Dear Parents,
We have just finished our first round of book club meetings. All students read The
Outsiders by S.E. Hinton while working in small book club groups to discuss the novel. We are
now ready for our next round of book club meetings. This time, each group will be reading a
different novel rather than the whole class reading the same novel. The selected novels, with a
brief synopsis from amazon, are listed below. Students will be placed in book club groups based
on their choice of novel.
If you would like to read more about each novel, you may refer to amazon or
goodreads.com. Please let me know if you have any questions about the choices listed below or
if you would prefer your student not read one of the choices. You can contact me at
rfurrow@cornerstonecharterk8.com.
Thank you,
Rebecca Furrow
Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper
Eleven-year-old Melody has a photographic memory. Her head is like a video camera that is
always recording. Always. And there's no delete button. She's the smartest kid in her whole
school—but no one knows it. Most people--her teachers and doctors included--don't think she's
capable of learning, and up until recently her school days consisted of listening to the same
preschool-level alphabet lessons again and again and again. If only she could speak up, if only
she could tell people what she thinks and knows . . . but she can't, because Melody can't talk.
She can't walk. She can't write.
Being stuck inside her head is making Melody go out of her mind--that is, until she discovers
something that will allow her to speak for the first time ever. At last Melody has a voice . . . but
not everyone around her is ready to hear it.
From multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner Sharon M. Draper comes a story full of
heartache and hope. Get ready to meet a girl whose voice you'll never, ever forget.
Counting By 7's by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Counting by 7's is a delightful, powerful, and beautifully written book that I can’t forget and
want to give to everyone around me. Holly Goldberg Sloan's quirky characters nestle into your
heart and stay there, particularly 12-year-old Willow Chance. A young genius obsessed with the
number seven, plants, and diagnosing medical conditions (especially skin disorders that she can
surreptitiously photograph) Willow is a true outsider looking for a way in. Her parents tether
her to the world, and when they are killed in a car crash Willow’s comfortable sphere is
shattered. Though a tragedy, the loss of her parents is also Willow’s entry into the lives of
others. The bond she forms with an unlikely cast of characters is heartfelt and transformative.
Like Willow’s beloved plants, these are people putting down new roots and rising toward the
sun.
The Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings
In this satisfying crime and coming-of-age drama, a toddler drowns in a kayak accident after
friends of teenage Brady, the victim's neighbor, vent some anger against the child's dad by
drilling holes in the bottom of his craft. It was a mean-spirited prank--but no one was supposed
to die. What happens now? Revealing the terrible secret would implicate Brady's friends in the
drowning, and it clouds his whole world with guilt and fear. Cummings works plot and
characterizations skillfully, building suspense as the evidence unfolds and as Brady wrestles
with his decision and tries to come to terms with his own responsibility. Brady's easternMaryland surroundings and heritage (his father, a waterman, struggles to make a living from
crabbing) are also vividly evoked. Brady's ultimate decision is both anguished and wellreasoned, making for a realistic conclusion.
Sure Signs of Crazy by Karen Harrington
Sarah Nelson is dreading the seventh-grade family tree project and hoping her alcoholic father,
a college professor, will move them from Garland, Texas, by summer's end. That has been their
pattern whenever local acquaintances discover, usually through a resurfacing news story about
two notorious court trials, that Sarah is the sole survivor of her mother's attempt to drown her
two-year-old twins 10 years earlier. With a plant as her only confidante, she conducts imaginary
conversations with her dead brother and looks for signs of insanity in herself as she puzzles
over the twice-yearly cryptic greeting cards from her mother, a patient in a home for the insane
in Wichita. An end-of-sixth-grade letter-writing assignment has Sarah sharing her loneliness and
confusion with an idealized father, Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird. But at least her
own father has agreed to spare her a boring summer with her grandparents in Houston,
deciding instead to leave her in the charge of a college student. Charlotte's romantic
preoccupations, benign neglect, and attractive brother who shares Sarah's love of words start
her on a road to self-discovery and give her the courage to challenge her father's well-intended
but misguided attempts to shield her from her past. Sarah is an introspective protagonist whose
narrative, interspersed with letters and word definitions, keeps readers absorbed. The horrific
premise is not belabored, and the focus remains on the plight of a girl juggling the normal
challenges of adolescence with a complex family situation. Secondary characters add interest
and texture to this compelling novel.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
In The Fault in Our Stars, John Green has created a soulful novel that tackles big subjects--life,
death, love--with the perfect blend of levity and heart-swelling emotion. Hazel is sixteen, with
terminal cancer, when she meets Augustus at her kids-with-cancer support group. The two are
kindred spirits, sharing an irreverent sense of humor and immense charm, and watching them
fall in love even as they face universal questions of the human condition--How will I be
remembered? Does my life, and will my death, have meaning?--has a raw honesty that is
deeply moving.
