8
/ Gidwitz, Adam. A Tale Dark Grimm
Follows Hansel and Gretel as they walk out of their own story and into eight more tales, encountering such wicked creatures as witches, along with kindly strangers and other helpful folk. Based in part on the Grimms' fairy tales Faithful Johannes, Hansel and Gretel, The seven ravens, Brother and sister, The robber bridegroom, and The devil and his three golden hairs.
Reading Level:4.8Interest Level:5-8
/ Law, Ingrid.Savvy
Recounts the adventures of Mibs Beaumont, whose thirteenth birthday has revealed her "savvy"--a magical power unique to each member of her family--just as her father is injured in a terrible accident.
Reading Level:6.0Interest Level:5-8
/ Auxier, Jonathan.The Night Gardener
Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.
Reading Level: 5.4 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Riordan, Rick. The Lost Hero
Jason, Piper, and Leo, three students from a school for "bad kids," find themselves at Camp Half-Blood, where they learn that they are demigods and begin a quest to free Hera, who has been imprisoned by Mother Earth herself.
Reading Level: 4.8 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Colfer, Eoin. Artemis Fowl
When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll.
Reading Level: 6.7 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Reading Level: 5.3 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Blakemore, Megan Frazer.The Water Castle
Moving into an inherited mansion in Maine with their mother and stroke-afflicted father, three siblings uncover a mystery involving hidden passageways, family rivalries, and healing waters.
Reading Level: 4.9 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Stiefvater, Maggie. The Scorpio Races
Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.
Interest Level: Young Adult

Historical Fiction

/ Gantos, Jack. Dead End in Norvelt
In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.
Reading Level:6.0Interest Level:5-8
/ Anderson, Laurie Halse. Chains
After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.
Reading Level: 5.2 Interest Level:5-8
/ Pileggi, Leah. Prisoner 88
In 1885, ten-year-old Jake is sent to prison for killing a man who threatened his father, and struggles to survive the harsh realities of prison life in the Idaho Territory.
Interest Level:5-8
/ Korman, Gordan. Unsinkable (Titanic Series)
The lives of four young passengers aboard the maiden voyage of the RMS “Titanic” become linked, and while Paddy stows away, Sophie and her mother are delivered to the ship by the police, Juliana watches as her father's wealth barely conceals his madness, and Alphie harbors a great secret.
Reading Level:5.7Interest Level:3-6
/ Sharenow, Robert. The Berlin Boxing Club
In 1936 Berlin, fourteen-year-old Karl Stern, considered Jewish despite a non-religious upbringing, learns to box from the legendary Max Schmeling while struggling with the realities of the Holocaust.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Moss, Marissa. A Soldier’s Secret: The Incredible True Story of Sarah Edmonds, A Civil War Hero
This riveting novel is based on the true story of a teenage girl named Sarah Emma Edmonds who masqueraded as a man during the Civil War. As “Frank Thompson,” Sarah must grapple with living a lie while having to deal with danger, war, and even romance. Sarah’s gripping voice vividly reveals her incredible journey of self-discovery and brings to life the truths and horrors of the Civil War.
Reading Level: 5.6 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Sepetys, Ruta. Between Shades of Gray
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Bruchac, Joseph. Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two
After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.
Reading Level: 6.2 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Hopkinson, Deborah. The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel
Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854.
Reading Level: 4.2 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Timberlake, Amy. One Came Home
In 1871 Wisconsin, thirteen-year-old Georgia sets out to find her sister Agatha, presumed dead when remains are found wearing the dress she was last seen in, and before the end of the year gains fame as a sharpshooter and foiler of counterfeiters.
Reading Level: 4.8 Interest Level: 5-8

