Newton Country Day
Middle School
Outside Reading Suggestions
2011-2012

compiled by Ms. Kinney, Middle School Librarian

Classics

Andersen, H.C. Andersen's Fairy Tales.

Andersen wrote some of the most beloved tales of all time including "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Little Mermaid", "Tumbelina", "The Little Match Girl" and "The Emperor's New Clothes".

Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting.
A family accidentally stumbles upon a spring with water endowing them with the gift of eternal life. Seventy years later, without having grown a day older, a young girl discovers them and learns their secret.

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
 A tragic story of a passionate young heroine who falls in love with her tormented employer and the disaster that follows when they try to marry.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Little Lord Fauntleroy.
An American boy goes to live with his grandfather in England where he becomes heir to a title, estate, and fortune.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
When a young girl falls down a rabbit hole, she discovers a strange and interesting world with fantastical, mad characters as she tries to find her way back home.

Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Book.

Presents the adventures of Mowgli, the "man-cub," abandoned as a baby by his parents and raised by the wolves in the wilds of the jungle.

Nesbit, E. The Railway Children.
When their father is framed and imprisoned, three children and their mother move to the country, where they prevent a train accident, befriend an old gentleman, and try not to quarrel.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels.
The voyages of an eighteenth-century Englishman who visits such strange places as Lilliput, where people are six inches tall, and Brobdingnag, a land of giants.

For the Love of the Game

Cochrane, Mick. The Girl Who Threw Butterflies.
Eighth-grader Molly's ability to throw a knuckleball earns her a spot on the baseball team, which not only helps her feel connected to her recently deceased father, who loved baseball, it helps in other aspects of her life, as well.

Day, Karen. No Cream Puffs.
In 1980, when twelve-year-old Madison, who loves to play baseball, decides to play in her town's baseball league, she never envisions the uproar it causes when she becomes the first girl to join.

Fitzgerald, Dawn. Soccer Chick Rules.
While trying to focus on a winning soccer season, thirteen-year-old Tess becomes involved in local politics when she learns that all sports programs at her school will be stopped unless a tax levy is passed.

Levy, Elizabeth. Tackling Dad.
When Cassie tries out for the middle school football team, she faces unexpected opposition from her father, a former professional football player.

Lupica, Mike. Miracle on 49th Street.
After her mother's death, twelve-year-old Molly learns that her father is a basketball star for the Boston Celtics.

Roberts, Kristi. My Thirteenth Season.
Already downhearted due to the loss of her mother and her father's overwhelming grief, thirteen-year-old Fran decides to give up her dream of becoming the first female in professional baseball after a coach attacks her just for being a girl.

Van Draanen, Wendelin. The Running Dream.
When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

Voigt, Cynthia. The Runner.
As a dedicated runner, a teenage boy has always managed to distance himself from other people until the experience of coaching one of his teammates on the track team gradually helps him see the value of giving and receiving.

Grimm Tales

Baker, E.D. Wide-Awake Princess.
Annie, younger sister of the princess who would be known as Sleeping Beauty, is immune to magic and stays awake when the rest of the castle falls into an enchanted sleep, then sets out to find a way to break the spell.

Bunce, Elizabeth C. A Curse as Dark as Gold.
Upon the death of her father, seventeen-year-old Charlotte struggles to keep the family's woolen mill running in the face of an overwhelming mortgage, but when a man capable of spinning straw into gold appears on the scene she must decide if his help is worth the price.

Dowell, Frances O’Roark. Falling In.
Middle schooler Isabelle Bean follows a mouse's squeak into a closet and falls into a parallel universe where the children believe she is the witch they have feared for years, finally come to devour them.

Gardner, Lyn. Into the Woods.
Pursued by the sinister Dr.DeWilde and his ravenous wolves, three sisters, Storm, the inheritor of a special musical pipe, the elder Aurora, and the baby Any, flee into the woods and begin a treacherous journey filled with many dangers as they try to find a way to defeat their pursuer and keep him from taking the pipe and control of the entire land.

Gidwitz, Adam. A Tale Dark and Grimm.
Follows Hansel and Gretel as they walk out of their own story and into eight more tales, encountering such wicked creatures as witches, along with kindly strangers and other helpful folk.

