Okeeheelee Middle School – Summer Reading List
Title
Author
Lexile
Genre & Synopsis
How Lamar’s Bad
Prank Won a Bubbasized Trophy
Allen, Crystal
550
Thirteen-year-old Lamar Washington is great at bowling, but he can't compete for
his father's attention with his basketball-star brother. With the encouragement of a
troublemaker he knows, Lamar starts hustling at the bowling alley, causing trouble
for everyone in Lamar's life.
Wild Things
Carmichael, Clay 890
Happenstance Found
Catanese, P.W.
700
90 Miles to Havana
Flores-Galbis,
Enrique
790
The Graveyard Book
Gaiman, Neil
820
Hide and Seek
Grant, Katy
700
Charlie Joe Jackson’s
Guide to Not Reading
The Juvie Three
Greenwald,
830
Tommy
Korman, Gordon 730
Eleven-year-old Zoë has been let down too many times, and she doesn't trust
anyone. When her mother dies, Zoe is sent to live with an uncle she didn't even
know she had, where she encounters a stray cat, a wild boy, and her reclusive
uncle's unusual art.
The first book in The Books of Umber trilogy, this story begins when twelve-year old
Happenstance awakens in a cave with no memory of who he is or how he came to
be there and follows Hap's adventures in the corrupt kingdom of Sarnica.
When Julian's parents make the heartbreaking decision to send him and his two
brothers away from Cuba to Miami via the Pedro Pan operation, the boys are thrust
into a new world where bullies run rampant and it's not always clear how best to
protect themselves.
Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if
he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to
neither the world of the living nor the dead.
Fourteen-year-old Chase discovers a geocache that contains a troubling message
for help in a child's handwriting. When he figures out the story behind the plea for
help, he finds himself on a dangerous rescue mission.
Charlie Joe has managed to get all the way to middle school without ever reading
an entire book, but is his luck running out?
Three boys, each with a different criminal act on their record, are given a special
chance to avoid prison and learn to be productive citizens. When their guardian
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A Long Walk to Water: Park, Linda Sue
Based on a True Story
720
The Dangerous Days
of Daniel X
Patterson,
James
680
The Mostly True
Adventures of Homer
P. Figg
Philbrick,
Rodman
950
My Fair Godmother
Rallison, Janette
760
Lost in the River of
Grass
Rorby, Ginny
750
The Trouble with Half
a Moon
Vigilante,
Danette
600
Healy gets injured in an accident they caused, will Gecko, Arjay, and Terence walk a
straight path, or will the temptations of crime bring down all three of them?
When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva
becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members
through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the
life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig
water wells in Sudan.
Daniel may appear to be just a normal 15 year old, but in reality he's an alien
hunter with superhuman powers. This makes sense, as Daniel is an alien too. He is
the only thing keeping the Earth safe from evil alien outlaws!
When his evil uncle sells his older brother Harold into the Union army, Homer sets
out with Bob the horse to get him back. The journey to find Harold is not a smooth
one. Many hilarious adventures ensue before the culmination of the tale at the
Battle of Gettysburg.
Having your own fairy godmother would be really cool, right? Perhaps not, if your
fairy godmother is still in training and often her magic doesn't quite work the way it
was intended! After losing her boyfriend to her older sister, Savannah's wish for her
own fairytale prince causes all sorts of complications, as the fairy student
Chrysanthemum Everstar sends her on time travelling misadventures.
A science-class field trip to the Everglades is supposed to be fun, but Sarah's new at
Glades Academy, and her fellow freshmen aren't exactly making her feel welcome.
When an opportunity for an unauthorized side trip on an airboat presents itself, it
seems like a perfect escape-an afternoon without feeling like a sore thumb. But,
one simple oversight turns a joyride into a race for survival across the river of grass.
Sarah will have to count on her instincts-and a guy she barely knows-if they have
any hope of making it back alive.
Dellie feels like a prisoner; ever since her little brother's accidental death her
mother won't allow her out of the house unless her father is with her. To make
matters worse, Dellie blames herself for her brother's death. So when a new family
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Saint Louis Armstrong
Beach
Woods, Brenda
660
Crispin the Cross of
Lead
Avi
NC
Elijah of Buxton
Curtis,
1070
Christopher Paul
Turtle in Paradise
Holmes,
Jennifer L.
610
moves into the apartment building and she discovers the little boy Corey (who
reminds her of her brother) is being abused, Dellie sets out to save him.
