Summer Reading Suggestions 2005 – Palo Alto Middle Schools

Note: (YA) = Young Adult title for more mature readers

Any books by these authors:

Karen Cushman, Robin McKinley, Robert Newton Peck, Laurence Yep

California Young Reader Medal – 2006 Nominees

Bauer, Joan Stand Tall
Tree, a six-foot-three-inch twelve-year-old, copes with his parents' recent divorce and his failure as an athlete by helping his grandfather, a Vietnam vet and recent amputee, and Sophie, a new girl at school.

Caletti, Deb Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (YA)
In the summer of her junior year, sixteen-year-old Ruby McQueen and her mother, both nursing broken hearts, set out on a journey to reunite an elderly woman with her long-lost love and in the process learn many things about "the real ties that bind" people to one another.

Corbett, Sue 12 Again
Bernadette, having wished on the eve of her fortieth birthday to be young again, wakes up the next morning as a twelve year-old, and enrolls in her son Patrick's class in hopes of somehow enlisting his help in returning to her old self.

Giff, Patricia Pictures of Hollis Woods
A troublesome twelve-year-old orphan, staying with an elderly artist who needs her, remembers the only other time she was happy in a foster home, with a family that truly seemed to care about her.

Prose, Francine After (YA)
In the aftermath of a nearby school shooting, a grief and crisis counselor takes over Central High School and enacts increasingly harsh measures to control students, while those who do not comply disappear.

Wolff, Virginia E. True Believer (YA)
Sequel to: Make Lemonade; “A novel in the Make Lemonade trilogy". Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to.

Classics

Doyle, Arthur Conan The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Presents all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes, including fifty-six short stories and four novellas, and includes Christopher Morley's well-known preface.

Grahame, Kenneth The Wind in the Willows
The escapades of four animal friends who live along a river in the English countryside--Toad, Mole, Rat, and Badger.

London, Jack The Call of the Wild
The story of Buck, a part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, that is forcibly taken to the Klondike gold fields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack.

Milne, A.A. The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh
Contains the complete and unabridged texts of all the Pooh stories with original illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard.

Packer, Tina Tales from Shakespeare
Presents prose retellings of ten familiar Shakespeare comedies and tragedies, including "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Othello,” and "Romeo and Juliet," each with illustrations by an award-winning artist.

Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
The voyages of an Englishman carry him to a land of people six inches high, a land of giants, an island of sorcerers, and a land where horses are masters of human-like creatures.

Contemporary

Bode, N. E. The Anybodies
After learning that she is not the biological daughter of boring Mr. and Mrs. Drudger, Fern embarks on magical adventures with her real father and finally finds "a place that feels like home."

Cooney, Caroline Flight 116 Is Down
Teenager Heidi Landseth helps rescue people from a plane crash on her family's property, and the experience changes her life forever.

Cormier, Robert Tenderness (YA)
A psychological thriller told from the points of view of a teenage serial killer and the runaway girl who falls in love with him.

Creech, Sharon Heartbeat
Twelve-year-old Annie ponders the many rhythms of life the year that her mother becomes pregnant, her grandfather begins faltering, and her best friend (and running partner) becomes distant.

Dessen, Sarah The Truth About Forever (YA)
The summer following her father's death, Macy plans to work at the library and wait for her brainy boyfriend to return from camp, but instead she goes to work at a catering business where she makes new friends and finally faces her grief.

Hautman, Pete Godless
When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own.

Koja, Kathe Buddha Boy (YA)
Justin spends time with Jinsen, the unusual and artistic new student whom the school bullies torment and call Buddha Boy, and ends up making choices that impact Jinsen, himself, and the entire school.

Peck, Robert Newton Soup (or any of the Soup books)
The adventures and misadventures of two boys growing up in a small Vermont town.

Philbrick, Rodman Freak the Mighty
At the beginning of eighth grade, learning disabled Max and his new friend Freak, whose birth defect has affected his body but not his brilliant mind, find that when they combine forces they make a powerful team.

Rosoff, Meg How I Live Now (YA)
To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

Sones, Sonya One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (YA)
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.

Susanna Vance Deep (YA)
Somewhere in the Caribbean, seventeen-year-old Morgan and thirteen-year-old Birdie, two girls whose lives are worlds apart, are brought together by the maniacal Nicholas.

Wolff, Virginia Euwer Bat 6
In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one 6th grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface.

Fantasy/Science Fiction

Allende, Isabel City of the Beasts and its sequel Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
When fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold accompanies his individualistic grandmother on an expedition to find a humanoid Beast in the Amazon, he experiences ancient wonders and a supernatural world as he tries to avert disaster for the Indians. In the sequel, Alex, now 16, journeys to the remote Himalayas to help locate a sacred statue.