Mystery & Adventure

/ Dowd, Siobahn.Down the Rabbit Hole : An Echo Falls Mystery
Like her idol Sherlock Holmes, eighth grader Ingrid Levin-Hill uses her intellect to solve a murder case in her home town of Echo Falls.
Reading Level:6.0Interest Level:5-8
/ Grisham, John. Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer
Thirteen-year-old TheodoreBoone, who knows every judge, police officer, and court clerk in the small town of Strattenburg, finds himself involved in a murder trial because of knowledge he might have about a cold-blooded killer.
Reading Level: 5.4 Interest Level:5-8
/ Cooney, Caroline B. The Face on the Milk Carton
A photograph of a missing girl on a milkcarton leads Janie on a search for her real identity. Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Haddix, Margaret Peterson. Among the Hidden
In a future where the Population Police enforce the law limiting a family to only two children, Luke has lived all his twelve years in isolation and fear on his family's farm, until another "third" convinces him that the government is wrong.
Reading Level: 4.7 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Wasserman, Robin.The Book of Blood and Shadow
While working on a project translating letters from sixteenth-century Prague, high school senior Nora Kane discovers her best friend murdered with her boyfriend the apparent killer and is caught up in a dangerous web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all searching for a mysterious ancient device purported to allow direct communication with God.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Stewart, Trenton Lee. The Mysterious Benedict Society
After passing a series of mind-bending tests, four children are selected for a secret mission that requires them to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.
Reading Level:5.6Interest Level:3-6
/ Horowitz, Anthony. Stormbreaker(Alex Rider Series)
After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6.
Reading Level: 5.5 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Reichs, Kathy. Virals
Tory Brennan is the leader of a band of teenage 'sci-philes' who live on an island off the coast of South Carolina and when the group rescues a dog caged for medical testing, they are exposed to an experimental strain of canine parvovirus that changes their lives forever.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Lane, Andrew. Death Cloud
In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously "unwell," fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Grabenstein, Chris.Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library
Twelve-year-old Kyle gets to stay overnight in the new town library, designed by his hero (the famous gamemakerLuigi Lemoncello), with other students but finds that come morning he must work with friends to solve puzzles in order to escape.
Reading Level: 5.2 Interest Level: 3-6

Realistic Fiction

/ Grimes, Nikki. Planet Middle School
A series of poems describes all the baffling changes at home and at school in twelve-year-old Joylin's transition from tomboy basketball player to not-quite-girly girl.
Reading Level:3.8Interest Level:3-6
/ Hiassen, Carl. Hoot
Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.
Reading Level:5.5 Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Mass, Wendy. The Candymakers
Four gifted twelve-year-olds, including Logan, the candymaker's son, are set to be contestants in the Confectionary Association's national competition to determine the nation's tastiest sweet, but nobody anticipates that a friendship will form between them.
Reading Level:5.7Interest Level:3-6
/ Lubar, David. Dunk
Chad, hoping to work out his frustrations and his anger by taking a summer job as a dunk tank Bozo on the boardwalk at the New Jersey shore, comes to a better understanding of himself and the uses of humor as he undergoes training in the fine art of insults.
Reading Level:7.5Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Van Draanen, Wendelin.Flipped
In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years.
Reading Level:5.9Interest Level:5-8
/ Sonnenblick, Jordan. Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie
When his younger brother is diagnosed with leukemia, thirteen-year-old Steven tries to deal with his complicated emotions, his school life, and his desire to support his family. Reading Level: 5.3 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Preller, James. Bystander
Thirteen-year-old Eric discovers there are consequences to not standing by and watching as the bully at his new school hurts people, but although school officials are aware of the problem, Eric may be the one with a solution.
Reading Level: 5.0 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Tolan, Stephanie S. Listen!
During her solitary convalescence from a crippling accident, twelve-year-old Charley finds a wild dog, and the arduous process of training him leads her to explore her feelings about her mother's death two years earlier.
Reading Level: 4.8 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Levine, Kristin. The Lions of Little Rock
Twelve-year-old Marlee develops a strong friendship with Liz, the new girl in school, but when Liz suddenly stops attending school and Marlee hears a rumor that her friend is actually an African American girl passing herself off as white, the two young girls must decide whether their friendship is worth taking on integration and the dangers it could bring to their families.
Reading Level: 3.9 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Kadohata, Cynthia. The Thing About Luck
Just when twelve-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year of bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for harvest workers.
Reading Level: 4.7 Interest Level: 5-8

