Summer+Reading+for+Middle+School

= Cranston Public Schools = **2010 Summer Reading //__Suggestions__//**

Middle School
Make Waves @ your Library

2010 //__winner__// Rhode Island Teen Book Award
 * * 2011 //__nominee__// Rhode Island Teen Book Award **

FICTION
Barnes, Jennifer Lynn __ The Squad Series __ Bayport High’s cheerleader squad is made up of the hottest of the hot. However, the squad is actually a cover for the most highly trained group of underage government operatives the United States has ever assembled.

Jason, a twelve-year-old autistic boy who wants to become a writer, relates what his life is like as he tries to make sense of his world. When best friends Chris and Win go on a cross-country bicycle trek the summer after graduating and only one of them returns, the FBI wants to know what happened.
 * Baskin, Nora Raleigh __Anything But Typical__**
 * * Beil, Michael E. // The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour //** Three 7th grade detectives in New York help a neighbor solve puzzles hidden in the church next to their school while looking to find a legendary ruby ring.
 * Bradbury, Jennifer __Shift__**

Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret he left behind and, now, in a loving adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events forces him to confront his past. Zebby and Amr just want to have an uncensored, online school magazine, but someone uses their website to bully a popular girl … should they censor their classmates?
 * Burg, Ann E. __All the broken pieces : a novel in verse__ **
 * * **Butler, **Dori Hillstad //The Truth About Truman School// **

Collins, Suzanne __The Hunger Games__
 * Welcome to the Hunger Games, a Capitol-endorsed reality TV show in which Katniss can only prevail by killing the other players … even Peeta, who once saved her from starvation.**

Fitzgerald, Dawn __Soccer Chick Rules__
 * While trying to focus on a winning soccer season, thirteen-year-old Tess becomes involved in local politics when she learns that all sports programs at her school will be stopped unless a tax levy is passed.**

Galante, Celia __The Patron Saint of Butterflies__
 * When her grandmother takes Agnes, her brother, and her friend Honey from a religious commune, Agnes clings to faith as Honey looks toward a future free of control and cruelty.**

Henkes, Kevin __Bird Lake Moon__ * **Hiaasen, Carl Scat While on a field trip in a Florida wildlife preserve, Nick and Marta decide to investigate when a mysterious fire starts and their unpopular teacher disappears.** Hoffman, Alice __Incantation__
 * Temporarily living with his mom at his grandparents' home on Bird Lake, 12-year-old Mitch Sinclair's plans to make the seemingly abandoned house next door his own are shattered when Spencer Stone arrives with his family.**
 * Estrella's family is hiding a huge secret. But will her best friend, Catalina, betray her trust because of a boy's love for Estrella and not her?**

Johnston __Bone by bone by bone__
 * In 1950s Tennessee, ten-year-old David's racist father refuses to let him associate with his best friend Malcolm, an African American boy.**

Kelly, Jacqueline __Evolution of Calpurnia Tate__ ** In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery. **

Kinney, Jeff __Diary of a Wimpy Kid__ Korman, Gordon __The Juvie Three__ **Crime landed them in jail, but their luck changes when Mr. Healy selects them to serve their sentences in his halfway house. Then he is injured, everything changes.** * Korman, Gordon __Schooled__
 * Greg records his sixth grade experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive.**
 * Cap lives in isolation with his grandmother, a former hippie; but when she falls from a tree and breaks her hip, Cap is sent to a foster home where he has his first experience in a public school.**

Koss, Amy Goldman __Side Effects__


 * When Izzy goes to the doctor to check her swollen glands, she thinks he'll give her some medicine but it’s not that simple ... Izzy has cancer.**

Mackel, Kathryn __Boost__
 * Thirteen-year-old Savvy searches for some way to boost her performance on the girls’ basketball team. Savvy denies that she uses steroids, but rumors start to fly.**

Mass, Wendy __Every Soul a Star__
 * Ally, Bree, and Jack meet at Moon Shadow, an isolated campground, to watch a total eclipse of the sun; but soon they begin to learn a great deal about themselves, each other, and the universe.**

Meyer, Carolyn __Marie, Dancing__
 * Living in a part of Paris in the 1800's is dismal for Marie, but an invitation to model for Edgar Degas could bring new meaning to the life for this talented Paris Opera ballet dancer.**

Miller, Sarah __ Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller __** At age twenty, Annie Sullivan travels from Massachusetts to Alabama to try to teach six-year-old Helen Keller. **

Myers, Walter Dean __Sunrise over Fallujah__ * **Nielsen-Fernlund,** Susin __Word Nerd__ **Ambrose is a magnet for bullies, making his mother decide to homeschool him. He then befriends the neighborhood ex-con and joins a scrabble club … all behind his mother's back!** O’Connor Barbara __How to steal a dog__
 * Robin Perry, from Harlem, is sent to Iraq in 2003 as a member of the Civilian Affairs Battalion, and his time there profoundly changes him.**
 * Living in the family car in their small North Carolina town after their father leaves them virtually penniless, Georgina, desperate to improve their situation and unwilling to accept her overworked mother’s calls for patience, persuades her younger brother to help her in an elaborate scheme to get money by stealing a dog and then claiming the reward that the owners are bound to offer.**

Patterson, James __The Maximum Ride Series__
 * After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "birdkids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.**