Barron, T.A. Tree Girl
Nine-year-old Rowanna is drawn to the forest and a huge tree, despite the warnings of the old man with whom she has always lived at the edge of the sea--especially after she befriends a bear/boy who is in reality a tree spirit.

Billingsley, Franny Folk Keeper
Orphan Corinna disguises herself as a boy to poses as a Folk Keeper, one who keeps the Evil Folk at bay, and discovers her heritage as a seal maiden when she is taken to live with a wealthy family in their manor by the sea.

Dickinson, John The Cup of the World (YA)
Phaedra, the willful daughter of a baron, sets off an unforeseeable chain of events and a battle between good and evil when she announces her intention to marry for love.

DuPrau, Jeanne The City of Ember and its sequel The People of Sparks
In the city of Ember, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in herdecaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions. Lina and Doon are thrilled to see their people join them in the vibrant village of Sparks, but suspicion and prejudice soon turn the villagers and newcomers against each other.

Farmer, Nancy The Sea of Trolls
After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.

Funke, Cornelia Caroline Dragon Rider
After learning that humans are headed toward his hidden home, Firedrake, a silver dragon, is joined by a brownie and an orphan boy in a quest to find the legendary valley known as the Rim of Heaven, encountering friendly and unfriendly creatures along the way, and struggling to evade the relentless pursuit of an old enemy.

Hoban, Russell The Mouse and His Child
Two discarded toy mice survive perilous adventures in a hostile world before finding security and happiness with old friends and new.

Langrish, Katherine Troll Fell
Forced to move to Troll Fell to live with his uncles, Baldur and Grim, after his father's death, young Peer Ulfsson learns of his uncles' sinister plan to sell children to the trolls and sets out with an adventurous neighbor girl named Hilde to stop them.

Lowry, Lois Messenger (YA)
In this novel that unites characters from "The Giver" and "Gathering Blue," Matty, a young member of a utopian community that values honesty, conceals an emerging healing power that he cannot explain or understand.

Oppel, Kenneth Airborn
Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth's surface.

Stahler, David Truesight
In a distant frontier world, thirteen-year-old Jacob is uncertain of his future in a community that considers blindness a virtue and "Seers" as aberrations.

Stroud, Jonathan The Amulet of Samarkand and its sequel The Golem's Eye
Nathaniel, a young magician's apprentice, becomes caught in a web of magical espionage, murder, and rebellion, after he summons the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Loveland. In their continuing adventures, magician's apprentice Nathaniel, now fourteen years old, and the djinni Bartimaeus travel to Prague to locate the source of a golem's power before it destroys London.

Turner, Megan Whalen The Thief
Gen flaunts his ingenuity as a thief and relishes the adventure which takes him to a remote temple of the gods where he will attempt to steal a precious stone.

Yolen, Jane Dragon’s Blood
Jakkin, a bond boy who works as a Keeper in a dragon nursery on the planet Austar IV, secretly trains a fighting pit dragon of his own in hopes of winning his freedom.

Historical Fiction

Choldenko, Gennifer Al Capone Does My Shirts *2005 Newbery Honor Book
A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

Chotjewitz, David Daniel Half Human and the Good Nazi (YA)
In 1933, best friends Daniel and Armin admire Hitler, but as anti-Semitism buoys Hitler to power, Daniel learns he is half Jewish, threatening the friendship even as life in their beloved Hamburg, Germany, is becoming nightmarish. Also details Daniel and Armin's reunion in 1945 in interspersed chapters.

Fleischman, Sid The Giant Rat of Sumatra, or, Pirates Galore
A cabin boy on a pirate ship finds himself in San Diego in 1846 as war breaks out between the United States and Mexico.

McCaughrean, Geraldine Stop the Train!
Despite the opposition of the owner of the Red Rock Runner Railroad in 1893, the new settlers of Florence, Oklahoma, are determined to build a real town.

Humor

Curtis, Christopher Paul Bucking the Sarge (YA)
Deeply involved in his cold and manipulative mother's shady business dealings in Flint, Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home For Men, all the while dreaming of going to college and becoming a philosopher.

Klise, Kate Regarding the Sink
A series of letters reveals the selection of the famous fountain designer, Florence Waters, to design a new sink for the Geyser Creek Middle School cafeteria, her subsequent disappearance, and the efforts of a class of sixth-graders to find her.

Peck, Richard The Teacher’s Funeral. A Comedy in Three Parts
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."

Wardlaw, Lee 101 Ways to Bug Your Teacher
Steve "Sneeze" Wyatt attempts to thwart his parents' plan to have him skip eighth grade, but he has bigger problems when his friends disapprove of his new list and Mrs. "Fierce" Pierce threatens to keep him from the Invention Convention.

Multicultural

Bredsdorff, Bodil The Crow-Girl: the Children of Crow Cove
After the death of her grandmother, a young orphaned girl leaves her house by the cove and begins a journey which leads her to people and experiences that exemplify the wisdom her grandmother had shared with her.