Saint loves Tremé, his New Orleans neighborhood, and playing his clarinet to earn
money from tourists. But most of all he loves Shadow, the stray dog. Saint swears
that of all the kids in Tremé, he's Shadow's favorite. When the warnings for
Hurricane Katrina come and the city starts to evacuate, Shadow runs away and so
does Saint;
"Asta's Son" is all he's ever been called. The lack of a name is appropriate, because
he and his mother are but poor peasants in 14th century medieval England. But this
thirteen-year-old boy who thought he had little to lose soon finds himself with even
less - no home, no family, or possessions. Accused of a crime he did not commit, he
may be killed on sight, by anyone. If he wishes to remain alive, he must flee his tiny
village. All the boy takes with him is a newly revealed name - Crispin - and his
mother's cross of lead.
Eleven-year-old Elijah is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada, a
settlement of runaway slaves just over the border from Detroit. He's best known
for having made a memorable impression on Frederick Douglass, but that changes
when a former slave steals money from Elijah’s friend, who has been saving to buy
his family out of captivity in the South. Elijah embarks on a dangerous journey to
America in pursuit of the thief and discovers firsthand the unimaginable horrors of
the life his parents fled--a life from which he’ll always be free, if he can find the
courage to get back home.
She's smart and tough and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood
ending. After all, it's 1935 and jobs and money and sometimes even dreams are
scarce. So, when Turtle's mama gets a job housekeeping for a lady who doesn't like
kids, Turtle says goodbye without a tear and heads off to Key West, Florida to live
with relatives she's never met. Florida's like nothing Turtle's ever seen before
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Rules
Lord, Cynthia
780
The Giver
Lowry, Lois
760
The Westing Game
Raskin, Ellen
750
though. It's hot and strange, full of rag tag boy cousins, family secrets, scams, and
even buried pirate treasure! Before she knows what's happened, Turtle finds
herself coming out of the shell she's spent her life building, and as she does, her
world opens up in the most unexpected ways. Filled with adventure, humor and
heart.
Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when
you have a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability.
She's spent years trying to teach David the rules-from "a peach is not a funnylooking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"-in order to stop his embarrassing
behaviors. But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a paraplegic boy, and Kristi, the
next-door friend she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behavior that turns
everything upside down and forces her to ask: What is normal?
December is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve-year-old
receives a life assignment determined by the Elders. Jonas watches his friend Fiona
named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant
Director of Recreation. But, Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his
selection leads him to an unnamed man-the man called only the Giver-he begins to
sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world.
Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the
receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the
terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
Sixteen heirs who are mysteriously chosen to live in the Sunset Towers apartment
building on the shore of Lake Michigan, somewhere in Wisconsin, come together to
hear the will of the self-made millionaire, Samuel W. Westing. The will takes the
form of a puzzle, dividing the sixteen heirs into eight pairs, giving each pair a
different set of clues which consist of almost all of the lyrics from "America The
Beautiful", and challenging them to solve the mystery of who murdered Sam
Westing. As an incentive, each heir is given $10,000 to play the game. Whoever
solves the mystery will inherit Sam Westing's $200 million fortune, and his
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Breaking Stalin’s Nose
Yelchin, Eugene
610
company, Westing Paper Products.
Sasha Zaichik has known the laws of the Soviet Young Pioneers since the age of six:
The Young Pioneer is devoted to Comrade Stalin, the Communist Party, and
Communism. A Young Pioneer is a reliable comrade and always acts according to
conscience. A Young Pioneer has a right to criticize shortcomings. But now that it is
finally time to join the Young Pioneers, the day Sasha has awaited for so long,
everything seems to go awry. He breaks a classmate's glasses with a snowball. He
accidentally damages a bust of Stalin in the school hallway. And worst of all, his
father, the best Communist he knows, was arrested just last night.
Reading List for Advanced Language Arts Students
Title
The Incredible
Journey
Author
Lexile
Burnford,
Sheila
1320
Midwife’s Apprentice Cushman,
Karen
1240
Genre & Synopsis
Instinct told them that the way home lay to the west. And so the doughty
young Labrador retriever, the roguish bull terrier and the indomitable Siamese
set out through the Canadian wilderness. Separately, they would soon have
died. But, together, the three house pets faced starvation, exposure, and wild
forest animals to make their way home to the family they love. The Incredible
Journey is one of the great children's stories of all time--and has been popular
ever since its debut in 1961.