Jones, Diana Wynne. Enchanted Glass.
After his grandfather dies, Andrew Hope inherits a house and surrounding land in an English village, but things become very complicated when young orphan Aidan shows up and suddenly a host of variously magical townsfolk and interlopers start intruding on their lives.

Riley, James. Half Upon a Time.
In the village of Giant's Hand Jack's grandfather has been pushing him to find a princess and get married, so when a young lady falls out of the sky wearing a shirt that says "Punk Princess," and she tells Jack that her grandmother, who looks suspiciously like the long-missing Snow White, has been kidnapped, Jack decides to help her.

Life Lessons

Bell, Cathleen Davitt. Little Blog on the Prairie.
Thirteen-year-old Genevieve's summer at a frontier family history camp in Laramie, Wyoming, with her parents and brother is filled with surprises, which she reports to friends back home on the cell phone she sneaked in, and which they turn into a blog.

Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette.
It's off to the beach for Rosalind and off to Maine with Aunt Claire for the rest of the Penderwick girls, as well as their old friend, Jeffrey.

Budhos, Marina Tamar. Tell Us We’re Home.
Three immigrant girls from different parts of the world meet and become close friends in a small New Jersey town where their mothers have found domestic work, but their relationships are tested when one girl's mother is accused of stealing a precious heirloom.

Dowell, Frances O’Roark. 10 Miles Past Normal.
Janie Gorman wants to be normal. The problem with that: she's not. She's smart and creative and a little bit funky. She's also an unwilling player in her parents' modern-hippy, let's-live-on-a-goat-farm experiment.

Fixmer, Elizabeth. Saint Training.
During the turbulent 1960s, sixth-grader Mary Clare makes a deal with God: she will try to become a saint if He provides for her large, cash-strapped family.

Keller, Julia. Back Home.
Thirteen-year-old Rachel Browning understands that her father will be different after being injured in the Iraq War, but no one is prepared for the impact that his traumatic brain injury and other wounds have on the entire family.

Magoon, Kekla. Camo Girl.
A poignant novel about a biracial girl living in the suburbs of Las Vegas examines the friendships that grow out of, and despite, her race.

Weeks, Sarah. As Simple As It Seems.
Eleven-year-old Verbena Polter gets through a difficult summer of turbulent emotions and the revelation of a disturbing family secret with an odd new friend who believes she is the ghost of a girl who drowned many years before.

 

Rhythm and Rhyme

Atkins, Jeanine. Borrowed Names.
Told in vivid, compelling poems, this is the story of three daughters and their remarkable mothers whose work in literature, business, and science changed the world.

Bryant, Jennifer. Ringside, 1925:views from the Scopes trial.
Visitors, spectators, and residents of Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 describe, in a series of free-verse poems, the Scopes "monkey trial" and its effects on that small town and its citizens.

Gutman, Dan. Talent Show.
After a devastating tornado destroys much of Cape Bluff, Kansas, residents come together as a community to put on a talent show as a fund-raiser.

Frost, Helen. Crossing Stones.
In their own voices, four young people, Muriel, Frank, Emma and Ollie, tell of their experiences during the first World War, as the boys enlist and are sent overseas, Emma finishes school and Muriel fights for peace and women's suffrage.

Hemphill, Stephanie. Wicked Girls.
A fictionalized account, told in verse, of the Salem witch trials, told from the perspective of three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692--Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott, and Ann Putnam, Jr.

Hesse, Karen. Aleutian Sparrow.
An Aleutian Islander recounts her suffering during World War II in American internment camps designed to "protect" the population from the invading Japanese.

Mass, Wendy. Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall.
When high school junior Tessa Reynolds falls into a coma after getting hit in the head during gym class, she experiences heaven as the mall where her parents work, and she revisits key events from her life, causing her to reevaluate herself and how she wants to live.

Myers, Walter Dean. Riot. In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and a black father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy "swells" of New York City.

 

Around the World

Abdel-Fattah, Randa. Where the Streets Had a Name.
Thirteen-year-old Hayaat of Bethlehem faces check points, curfews, and the travel permit system designed to keep people on the West Bank when she attempts to go to her grandmother's ancestral home in Jerusalem with her best friend.

