8th Grade Summer Reading Assignments
Summer Reading Assignments are due on the FIRST day of school!
Choose three books from this list to read. Choose from the following list of projects to
complete upon reading each book. Your three projects are due on the first day of school! Each
project is worth 50 points. Make it neat; quality counts! Happy Reading!
1. Design an advertisement for the book. Make it bright and colorful and very informative.
Include pertinent information from your book, such as title, author, characters, setting,
problem/solution, etc. Your advertisement should convince someone else to read the
book! This can be completed on the computer, but it must be printed and turned in. Along
with your advertisement, write a one page explanation of your advertisement. You must
include the target audience and the purpose for your advertisement. This will be typed, 12
font, double spaced.
2. Write a two page essay comparing and contrasting two books you have read. In your
comparative essay, tell how characters, setting, problems, etc. are similar and different.
This will be typed using a 12 font, double spaced format.
3. Create a diorama. Use a shoebox (or small box) to create a 3-D model of a scene in the
book. A diorama is a model representing a scene with three-dimensional figures. Write a
two page (12 font, double spaced) explanation of the scene you have chosen. Explain why
your scene is important to the book. Make sure you provide adequate background to your
scene so someone who hasn’t read the book will understand the scene.
Soldier’s Heart by Gary Paulsen
In June 1861, when the Civil War began, Charley Goddard enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers.
He was 15. He didn't know what a "shooting war" meant or what he was fighting for. But he didn't want
to miss out on a great adventure.
The "shooting war" turned out to be the horror of combat and the wild luck of survival; how it feels to
cross a field toward the enemy, waiting for fire. When he entered the service he was a boy. When he
came back he was different; he was only 19, but he was a man with "soldier's heart," later known as
"battle fatigue."
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
The classic story of one family torn apart by the Revolutionary War -- now with special After Words
bonus features!
All his life, Tim Meeker has looked up to his brother Sam. Sam's smart and brave -- and is now a part of
the American Revolution. Not everyone in town wants to be a part of the rebellion. Most are supporters
of the British -- including Tim and Sam's father. With the war soon raging, Tim knows he'll have to make
a choice -- between the Revolutionaries and the Redcoats . . . and between his brother and his father.
Tangerine by Edward Bloor
Edward Bloor’s award-winning novel Tangerine grabs readers by the collar on the first page and never
lets go. Tangerine, Florida—once known for its citrus groves—is now an uninhabitable quagmire of muck
fires and school-swallowing sinkholes. Still, twelve-year-old Paul sees the move as a way to start anew,
maybe even make a name for himself in middle school soccer—despite his father’s obsession with his
high-school-age brother Erik’s future in football. Paul is visually impaired (without his Coke bottle
glasses), but it’s everyone else who seems to be blind to Erik’s dangerous nature. Written as a series of
Paul’s journal entries, Tangerine is a gut-wrenching coming-of-age novel about truth, memory, culture,
courage, social consciousness, classism, the environment . . . and soccer. Paul is a character well worth
cheering for.
Rules by Cynthia Lord
Twelve-year-old Catherine just wants a normal life. Which is near impossible when you have a brother
with autism and a family that revolves around his disability. She's spent years trying to teach David the
rules from "a peach is not a funny-looking apple" to "keep your pants on in public"---in order to head off
David's embarrassing behaviors.
But the summer Catherine meets Jason, a surprising, new sort-of friend, and Kristi, the next-door friend
she's always wished for, it's her own shocking behavior that turns everything upside down and forces her
to ask: What is normal?
The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
One day, thirteen-year-old Jessie Bollier is earning pennies playing his life on the docks of New Orleans;
the next, he is kidnapped and thrown aboard a slave ship, where his job is to provide music while
shackled slaves "dance" to keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable. As the endless voyage
continues, Jessie grows increasingly sickened by the greed, brutality, and inhumanity of the slave trade,
but nothing prepares him for the ultimate horror he will witness before his nightmare ends -- a horror that
will change his life forever.
The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has
since become a world classic -- a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the
human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled
their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were
betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office
building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in
confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death.
In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns
thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and
frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was
tragically cut short.
Chomp by Carl Hiaasen
Wahoo Cray lives in a zoo. His father is an animal wrangler, so he's grown up with all manner of gators,
snakes, parrots, rats, monkeys, and snappers in his backyard. The critters, he can handle. His father is the
unpredictable one.
When his dad takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo figures he'll have to
do a bit of wrangling himself—to keep his dad from killing Derek Badger, the show's inept and egotistical
star, before the shoot is over. But the job keeps getting more complicated. Derek Badger foolishly
believes his own PR and insists on using wild animals for his stunts. And Wahoo's acquired a shadow
named Tuna—a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her father and needs a place to hide out.
They've only been on location in the Everglades for a day before Derek gets bitten by a bat and goes
missing in a storm. Search parties head out and promptly get lost themselves. And then Tuna's dad shows
up with a gun . . .
It's anyone's guess who will actually survive Expedition Survival. . . .