This novel is about a strong young woman in medieval England who finds her
own way home. This is a world, like Chaucer's, that's . . . dangerous, primitive
and raucous. From the first page you're caught by the spirit of the homeless,
nameless waif, somewhere around 12 years old. She gets the village midwife to
take her in, befriends a cat, names herself Alyce, and learns something about
delivering babies. When she fails, she runs away, but she picks herself up again
and returns to work and independence.' --ALA Booklist (starred review). '. . .A
5
Water
Dickinson
1180
Peter;
McKinley Robin
Incident at Hawk’s
Hill
Eckert, Allan
W.
1200
The Faerie Door
Maxwell, B. E.
1120
Brian’s Winter
Paulsen, Gary
1140
fascinating view of a far distant time.' -- The Horn Book (starred review)
What magical beings inhabit earth?s waters? Some are as almost-familiar as the
mer- people; some as strange as the thing glimpsed only as a golden eye in a
pool at the edge of Damar?s Great Desert Kalarsham, where the mad god
Geljdreth rules; or as majestic as the unknowable, immense Kraken, dark
beyond the darkness of the deepest ocean, who will one day rise and rule the
world. These six tales from the remarkable storytellers Robin McKinley and
Peter Dickinson transform the simple element of water into something very
powerful indeed.
Six-year-old Ben is very small for his age, and gets along better with animals
than people. One June day in 1870, Ben wanders away from his home on
Hawk's Hill and disappears into the waving prairie grass. This is the story of
how a shy, lonely boy survives for months in the wilds and forges a bond with a
female badger. ALA Notable Book. Newbery Honor Book.
Long ago the Faerie Queen created portals between our world and hers, so that
children could summon help from faeries whenever the need arose. But a
wicked entity called the Shadow Knight is endeavoring to control the doors
between the two worlds, and only evil can get through. It falls to two
imaginative eleven-year-olds—Victoria Deveny, from 1890 Britain, and Elliot
Good, from 1966 America—to thwart his plan.
The Faerie Queen dispatches the youths on separate quests to retrieve orbs of
power that will ultimately defeat the Shadow Knight. Their bravery and
friendship are tested as the children travel to fantastic realms and face lifethreatening dangers—from dragons to flying pirate ships to a wicked sorceress
queen—before they're reunited to confront the dreaded Shadow Knight.
In Hatchet, 13-year-old Brian Robeson learned to survive alone in the
Canadian wilderness, armed only with his hatchet. He was rescued at the end of
the summer. Brian's Winter begins where Hatchet might have ended: Brian is
not rescued, but must build on his survival skills to face his deadliest enemy--a
northern winter.
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The Crossing
Paulsen Gary
1150
The Slippery Slope
Snicket,
Lemony
1150
Living Up the Street
Soto Gary
1140
A critically acclaimed tearjerker from a master storyteller: On one side of the
border is brutality and heartache; on the other side--a new life.
14year old Manny is an orphan in Juarez, Mexico. He competes with his bigger,
meaner rivals for the coins American tourists throw off the bridge between
Texas and his town. Across that heavily guarded bridge await a different world
and a better existence. On the night when Manny dares the crossing--through
the muddy shallows of the Rio Grande, past the searchlights and the border
patrol--the young man encounters an old stranger who could prove to be an
ally or an enemy. Manny can't tell for certain. But if he is to achieve his dream,
then he must be willing to risk everything--even his life.
Like bad smells, uninvited weekend guests or very old eggs, there are some
things that ought to be avoided. Snicket's saga about the charming, intelligent,
and grossly unlucky Baudelaire orphans continues to alarm its distressed and
suspicious fans the world over. The 10th book in this outrageous publishing
effort features more than the usual dose of distressing details, such as snow
gnats, an organised troupe of youngsters, an evil villain with a dastardly plan, a
secret headquarters and some dangerous antics you should not try at home.
With the weather turning colder, this is one chilling book you would be better
off without.
In a prose that is so beautiful it is poetry, we see the world of growing up and
going somewhere through the dust and heat of Fresno's industrial side and
beyond: It is a boy's coming of age in the barrio, parochial school, attending
church, public summer school, and trying to fall out of love so he can join in a
Little League baseball team. His is a clarity that rings constantly through
the warmth and wry reality of these sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic,
always human remembrances.
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