Kadohata, Cynthia Kira- Kira *2005 Newbery Award Winner
Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.

McCaughrean, Geraldine The Kite Rider

In thirteenth-century China, after trying to save his widowed mother from a horrendous second marriage, twelve-year-old Haoyou has life-changing adventures when he takes to the sky as a circus kite rider and ends up meeting the great Mongol ruler Kublai Khan.

Mikaelsen, Ben Tree Girl (YA)
When, protected by the branches of one of the trees she loves to climb, Gabriela witnesses the destruction of her Mayan village and the murder of nearly all its inhabitants, she vows never to climb again until, after she and her traumatized sister find safety in a Mexican refugee camp, she realizes that only by climbing and facing their fears can she and her sister hope to have a future.

Napoli, Donna Jo Bound
In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.

Schmidt, Gary Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy *2005 Newbery Honor Book
In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers--and Turner's--want to change into a tourist spot.

Mystery/Suspense/Horror

Bruchac, Joseph The Dark Pond
After he feels a mysterious pull drawing him toward a dark, shadowy pond in the woods, Armie looks to old Native American tales for guidance about the dangerous monster lurking in the water.

Ibbotson, Eva The Star of Kazan
Annika, a twelve-year-old foundling in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, and soon afterwards a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany.

Lyon, George Ella Sonny's House of Spies
In a small Alabama town in 1947-1956, Sonny searches for answers about his father's disappearance, "Uncle Marty," who looks after the family, and Mamby, their black housekeeper.

Updale, Eleanor Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?
In Victorian London, after his life is saved by a young physician, a thief utilizes the knowledge he gains in prison and from the scientific lectures he attends as the physician's case study exhibit to create a new, highly successful, double life for himself.

Wooding, Chris Haunting of Alaizabel Gray
As Thaniel, a wych-hunter, and Cathaline, his friend and mentor, try to destroy the terrible creatures that infest the alleys of London's Old Quarter, their lives become entwined with that of Alaizabel Cray, a woman who may be either mad or possessed.

Non-Fiction

Allen, Thomas B. George Washington, Spymaster : How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the
Revolutionary War
A biography of Revolutionary War general and first President of the United States, George Washington, focusing on his use of spies to gather intelligence that helped the colonies win the war.

Bausum, Ann With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote
Chronicles the long history of the fight for women's voting rights, beginning in 1848, with a focus on the years between 1913 and 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, and includes profiles of notable women in the struggle.

Bolden, Tonya Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists
Explores the lives and creations of a select number of notable African-American men and women who have contributed to the American art scene.

Bruchac, Joseph Code Talker's Story
After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.

Freedman, Russell The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights
*2005 Newbery Honor Book
Tells the life story of singer Marian Anderson, describing her famous 1939 Lincoln Memorial performance and explaining how she helped end segregation in the American arts after being refused the right to perform at Washington's Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin.

Hakim, Joy Aristotle Leads the Way (YA)
Presents a number of full-color illustrated photographs, charts, maps, and diagrams that examines the history of science through discoveries in astronomy, math, and physics.

Hoose, Phillip M. The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (YA)
Tells the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker's extinction in the United States, describing the encounters between this species and humans, and discussing what these encounters have taught us about preserving endangered creatures.

Jackson, Donna M. In Your Face: The Facts About Your Features
Presents an extensive study of the face and discusses how facial recognition technology can help find missing persons as well as how different cultures define beauty.

Janeczko, Paul Top Secret: a Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing
Presents a guide to codemaking, codebreaking, and their role in history, describing different types of codes and ciphers, discussing codebreaking and concealment techniques, and including brief stories about exciting moments in the history of the art.

Ralston, Aron Between a Rock and a Hard Place (YA)
The author recounts his harrowing experiences of being trapped for six days in Blue John Canyon in Utah and having to amputate his own right arm in order to save his life.

Schroeder, Andreas Scams: Ten Stories that Explore Some of the Most Outrageous Swindlers and Tricksters of All Time
A collection of true stories about some of the most outrageous scams in history.

Sports

Any books by Chris Crutcher or Thomas Dysgard.

Gutman, Dan The Million Dollar Strike
Best friends Ouchie and Squishy, who love bowling and horror movies respectively, meet the eccentric owner of a local bowling alley and try to help him save Bowl-A-Rama from the wrecking ball and a destructive psychotic lunatic.

Hirschfeld, Robert Goalkeeper in Charge
Shy Tina Esparza is upset when her coach decides she will be the goalkeeper a position in which she will be too noticeable.

Lupica, Mike Travel Team
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.

Swan, Bill Corner Kick
Michael Strike learns a lesson on friendship when fellow soccer player Miriah befriends Zahir, an immigrant from the Middle East, whom Michael sees as a rival until he finds out that Zahir is an excellent chess player.

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