Science Fiction & Dystopian

/ Patterson, James. The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride Series)
After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "bird kids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Dashner, James. The Maze Runner
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ L’Engle, Madeline.A Wrinkle in Time
Meg Murry, her brother Charles, and their friend Calvin, embark on a journey through space and time, assisted by three otherworldly women, when they set out to find Meg's father, a physicist who disappeared while experimenting with time travel.
Reading Level:4.7Interest Level:5-8
/ Bacigalupi, Paolo.Ship Breaker
In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Westerfeld, Scott.Uglies
Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen year old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Haddix, Margaret Peterson. Found
Thirteen year old best friends Jonah and Chip, who know that they are both adopted, begin receiving threatening notes in the mail and as they investigate they uncover very complicated circumstances surrounding their adoptions.
Reading Level: 5.0 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Roth, Veronica. Divergent
In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Crockett, S. D. After the Snow
Fifteen-year-old Willo Blake, born after the 2059 snows created a new ice age, searches for his family, who mysteriously disappeared from their frozen mountain home, and encounters outlaws, halfmen, and an abandoned girl along the way.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Healey, Karen. When We Wake
In 2027, sixteen-year-old Tegan is just like every other girl--playing the guitar, falling in love, and protesting the wrongs of the world with her friends. But then Tegan dies, waking up 100 years in the future as the unknowing first government guinea pig to be cryogenically frozen and successfully revived. Appalling secrets about her new world come to light, and Tegan must choose to either keep her head down or fight for a better future.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ VandeVelde, Vivian. Heir Apparent
While playing a total immersion virtual reality game of kings and intrigue, fourteen-year-old Giannine learns that demonstrators have damaged the equipment to which she is connected, and she must win the game quickly or be damaged herself.
Reading Level: 7.6 Interest Level: 5-8

Sports Fiction

/ Deuker, Carl.Gym Candy
Groomed by his father to be a star player, football is the only thing that has ever really mattered to Mick Johnson, who works hard for a spot on the varsity team his freshman year, then tries to hold onto his edge by using steroids, despite the consequences to his health and social life.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Green, Tim.Football Genius
Troy, a sixth-grader with an unusual gift for predicting footballplays before they occur, attempts to use his ability to help his favorite team, the Atlanta Falcons, but he must first prove himself to the coach and players.
Reading Level:4.8Interest Level:5-8
/ Alexander, Kwame.The Crossover
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
Reading Level: 4.5 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Lupica, Mike. Heat
Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof.
Reading Level:6.9Interest Level:5-8
/ Murdock, Catherine Gilbert.Dairy Queen
After spending her summer running the family farm and training the quarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decides to go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those around her.
Interest Level:Young Adult
/ Ritter, John H. The Boy Who Saved Baseball
The fate of a small California town rests on the outcome of one baseball game, and Tom Gallagher hopes to lead his team to victory with the secrets of the now disgraced player, Dante Del Gato.
Reading Level: 6.5 Interest Level: 5-8
/ Van Draanen, Wendelin.The Running Dream
When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Coy, John. Crackback
Miles barely recalls when football was fun after being sidelined by a new coach, constantly criticized by his father, and pressured by his best friend to take performance-enhancing drugs.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Korman, Gordon. Pop
Lonely after a midsummer move to a new town, sixteen-year-old high-school quarterback Marcus Jordan becomes friends with a retired professional linebacker who is great at training him, but whose childish behavior keeps Marcus in hot water.
Interest Level: Young Adult
/ Gutman, Dan. Roberto & Me
Stosh travels back to 1969 to try to prevent the untimely death of Roberto Clemente, a legendary baseball player and humanitarian, but upon his return to the present, he meets his own great-grandson who takes him into the future, and what he finds there is more shocking than anything he has encountered in his travels to the past.
Reading Level: 4.3 Interest Level: 5-8

Non-Fiction