Nanji, Shenaaz. Child of the Dandelions.
In Uganda in 1972, fifteen-year-old Sabine and her family, wealthy citizens of Indian descent, try to preserve their normal life during the ninety days allowed by President Idi Amin for all foreign Indians to leave the country, while soldiers and others terrorize them and people disappear.

Park, Linda Sue. Long Walk to Water.
When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven.

Perkins, Mitali. Bamboo People.
Two Burmese boys, one a Karenni refugee and the other the son of an imprisoned Burmese doctor, meet in the jungle and in order to survive they must learn to trust each other.

Sepetys, Ruta. Between Shades of Grey.
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil.

Whelan, Gloria. Small Acts of Amazing Courage.
In 1919, independent-minded fifteen-year-old Rosalind lives in India with her English parents, and when they fear she has fallen in with some rebellious types who believe in Indian self-government, she is sent "home" to London, where she has never been before and where her older brother died, to stay with her two aunts.

 

Shakespeare's World

Bauer, A.C.E. Come Fall.
Drawn together by a mentoring program and an unusual crow, middle school misfits Salman, Lu, and Blos form a strong friendship despite teasing by fellow students and the maneuverings of fairies Oberon, Titania, and Puck.

Blackwood, Gary. The Shakespeare Stealer.

A young orphan boy is ordered by his master to infiltrate Shakespeare's acting troupe in order to steal the script of "Hamlet," but he discovers instead the meaning of friendship and loyalty.

Broach, Elise. Shakespeare’s Secret. 

Named after a character in a Shakespeare play, misfit sixth-grader Hero becomes interested in exploring this unusual connection because of a valuable diamond supposedly hidden in her new house, an intriguing neighbor, and the unexpected attention of the most popular boy in school.

Dionne, Erin. The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet.
Hamlet's attempts to be a "normal" eighth grader become increasingly difficult when her genius seven-year-old sister and her eccentric Shakespeare scholar parents both begin to attend her school.

Klein, Lisa M. Ophelia.

In a story based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia tells of her life in the court at Elsinore, her love for Prince Hamlet, and her escape from the violence in Denmark.

MacDonald, Bailey. Wicked Will.
Performing in the English town of Stratford-on-Avon in 1576, a young actress (disguised as a boy) and a local lad named Will Shakespeare uncover a murder mystery.

Schmidt, Gary D. The Wednesday Wars.
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

NCDS Favorites

Abbott, Tony. Firegirl.
A middle school boy's life is changed when Jessica, a girl disfigured by burns, starts attending his Catholic school while receiving treatment at a local hospital.

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Forge.
Separated from his friend Isabel after their daring escape from slavery, fifteen-year-old Curzon serves as a free man in the Continental Army at Valley Forge until he and Isabel are thrown together again, as slaves once more.

Erskine, Kathryn. Mockingbird.
Ten-year-old Caitlin, who has Asperger's Syndrome, struggles to understand emotions, show empathy, and make friends at school, while at home she seeks closure by working on a project with her father.

Hegedus, Bethany. Truth with a Capital T.
Staying with her grandparents over the summer while her parents are on tour for their latest book, eleven-year-old Maebelle struggles to find her true talent and tries to compete with her newly adopted African American cousin.

Martin, Ann M. Summer Before.
During the summer before their seventh-grade year, Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey tackle difficulties, including family problems, crushes, moving, and making new friends.

Mass, Wendy. Every Soul a Star.
Ally, Bree, and Jack meet at the one place the Great Eclipse can be seen in totality, each carrying the burden of different personal problems, which become dim when compared to the task they embark upon and the friendship they find.

Taylor, Mildred D. The Land.
After the Civil War, Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.

Van Cleve, Kathleen. Drizzle.
When a drought threatens her family's magical rhubarb farm, eleven-year-old Polly tries to find a way to make it rain again.

Super Sleuth

Allison, Jennifer. Gilda Joyce and the Bones of the Holy.
Psychic investigator Gilda Joyce is appalled that her mother plans to remarry, but while they are in St. Augustine, Florida, making wedding arrangements Gilda discovers that the city is full of ghosts and mysteries, including one involving her stepfather-to-be.