Paulsen, Gary __Mudshark__
 * Principal Wagner confidently deals with a faculty washroom crisis, a psychic parrot, and a terrorizing gerbil, but when sixty-five erasers go missing, he enlists the help of the school's best problem solver and lost item locator, twelve-year-old Lyle Williams, also known as Mudshark.**

Rodman Philbrick __The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg__
 * Homer P. Figg escapes from his wretched foster home in Pine Swamp, Maine , and sets out to find his beloved older brother, Harold, who has been illegally sold into the Union Army**

Potter, Ellen __Pish Posh__
 * Eleven-year-old Clara Frankofile sits in her parents' elegant New York City restaurant, Pish Posh, and passes judgement on each customer, but her all-seeing eyes fail to observe the mysterious events occurring right under her nose.**

Reeve, Philip __Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest__ __Reaches of Space__
 * In an alternate Victorian England, Arthur and his sister Myrtle, residents of //Larklight,// a space worthy vessel, uncover a spidery plot to destroy the solar system.**

Reinhardt, Dana A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
 * Simone's life changes unexpectedly when her parents convince her to contact her biological mother, an agnostic from a Jewish family who is losing her battle with cancer.**

Riordan, Rick __The Lightning Thief__
 * Percy Jackson always had a hard time fitting in, especially after he found out his father is a Greek god who needs him to save mankind.**

Roy, Jennifer __Yellow Star__
 * Syvia was 4 years old when the Nazis forced Jews from her area of Poland into the Lodz Ghetto. Six years later, she was one of only 12 child survivors to be liberated from the ghetto.**

Shaw, Susan __Safe__
 * When thirteen-year-old Tracy, whose mother died when she was three years old, is attacked and beaten on the last day of school, all her feelings of security disappear.**

Sedgwick, Marcus __The Foreshadowing__
 * Having always been able to know when someone is going to die, Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother and try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him.**

Skelton, Matthew __Endymion Spring__
 * Having accompanied his mother and pesky younger sister to Oxford, Blake stumbles across an ancient, magical book that was secreted to England in 1453 to save it from evil forces.**

Sonnenblick, Jordan __Notes From the Midnight Driver__
 * After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, Alex befriends a cranky old man with lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.**

St. Anthony, Jane __The Summer Sherman Loved Me__
 * In addition to coping with her changing relationship with her mother, twelve-year-old Margaret spends her summer trying to sort out her feelings for the boy next door who claims to love her.**

Werlin, Nancy __Rules of Survival__
 * Matt tells of trying desperately to save his younger sisters and himself from the very real dangers of life with a very disturbing and dangerous woman: their mother.**

* Westerfield, Scott __Leviathan__
 * Clankers and Darwinists prep for war while orphaned Austro-Hungarian Prince Alek flees danger and Deryn, disguised as a boy, trains as an airman on a British flying whaleship.**

Westerfeld, Scott __The Last Days: A Novel__
 * Five New York teenagers try to concentrate on their new band while the city suffers from a mysterious epidemic that is turning people into cannibals.

NON-FICTION **

Balsam, Ann __Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zero on the Front Lines__ __of The Civil Rights Movement__
 * Recounts the freedom ride of John Lewis and Jim Zero into the South in 1961 as part of the Civil Rights Movement.**

Fleischman, Sid __Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini__
 * A biography of the magician, ghost chaser, aviator, and king of escape artists whose amazing feats are remembered long after his death in 1926.**

Hoose, Phillip __Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice__
 * Presents an account of fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, an African-American girl who refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama , nine months before Rosa Parks, and covers her role in a crucial civil rights case.**

Lipsyte, Robert. __Heroes of Baseball: The Men Who Made It America’s Favorite Game__
 * Meet the men who were and remain the heroes of baseball. These are men who did more than hit home runs or pitch perfect games--they changed the way our society perceives itself, and the goals we set for ourselves and our nation.**

O'Meara, Stephen James __Are You Afraid Yet? The Science Behind Scary Stuff__
 * Uncover the scientific truth about the strange and unusual**

Oppenheim, Joanne __Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration__ __During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference__


 * The true-life story of Clara Breed, a librarian whose outreach efforts helped a group of Japanese-American children survive the persecutions of the American government during World War II.**

Regan, Sally __The Vampire Book__
 * All you ever wanted to know about vampires**

Renn, Crystal __Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the__ __Ultimate Embrace of Curves__
 * A model's success doesn't require starvation **

Robinson, Sharon __Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America__
 * Using words and pictures, Sharon Robinson captures the life of her father.**

Schlitz, Laura Amy // Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village //
 * Thirteenth-century England springs to life using 21 dramatic individual narratives that introduce young inhabitants of village and manor.**

Stone, Tanya Lee __Almost Astronauts: The True Story of the “Mercury 13” women__
 * Profiles thirteen women who challenged social norms and government policies to prove they could be exceptional astronauts.**

Stutts, Ryan __The Skateboarding Field Manual__
 * Evolution, tricks, etiquette and dealing with the law.**

Walker, Sally M. __Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the__ __H.L.Hunley__** Tells the story of the "H. L. Hunley," the Confederate submarine that in 1864 became the first to ever sink an enemy ship but lay missing on the ocean floor for more than a century.

Make Waves at your Library