Grade 8 Summer Reading Ideas from Common Core Expanded List 2013
(for your convenience all titles listed are part of our upper school library collection)
Title –Fiction
Author
Genre
Interest
Level
Reading
*YA =
Level
Young
Adult
America Street: A Multicultural
Anthology of Stories
Anne Mazer
American Eyes: New Asian American Short Stories for Young Adults
Lori M. Carlson
Children of the River
Code Talker: A Novel about the
Navajo Marines of World War II
The Color of My Words
Linda Crew
Joseph Bruchac
Lynn Joseph
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift
I, Juan de Pareja
Elizabeth Barton de
Trevino
The Incredible Journey
Johnny Tremain
Sheila Burnford
Esther Forbes
Join In: Multiethnic Short Stories
Donald R. Gallo
The Land
Mildred Taylor
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore
Cooper
A Long Way from Chicago
Richard Peck
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
Never Cry Wolf
William
Shakespeare
Farley Mowat
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
The Outsiders
S.E. Hinton
A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man
James Joyce
A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry
Short
Stories
Short
Stories
Realistic
Fiction
Historic
Fiction
Realistic
Fiction
Science
Fiction/
Adventure
Historical
Fiction
Adventure/
Animal Story
Historical
Fiction
Short
Stories
Historical
Fiction
Historical
Fiction
Historical
Fiction
Realistic
Fiction
# of
Pages
6.9
YA
152
7.5
YA
138
5.6
YA
213
5.7
5-8
231
5.1
5-8
138
8.8
YA
511
6.4
YA
180
6.5
5-8
145
5.5
5-8
270
6.1
YA
256
8.9
5-8
375
9.0
YA
427
4.6
5-8
148
8.1
YA
208
Play
8.7
YA
99
Nature
Historic/
Realistic Fict
Adventure/
Realistic Fict
Realistic
Fiction
Realistic
Fiction
Play/
Realistic Fict
7.5
YA
247
8.1
YA
107
8.1
YA
167
5.1
YA
180
9.0
YA
318
6.8
YA
151
Grade 8 Summer Reading Ideas from Common Core Expanded List 2013
(for your convenience all titles listed are part of our upper school library collection)
Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier
Shane
Jack Schaefer
Stargirl
Jerry Spinelli
Technically, It’s Not My Fault:
Concrete Poems
John Grandits
Title – Non-Fiction
Author
Mystery/
Suspense
Western
Realistic
Fiction
Poetry
7.2
YA
380
5.6
YA
119
6.1
5-8
186
3.9
5-8
48
Interest
Level
Reading
*YA =
Level
Young
Adult
American Plague: The True and
Terrifying Story of the Yellow
Fever Epidemic of 1793
Black Potatoes: The Story of the
Great Irish Famine, 1845-1950
Bodies from the Ice: Melting
Glaciers and Rediscovery of the
Past
The Boys’ War
Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl
in Hitler’s Germany
Geeks: How Two Boys Rode the
Internet Out of Idaho
Gorilla Doctors: Saving
Endangered Great Apes
Jim Thorpe, Original All-American
Lincoln: A Photobiography
Malcolm X: By Any Means
Necessary
19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of
the Middle East
Recycle This Book: 100 Top
Children’s Book Authors Tell you
How to Go Green
Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi
Death Camps
To Be a Slave
Trojan War
When Plague Strikes: The Black
Death, Smallpox, AIDS
# of
Pages
Jim Murphy
7.1
5-8
165
Susan Campbell
Bartoletti
6.8
5-8
184
James M. Deem
8.6
5-8
58
Jim Murphy
Eleanor Ramrath
Garner
7.8
5-8
110
6.4
YA
268
Jon Katz
9.0
YA
208
Pamela S. Turner
6.5
5-8
64
Joseph Bruchac
Russell Freedman
5.5
7.4
5-8
5-8
277
150
Walter Dean Myers
8.2
YA
210
Naomi Shihab Nye
6.8
5-8
142
Dan Gutman
7.7
5-8
267
Andrea Warren
6.3
5-8
146
Julius Lester
Olivia Coolidge
8.6
7.1
YA
7-10
160
244
James Cross Giblin
6.4
5-8
212