Summer Reading Suggestions
2004 - Palo Alto Middle Schools
Note: (YA) = Young adult title for more mature readers
Any books by these authors:
Ray Bradbury,
Michael Crichton, Paul Fleischman, Phyllis Naylor, Katherine Paterson, Gary
Paulsen,
and Phillip Pullman.
California Young Reader Medal - 2005 Nominees
Clements,
Andrew Things
Not Seen
When fifteen-year-old Bobby wakes up and finds himself invisible,
he and his parents and his new blind friend
Alicia try to find out what
caused his condition and how to reverse it.
Ferris,
Jean Of Sound
Mind (YA)
Tired of interpreting for his dead family and resentful of their
reliance on him, high school senior Theo finds
support and understanding from Ivy, a new student who also has a
deaf parent.
Grimes,
Nikki Bronx
Masquerade (YA)
While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school
read aloud poems they have written
revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless
classmates.
Horowitz,
Andrew Stormbreaker
After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old
Alex Rider is coerced to continue
his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's Intelligence Agency, M16.
Jimenez,
Francisco Breaking
Through
Having come from Mexico to California ten years ago, fourteen-year-old
Francisco is still working in the
fields but fighting to improve his life and complete his education.
Tolan,
Stephanie Surviving
the Applewhites
Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite
family's
Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never
knew he had.
Classics
Austen,
Jane Pride
and Prejudice
In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman, Elizabeth
Bennett, copes with the courtship of a
snobbish gentleman, Mr. Darcy,
as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
Bradbury,
Ray Fahrenheit
451
"Fahrenheit 451 -- temperature at which book paper catches fire
and burns." A book burner in
a future
fascist state finds out books are a vital part of a culture he never
knew. He secretly pursues reading
until he
is betrayed.
Carroll,
Lewis Alice
in Wonderland
A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical
and amusing characters.
Stevenson,
Robert Louis Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde
A respected doctor who lives a secret double life begins losing his
identity to his violent evil side.
Tolkien,
J.R.R. The Lord
of the Rings (trilogy)
Frodo, the hobbit, and a band of warriors from the different kingdoms
set out to destroy the Ring of Power
before the evil Sauron grasps control.
Contemporary
Creech,
Sharon Granny
Torrelli Makes Soup
With the help of her wise old grandmother, twelve-year-old Rosie
manages to work out some problems in her
relationship with her best friend Bailey, the boy next door.
Henkes, Kevin Olive's Ocean *2004 Newbery Honor
Book
On a summer visit to her grandmother's cottage by the ocean, twelve-year-old
Martha gains perspective on
the death of a classmate, on her relationship with her grandmother,
on her feelings for an older boy, and on
her plans to become a writer.
Hoffman,
Alice Green
Angel (YA)
Haunted by grief and by her past after losing her family, fifteen-year-old
Green retreats into her ruined garden
as she struggles to survive
emotionally and physically on her own.
Horvath,
Polly The Canning
Season
* 2003 National Book Award
Thirteen-year-old Ratchet spends a summer in Maine with her eccentric
great-aunts Tilly and Penpen,
hearing strange stories from the past and encountering a variety
of unusual and colorful characters.
Johnson,
Angela The First
Part Last (YA)
*2004 Coretta Scott King Award
Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father
and must care for his adored baby
daughter.
Konigsburg,
E.L. The Outcasts
of 19 Schuyler Place
Upon leaving an oppressive summer camp, twelve-year-old Margaret
Rose Kane spearheads a campaign to
preserve three unique towers her grand-uncles have been building
in their backyard for over forty years.
Koss,
Amy Gossip
Times Three
The relationships among three friends change in seventh grade when
they discover that two of them have a
crush on the same boy.
Nelson,
Theresa Ruby
Electric
Twelve-year-old Ruby Miller, movie buff and aspiring screen writer,
tries to resolve the mysteries surrounding
her little brother's stuffed
woolly mammoth and their father's five year absence.
Paulsen,
Gary, editor Shelf
Life - Stories by the Book
Ten short stories in which the lives of young people in different
circumstances are changed by their enounters
with books.
Philbrick,
Rodman The Young
Man and the Sea
After his mother's death, twelve-year-old Skiff Beaman decides that
it is up to him to earn money to take care
of himself and his father,
so he undertakes a dangerous trip alone out on the ocean off the coast of
Maine to
try to catch a huge blue tuna.
Wallace,
Bill Skinny
Dipping at Monster Lake
When twelve-year-old Kent helps his father in a daring underwater
rescue, he wins the respect he has always
craved.
