Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
Title
Author
Wonder
Palacio, R. J.
The One and Only Ivan
Applegate, Katherine
For Boys Only: the Baddest Book Ever
Aronson, Marc
Crispin: the Cross of Lead
Avi
Chasing Vermeer
Balliett, Blue
Almost Home
Bauer, Joan
Summer at Forsaken Lake
Beil, Michael D.
Book Description
Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial
abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being homeschooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in
Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunts and fear of his
classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.
When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circusthemed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the
mall, he decides that he must find her a better life.
Information on a variety of topics of interest to boys, such as how to
fight off an alligator, make fake blood, escape from being tied-up, land
an airplane, and much more.
Falsely accused of theft and declared a "wolf's head" (whom any man
may kill) after his mother's death, humble, pious Crispin flees the
feudal village where he was raised and the steward who wants him
dead. Taken in as an apprentice by a massive, red-haired, itinerant
juggler who calls himself Bear, Crispin learns about music and
mummery, about freedom and questioning fate, and about his own
mysterious parentage that seems to be the reason behind the
steward's continuing pursuit of him. Set in fourteenth century England.
When seemingly unrelated and strange events start to happen and a
precious Vermeer painting disappears, eleven-year-olds Petra and
Calder combine their talents to solve an international art scandal.
When twelve-year-old Sugar's grandfather dies and her gambling
father takes off yet again, Sugar and her mother lose their home in
Missouri. With the help of a rescue dog, Shush; a foster family; a
supportive teacher; a love of poetry; and her own grace and good
humor, Sugar comes to understand that while she can't control the
hand life deals her, she can control how she responds.
Twelve-year-old Nicholas and his ten-year-old, twin sisters, Hetty and
Haley, spend the summer with their Great-Uncle Nick at Forsaken Lake,
where he and their new friend Charlie investigate the truth about an
accident involving their families many years before.
Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
Cosmic
Boyce, Frank Cottrell
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the
Awfully Famous
Bragg, Georgia
Twelve-year-old Liam, who looks like he is thirty and is tired of being
treated like he is older than he actually is, decides he is going to pose
as the adult chaperone on the first spaceship to take civilians into
space, but when he ends up in outer space with a group of kids and no
adult supervision, he must think fast to make things right.
This fascinating collection of remarkable deaths relays all the gory
details of how 19 world figures gave up the ghost, including King Tut,
Julius Caesar, George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry VIII.
Burnett, Frances H.
Ten-year-old Mary comes to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire
moors and discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked
garden.
The Secret Garden
Dragon’s Keep
Carey, Janet Lee
No Passengers Beyond This Point
Choldenko, Gennifer
Airman
Colfer, Eoin
The Great Unexpected
Creech, Sharon
In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who
will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to
accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the
dragon's claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother's
dark secrets.
With their house in foreclosure, sisters India and Mouse and brother
Finn are sent to stay with an uncle in Colorado until their mother can
join them, but when the plane lands, the children are welcomed by
cheering crowds to a strange place where each of them has a perfect
house and a clock that is ticking down the time.
This is a fast-paced, highly entertaining tale of flying machines,
criminals, martial arts, swordplay, princesses, poisons, and evil villains,
mixed with themes of justice, revenge, romance, good triumphing over
evil, realizing one's dreams, blackmail, conspiracy, corruption, and
betrayal.
Orphans Naomi and Lizzie, living in America, and grown-up sisters Sybil
and Nula, from Ireland, learn what life is truly about as they receive
help from one another and open up their hearts to love and
forgiveness.
Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
The Maze Runner
Dashner, James
The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet
Dionne, Erin
Last Shot
Feinstein, John
The Last Dragonslayer
Fforde, Jasper
Escape: The Story of The Great Houdini
Fleischman, Sid
Reckless
Funke, Cornelia
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
Gantos, Jack
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a
maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds
himself if he is to escape.
