Recommended book list for students entering 6th grade:
“Turnabout” by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Amelia Hazelwood, Annabeth Flick, and 40 or more others from Riverside nursing home
are selected at the old age of 100 to live forever. In a doctor’s experiment called Project
Turnabout. The doctors inject them with a formula called PT1. When the selected have
decrease in age to their ideal age they are supposed to get another injection to make the
reverse aging stop. Unfortunately, everyone who received the second injection died. Now in
2085 Amelia and Annabeth are in their teens and are still getting younger. They know they
need parents to care for them and time is running out. What will they do?
“The Devil’s Arithmetic” by Jane Yolen
Thirteen-year old Hannah detests attending her family Seder. All the talk about
remembering the Holocaust bores her until she finds herself transported to a Polish shtetl in
1942. There she joins the inhabitants as they're taken to a concentration camp. Through
Hannah, readers find themselves in a grim four-day journey by boxcar to the concentration
camp. In all that time Hannah gets one cup of dirty water to drink; she's packed in so tightly
she can't move; with no toilet facilities, people simply soil themselves, adding to the
intolerable odors. On the way, a child dies in her mother's arms and one of Hannah's new
friends dies too. And that's just the beginning of the horror.
“Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen
The survival adventures of 13-years-old Brian Robeson in Hatchet have sparked the
imagination of millions of young readers. Following a plane crash, Brian was stranded alone in
the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a small hatchet and painful memories of his parents'
recent breakup. Facing hunger, wild animals and harsh weather, Brian acquires inspiring
survival techniques and on the same time develops as a human being.
“Olive’s Ocean” by Kevin Henkes
At her family's annual stay with her grandmother, Godbee, on Cape Cod, Martha has a
lot to think about. She plans to be a writer, she has a crush on an older boy, Godbee is getting
frail, and sometimes Martha can't stand her family. But most of all she is thinking about Olive,
a shy new girl in her class whom she had barely noticed. Olive was killed in an accident a few
weeks ago, and she had written in her journal that she too wanted to be a writer, to visit the
sea, and to be friends with Martha, whom she considered "the nicest person in my whole entire
class." Why? Martha can't even remember talking to her. She wasn't mean, but wrapped up in
herself and her friends she had never reached out to Olive. As Martha suffers through small
family upheavals, first love, and first betrayal, the memory of Olive haunts her.
“The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan
After getting expelled from yet another school for yet another clash with mythological
monsters only he can see, twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is taken to Camp Half-Blood, where
he finally learns the truth about his unique abilities: He is a demigod, half human, half
immortal. Even more stunning: His father is the Greek god Poseidon, ruler of the sea, making
Percy one of the most powerful demigods alive. There's little time to process this news. All too
soon, a cryptic prophecy from the Oracle sends Percy on his first quest, a mission to the
Underworld to prevent a war among the gods of Olympus. This first installment of Rick
Riordan's best-selling series is a non-stop thrill-ride and a classic of mythic proportions.