Crash by Jerry Spinelli
A winning story about seventh-grade Crash Coogan's transformation from smug jock to
empathetic, mature young man. In a clever, breezy first-person style, Spinelli tackles gender
roles, family relationships, and friendship with humor and feeling. As the novel opens, Crash
feels passionately about many things: the violence of football; being in charge; the way he looks
in shoulder pads; never being second in anything; and the most expensive sneakers at the mall.
Although a stereotypical bully, the boy becomes more than one-dimensional in the context of
his overworked, unavailable parents and the love he has for his grandfather, who comes to live
with the Coogans and then suffers a stroke. It is because of his affection for Scooter that Crash
comes to appreciate Penn Webb, a neighbor and classmate whom for years Crash has
tormented and teased about his pacifism, vegetarianism, second-hand clothes, and social
activism. Penn relentlessly offers friendship, which Crash finally accepts when he sees Penn's
love for his own great-grandfather as a common bond. The story concludes as Penn, named by
his great-grandfather for Philadelphia's famous Penn Relays, wins the school race while the
elderly man looks on. Readers will devour this humorous glimpse at what jocks are made of
while learning that life does not require crashing helmet-headed through it.
Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen
Cole Matthews is angry. Angry, defiant, smug--in short, a bully. His anger has taken him too far
this time, though. After beating up a ninth-grade classmate to the point of brain damage, Cole
is facing a prison sentence. But then a Tlingit Indian parole officer named Garvey enters his life,
offering an alternative called Circle Justice, based on Native American traditions, in which
victim, offender, and community all work together to find a healing solution. Privately, Cole
sneers at the concept, but he's no fool--if it gets him out of prison, he'll do anything. Ultimately,
Cole ends up banished for one year to a remote Alaskan island, where his arrogance sets him
directly in the path of a mysterious, legendary white bear. Mauled almost to death, Cole awaits
his fate and begins the transition from anger to humility.
Ben Mikaelsen's depiction of a juvenile delinquent's metamorphosis into a caring, thinking
individual is exciting and fascinating, if at times heavy-handed. Cole's nastiness and the vivid
depictions of the lengths he must go to survive after the (equally vivid) attack by the bear are
excruciating at times, but the concept of finding a way to heal a whole community when one
individual wrongs another is compelling. The jacket cover photo of the author in a bear hug
with the 700-pound black bear that he and his wife adopted and raised is definitely worth
seeing!
Small Steps by Louis Sachar
–This sequel to Holes (Farrar, 1998) focuses on Armpit, an African-American former resident of
Tent D at Camp Green Lake. It's two years after his release, and the 16-year-old is still digging
holes, although now getting paid for it, working for a landscaper in his hometown of Austin, TX.
He's trying to turn his life around, knowing that everyone expects the worst of him and that he
must take small steps to keep moving forward. When X-Ray, his friend and fellow former
detainee at the juvenile detention center, comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme involving
scalping tickets to a concert by teenage pop star Kaira DeLeon, Armpit fronts X-Ray the money.
He takes his best friend and neighbor, Ginny, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy, to the concert
and ends up meeting Kaira, getting romantically involved, and finally becoming a hero by saving
her life when her stepfather tries to kill her and frame him. Small Steps has a completely
different tone than Holes. It lacks the bizarre landscape, the magical realism, the tall-tale
quality, and the heavy irony. Yet, there is still much humor, social commentary, and a great deal
of poignancy. Armpit's relationship with Ginny, the first person to care for him, look up to him,
and give his life meaning, is a compassionate one. Like Holes, Small Steps is a story of
redemption, of the triumph of the human spirit, of self-sacrifice, and of doing the right thing.
Sachar is a master storyteller who creates memorable characters.