All Hamlet Kennedy wants is to be a normal eighth grader. But with
parents like hers - Shakespearean scholars who actually dress in
Elizabethan regalia . . . in public! – it’s not that easy. As if they weren’t
strange enough, her genius seven-year-old sister will be attending her
middle school, and is named the new math tutor. Then, when the
Shakespeare Project is announced, Hamlet reveals herself to be an
amazing actress. Even though she wants to be average, Hamlet can no
longer hide from the fact that she - like her family - is anything but
ordinary.
As winners of a writing contest, eighth-graders Steven Thomas and
Susan Carol Anderson travel to the NCAA Final Four as journalists. In
addition to meeting college basketball celebrities, the two also uncover
a plot to fix the championship game. This fast-moving mystery takes
the reader to a behind-the-scenes look at the Final Four.
Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs an agency for underemployed
magicians in a world where magic is fading away, but when visions of
the death of the world's last dragon begin, all signs point to Jennifer-and Big Magic.
A biography of the magician, ghost chaser, aviator, and king of escape
artists whose amazing feats are remembered long after his death in
1926.
Jacob and Will Reckless have looked out for each other ever since their
father disappeared, but when Jacob discovers a magical mirror that
transports him to a warring world populated by witches, giants, and
ogres, he keeps it to himself until Will follows him one day, with dire
consequences.
To the constant disappointment of his mother and his teachers, Joey
has trouble paying attention or controlling his mood swings when his
prescription medications wear off and he starts getting worked up and
acting wired.
Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
How to Survive Middle School
Gephart, Donna
Spy School
Gibbs, Stuart
Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer
Grisham, John
A Taste for Red
Harris, Lewis
Take Me to the River
Hobbs, Will
Insignia
Kincaid, S. J.
Ungifted
Island of Thieves
The Call of the Wild
Korman, Gordon
When thirteen-year-old David Greenberg’s best friend makes the start
of middle school even worse than he feared it could be, David becomes
friends with Sophie, who shares his love of television shows and posts
on of their skits on YouTube, making them wildly popular – online, at
least.
Twelve-year-old Ben Ripley leaves his public middle school to attend
the CIA's highly secretive Espionage Academy, which everyone is told is
an elite science school.
Thirteen-year-old Theodore Boone, who knows every judge, police
officer, and court clerk in the small town of Strattenburg, finds himself
involved in a murder trial because of knowledge he might have about a
cold-blooded killer.
When some of her classmates disappear, sixth-grader Svetlana, along
with her new friends, goes in search of the missing students using her
newfound ability as an Olfactive, one who has heightened smell,
hearing, and the ability to detect vampires.
When North Carolina fourteen-year-old Dylan Sands joins his fifteenyear-old cousin Rio in running the Rio Grande River, they face a tropical
storm and a fugitive kidnapper.
Tom, a fourteen-year-old genius at virtual reality games, is recruited by
the United States Military to begin training at the Pentagon Spire as a
Combatant in World War III, controlling the mechanized drones that do
the actual fighting off-planet.
Due to an administrative mix-up, troublemaker Donovan Curtis is sent
to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction, a special program for gifted
and talented students, after pulling a major prank at middle school.
Lacey, Josh
Tom goes with his Uncle Harvey to Peru, where they narrowly escape
imprisonment and death as they hunt for buried treasure after tracking
down a journal written by John Drake, a young relative of Sir Francis
Drake, on a voyage to Lima in 1577.
London, Jack
Buck, who is half St. Bernard and half Scotch shepherd, is abducted and
taken to the Klondike where he reverts to the wild and becomes a
Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
Legend
Lu, Marie
Travel Team
Lupica, Mike
The Unwanted
McMann, Lisa
Trash
Mulligan, Andy
Emily’s Fortune
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds
leader of a pack of wolves.
In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring
nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June, the
brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a
common enemy.
After he is cut from his travel basketball team--the very same team
that his father once led to national prominence--twelve-year-old Danny
Walker forms his own team of cast-offs that might have a shot at
victory.