Fantasy/Science Fiction
Colfer,
Eoin The Eternity
Code: Artemis Fowl Book 3
Artemis Fowl's father has made him promise to give up his life of
crime and Artemis must go along with it,
but not before he completes one last scheme: a supercomputer that
will render all human technology obsolete.
Collins,
Suzanne Gregor
the Overlander
When twelve-year-old Gregor and his two-year-old sister are pulled
into a strange underground world, they
trigger an epic battle involving humans, bats, rats, cockroaches,
and spiders while on a quest foretold by
ancient prophecy.
Corder,
Zizou Lion
Boy
In the near future, a boy with the ability to speak the language
of cats sets out from London to seek his
kidnapped parents and finds himself on a Paris-bound circus ship
learning to train lions.
DiCamillo, Kate The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse…. *2004 Newbery
The adventures of Despereaux Tilling, a small mouse of unusual talents,
the princess that he loves, the servant
girl who longs to be a princess,
and a devious rat determined to bring them all to ruin.
Dickinson,
Peter The Tears
of the Salamander
When Alfredo, a twelve-year-old choir boy in eighteenth century Italy,
loses his family in a fire, he goes to live
with his Uncle Giorgio, who
he discovers is a sorcerer in control of the fires of Mt. Etna with sinister
plans
for his nephew.
Funke,
Cornelia Inkheart
Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father Mo, a bookbinder, can
"read" fictional characters to life when
an evil ruler named Capricorn, freed from the novel "Inkheart,"
tries to force Mo to release an immortal
monster from the story.
Paolini,
Christopher Eragon
In Aagaesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon
finds a mysterious stone that weaves
his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power,
peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.
Philbrick,
Rodman The Last
Book of the Universe
In a future time where no one reads, a boy meets an old man who has
lots of crazy, wonderful ideas.
Together they try to change their world.
Historical Fiction
Lyon,
Mary Letters
from a Slave Girl:The Story of Harriet Jacobs
The life of Harriet Jacobs is told in the form of letters that she
might have written during her slavery in North
Carolina and as she prepared to escape to the North in 1842.
Orlev,
Uri Run,
Boy, Run
Based on the true story of a boy who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto and
must survive throughout the war in the
Nazi-occupied Polish countryside.
Pearsall,
Shelley Trouble
Don't Last
Samuel, an 11-year-old Kentucky slave, and the elderly slave who
helped raise him, attempt to escape to
Canada via the Underground Railroad.
Peck,
Richard The River
Between Us
*2003 National Book Award Honor Book
During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in
two mysterious young ladies who have fled
New Orleans to come north to Illinois.
Richardson,
V.A. The House
of Windjammer
In the fall of 1636, Adam, fourteen-year-old heir to the House of
Windjammer, must find a way to keep his
family afloat after his father dies and tulip fever sweeps Amsterdam.
Humor
Coville,
Bruce Juliet
Dove, Queen of Love
A shy twelve-year-old girl must solve a puzzle involving characters
from Greek mythology to free herself
from a spell which makes her irrestible to boys.
Gliori,
Debi Pure
Dead Brilliant
Time travel, a deadly computer, and other strange things begin to
happen when some would-be witches come
to stay with the eccentric Strega-Borgia family.
Lubar,
David Hidden
Talents
Thirteen-year-old Martin, a new student at an alternative school
for misfits and problem students, falls in with
a group of boys with psychic powers and discovers something surprising
about himself.
Mackler, Carolyn The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things (YA)
Feeling like she doesn't fit in with the other members of her family,
who are all thin, brilliant and good-looking,
fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to deal with her self-image, her
first relationship, and her disillusionment with
some of the people close to her.
Martin,
Ann M. The Meanest
Doll in the World
Annabelle and Tiffany, dolls who are best friends living in the Palmer
house, have an adventure when they
hide in Kate Palmer's backpack, are carried to school, mistakenly
go to another house and try to stop Princess
Muni, a doll who threatens
all dolldom.
Multicultural
Alvarez,
Julia Before
We Were Free
*2004 Pura Belpre Medal Winner
In the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, twelve-year-old Anita
learns her family is involved in the
underground movement to end the bloody rule of dictator, General
Trujillo.
Cameron,
Ann Colibri
Kidnapped when she was very young by an unscrupulous man who has
forced her to lie and beg to get
money, a twelve-year-old Mayan girl endures an abusive life, always
wishing she could return to the parents
she can hardly remember.
Cisneros,
Sandra Caramelo
(YA)
A multi-generational story of a Mexican family whose voices create
a dazzling weave of humor, poignancy,
and passion from Chicago to Mexico City to San Antonio, Texas.
