BIRCHWOOD MIDDLE SCHOOL
SUMMER READING LIST
2008

Please select at least two books from your grade level and read them during the  summer.  You will be tested some time in September.
          Remember:  You  must read 25 books for the school year.  On June 1 you may start logging your books.

INCOMING GRADE 6

SOLDIER’S HEART (Gary Paulsen) Fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat.

HOOT (Carl Hiaasen)  Roy becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of  burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.

WEASEL (Cynthia DeFelice) Alone in the frontier wilderness in the winter of 1839, eleven-year-old Nathan meets the renegade known as Weasel and makes a surprising discovery about the concept of revenge.

THE EGYPT GAME (Zelpha Keatley Snyder) A group of children studying Egypt play their own Egypt game, which becomes more exciting than they expected.

INCOMING GRADE 7

DAIRY QUEEN (Catherine Gilbert Murdock) 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.

WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER COMES TO TOWN (Kimberly Willis Holt) During the summer of 1971, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Carl meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

SHOELESS JOE (William Kinsella) a book about baseball, love, and the power of dreams

CORALINE (Neil Gaiman) Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.

FLIGHT 116 IS DOWN (Caroline D. Cooney) High-schoolers Heidi and Patrick become heroes when a jumbo jet crashes into the woods behind Heidi’s house.

THE GREATEST, MUHAMMAD ALI (Walter Dean Myers) a riveting portrayal of Ali, his spirit and courage, from childhood to the present, as well as the hazards of boxing—the sport which he loved, but which ultimately damaged him

INCOMING GRADE 8

THE MOVES MAKE THE MAN (Bruce Brooks) As Jerome, a black athlete, shares his skills and interest in basketball with Bix, a white baseball player, their friendship grows, and the game becomes a reflection of both their lives.

13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES (Maureen Johnson) When seventeen-year-old Ginny receives a packet of mysterious envelopes from her favorite aunt, she leaves New Jersey to criss-cross Europe on a sort of scavenger hunt that transforms her life.

DRUMS, GIRLS, AND DANGEROUS PIE (Jordan Sonnenblick) The life of eighth-grader Steven Alper, already complicated by his friendship with two girls and a prodigious talent for drumming, is turned upside down when his five-year-old brother Jeffrey is hospitalized, having fallen while Steven is watching him.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS (John Boyne) Through the eyes of an innocent nine-year-old boy named Bruno, listeners become complicit bystanders, observing some of the horrors of the Holocaust.

THE SIGHT (David Clement-Davies) In Transylvania, a pack of wolves sets out on a perilous journey to prevent their enemy from calling upon a legendary evil one that will give her the power to control all animals.

THE YEAR OF SECRET ASSIGNMENTS (Jaclyn Moriarty) Lots of laughs, plenty of attitude, mystery and hi-jinx permeate this book. Three longtime girlfriends in high school—Emily, Lydia, and Cassie—who are connected through parents who went to law school together, are each required to become penpals with guys in a cross-town school with a bad reputation.

                                                                                                                                                   Annotations courtesy of Perma-Bound

Back to homepage