In a society that purges thirteen-year-olds who are creative, identical
twins Aaron and Alex are separated, one to attend University while the
other, supposedly Eliminated, finds himself in a wondrous place where
youths hone their abilities and learn magic.
A group of fourteen-year-old boys, who make a living picking garbage
from the outskirts of a large city, finds something special and
mysterious that brings terrifying consequences.
While traveling to her aunt's home in Redbud by train and stagecoach,
quiet young Emily and her turtle, Rufus, team up with Jackson, fellow
orphan and troublemaker extraordinaire, to outsmart mean Uncle
Victor, who is after Emily's inheritance.
The Girl Who Owned a City
Nelson, O.T.
When a plague sweeps over the earth killing everyone except children
under twelve, ten-year-old Lisa organizes a group to rebuild a new way
of life.
The False Prince
Nielsen, Jennifer A.
Harris and Me: a Summer Remembered
Paulsen, Gary
The Teacher’s Funeral: a Comedy in Three
Parts
Peck, Richard
In the country of Carthya, a devious nobleman engages four
orphans in a brutal competition to be selected to impersonate the
king's long-missing son in an effort to avoid a civil war.
Sent to live with relatives on their farm because of his unhappy home
life, an eleven-year-old city boy meets his distant cousin, Harris, and is
given an introduction to a whole new world.
In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell's dreams of quitting
school and joining a wheat threshing crew are disrupted when his older
sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean
old Myrt Arbuckle "hauls off and dies."
Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia
Runholt, Susan
Black Beauty
The Hunchback Assignments
Sewell, Anna
Paulsen, Gary
Hokey Pokey
Spinelli, Jerry
The Silver Bowl
Stanley, Diane
Liar and Spy
Stead, Rebecca
Treasure Island
Stevenson, Robert Louis
The Mysterious Benedict Society
Stewart, Trenton Lee
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Verne, Jules
While traveling in London, Paris, and Amsterdam, fourteen-year-old
best friends Kari and Lucas solve an international art forgery mystery.
A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with
both good and bad masters.
Sent to live with relatives on their farm because of his unhappy home
life, an eleven-year-old city boy meets his distant cousin, Harris, and is
given an introduction to a whole new world.
Ever since they were Snotsippers, Jack and the girl have fought, until
one day she steals his bike and as he and the Amigos try to recover it,
Jack realizes that he is growing up and must eventually leave the
"goodlands and badlands of Hokey Pokey."
From the age of seven when she became scullery maid in a castle,
Molly has seen visions of the future which, years later, lead her and
friend Tobias on an adventure to keep Alaric, the heir to the throne,
safe from a curse.
Seventh-grader Georges adjusts to moving from a house to an
apartment, his father's efforts to start a new business, his mother's
extra shifts as a nurse, being picked on at school, and Safer, a boy who
wants his help spying on another resident of their building.
While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed
them money, the mistress of an inn and her son find a treasure map
that leads them to a pirate's fortune.
After passing a series of mind-bending tests, four children are selected
for a secret mission that requires them to go undercover at the
Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that
there are no rules.
Science-fiction tale about a French professor and his companions who
are trapped aboard a futuristic submarine with a mad sea captain and
come face to face with exotic ocean creatures and strange sights
hidden from the world above.
Newport Independent Schools
6th and 7th Grade Recommended Summer Reading List
The Shadows
West, Jacqueline
The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman
Winters, Ben H.
The Swiss Family Robinson
Wyss, Johann David
When eleven-year old Olive and her distracted parents move into an
old Victorian mansion, Olive finds herself ensnared in a dark plan
involving some mysterious paintings, a trapped and angry nine-yearold boy, and three talking cats.
Spurred by a special project from her social studies teacher, seventhgrader Bethesda Fielding uncovers the secret identity of her music
teacher, which leads to a most unusual concert performance and a
tutoring assignment.
Relates the fortunes of a shipwrecked family as they adapt to life on an
island with abundant animal and plant life.