Dewey,
Jennifer Minik's
Story (YA)
Minik, an adolescent Inuit girl, relates the conflicts brought into
her tribe by the arrival of a priest from a
whaling ship in the late nineteenth century.
Ellis,
Deborah Mud City
The story of fourteen-year-old Shauzia, who escaped from Kabul, Afghanistan,
and who is unhappy with her
life as a refuge in a camp in Pakistan.
Grimes,
Nikki Jazmin's
Notebook
Jazmin, an African-American teenager who lives with her older sister
in a small Harlem apartment in the
1960s, finds strength in writing poetry and keeping a record of the
events in her sometimes difficult life.
Osa,
Nancy Cuba
15
Violet Paz, a Chicago high school student reluctantly prepares for
her "quince," a Spanish nickname for the
celebration of an Hispanic girl's fifteenth birthday.
Park,
Linda Sue When
My Name Was Keoko
With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face
the increasingly oppressive occupation of
Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean
culture entirely.
Mystery/Suspense/Horror
Lawrence,
Caroline The Thieves
of Ostia
In Rome in the year 79 A.D., a group of children from very different
backgrounds work together to discover
who beheaded a pet dog - and why.
This is the first in a series of mysteries set in Ancient Rome.
Naylor,
Phyllis Bernie
McGruder and the Bats in the Belfry
Many residents of Middleburg, Indiana, are already going crazy from the ever-ringing church bells and now,
after a bat is spotted in the hotel run by Bernie's family, they
worry that the dangerous Indiana Aztec bat has
finally arrived.
Nimmo,
Jenny Charlie
Bone and the Time Twister
While at Bloor's Academy, Charlie Bone gets a surprise when Henry
Yewbean arrives from the year 1916
and needs Charlie's help to stay alive.
Shan, Darren Cirque du Freak (series)
Two boys who are best friends visit an illegal freak show, where
an encounter with a vampire and a deadly
spider forces them to make life-changing choices. (Start with Book One.)
Non-Fiction
Balchin,
Judy Creative
Lettering
Use creative lettering for eight different projects. Included are explanations of techniques, materials
needed
and alphabet patterns.
Driscoll,
Michael A Child's
Introduction to Poetry
Colorful illustrations and poems introduce the reader to poetry,
teaching them about different types of poems
and the most popular poets from history.
Fleming,
Candace Ben Franklin's
Almanac
The life of Benjamin Franklin is told in a "scrapbook"
format with etchings, artifacts, and quotations.
Hardesty,
Von Air Force
One: The Aircraft That Shaped the Modern American Presidency
The book shows how aircraft have been used by U.S. presidents in
the second half of the twentieth century
and explains how the presidency itself has been affected by events
throughout the century.
Hudson,
Wade Powerful
Words: More Than 200 Years of Extraordinary Writing by African
Excerpts from the writings and speeches of over thirty notable African-Americans
from colonial times to the
twenty-first century. It
includes commentary about the time period in which each person lived, information
about the speaker/writer, and
Kiefer,
Joanne Jobs
for Kids: A Smart Kid's Q & A Guide
Answers questions about the five most popular jobs for young people,
as well as about other ways they can
make money, with advice on the planning and marketing involved.
Krull,
Kathleen Harvesting
Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
A biography of Cesar Chavez, from age ten when he and his family
lived happily on their Arizona ranch, to
age thirty-eight when he led a peaceful protest against California
migrant workers' miserable working
conditions.
Kurlansky,
Mark The Cod's
Tale
Outlines the history of fishing for and consuming of codfish from
the time of the Vikings through the present.
Includes discussions of the cod's life cycle, over-fishing, and recipes
using the fish.
Martin,
Laura Nature's
Box
From t-shirts to twig baskets, 65 projects for krafty kids to make
with natural materials you can find
anywhere. There are more than sixty projects made from natural materials.
Murphy,
Jim An American
Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever
Epidemic of 1793 *2004 Newbery
Honor Book, 2003 National Book
Award Honor Book
In 1793 an invisible killer roamed the streets of Philadelphia. It
was yellow fever. The book tells the story of
the frantic race to find the cause and, hopefully, a cure. The lessons
learned are relevant to us in the
twenty-first century.
Myers,
Walter Dean A Time
to Love: Stories From the Old Testament
A retelling of six stories from the Old Testament which explore the
complexity of love from the perspective of
Ruth, Delilah, Reuben, Isaac,
Gamiel, and Zillah.
Schyffert,
Bea Uusma The Man
Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon
Michael Collins circled the moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
walked on it. The book describes
Michael's everyday activities while aboard Apollo 11 as well as background
on all three astronauts.
Woodson, Jacqueline