Balliett, Blue. The Danger Box.
In small-town Michigan, twelve-year-old Zoomy and his new friend Lorrol investigate the journal found inside a mysterious box and find family secrets and a more valuable treasure, while a dangerous stranger watches and waits.

Beil, Michael D. Red Blazer Girls: Ring of Rocamadour.
Catholic-schooled seventh-graders Sophie, Margaret, Rebecca, and Leigh Ann help an elderly neighbor solve a puzzle her father left for her estranged daughter twenty years ago.

Berlin, Eric. The Puzzling World of Winston Breen. Puzzle-crazy, twelve-year-old Winston and his ten-year-old sister Katie find themselves involved in a dangerous mystery involving a hidden ring.

Riordan, Rick. Maze of Bones.
When their beloved aunt--matriarch of the world's most powerful family--dies, orphaned siblings Amy and Dan Cahill compete with less honorable Cahill descendants in a race around the world to find cryptic clues to a mysterious fortune. Includes game cards which the reader may use to play an online version of the treasure hunt.

Sherry, Maureen. Walls Within Walls.
When the Smithfork family moves into a lavish Manhattan apartment building, they discover clues to a decades-old mystery hidden behind the walls of their new home.

Golding, Julia. The Diamond of Drury Lane.
Catherine "Cat" Royal, an orphan who lives at the Drury Lane Theater in 1790s London, tries to find the "diamond" supposedly hidden in the theater, which unmasks a treasonous political cartoonist and involves her in the street gangs of Covent Garden and the world of nobility.

Just One Bite

Bauer, Joan. Close to Famous.
Twelve-year-old Foster McFee and her mother escape from her mother's abusive boyfriend and end up in the small town of Culpepper, West Virginia, where they use their strengths and challenge themselves to build a new life, with the help of the friends they make there.

Frederick, Heather Vogel. Pies and Prejudice.
Four girls, and their mothers, continue their mother-daughter book club via videoconference between Massachusetts and England, reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," and try to put friendship before romance.

Greenwald, Lisa. Sweet Treats and Secret Crushes.
When a snowstorm keeps thirteen-year-old best friends Olivia, Kate, and Georgia inside their Brooklyn, New York, apartment building on Valentine's Day, they connect with their neighbors by distributing homemade fortune cookies and uncover one another's secrets along the way.

Hepler, Heather. The Cupcake Queen.
While longing to return to life in New York City, thirteen-year-old Penny helps her mother and grandmother run a cupcake bakery in Hog's Hollow, tries to avoid the beastly popular girls, to be a good friend to quirky Tally, and to catch the eye of enigmatic Marcus.

Kent, Rose. Rocky Road.
Fashion-loving twelve-year-old Tess moves with her deaf younger brother and impulsive single mother to Schenectady, New York, where they open an ice-cream shop and lead a campaign for urban renewal.

Schaefer, Laura. The Teashop Girls.
Fourteen-year-old Annie, along with her two best friends, tries desperately to save her grandmother's beloved, old-fashioned teashop in Madison, Wisconsin, while she also learns to accept the inevitability of change in life.

Schroeder, Lisa. It’s Raining Cupcakes.
Twelve-year-old Isabel dreams of seeing the world but has never left Oregon, and so when her best friend, Sophie, tells her of a baking contest whose winners travel to New York City, she eagerly enters despite concerns about her mother, who is opening a cupcake bakery.

Prize Winners

Curtis, Christopher Paul. Elijah of Buxton.
In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.

Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book.
Nobody Owens is a normal boy, except that he has been raised by ghosts and other denizens of the graveyard.

Holm, Jennifer L. Turtle in Paradise.
In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

Kelly, Jacqueline. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.
In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.

Larson, Kirby. Hattie Big Sky.
After inheriting her uncle's homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa in 1917 to make a home for herself and encounters some unexpected problems related to the war being fought in Europe.

Law, Ingrid. Savvy.
Recounts the adventures of Mibs Beaumont, whose thirteenth birthday has revealed her "savvy"--a magical power unique to each member of her family--just as her father is injured in a terrible accident.

Lin, Grace. Where Mountain Meets the Moon.
Minli, an adventurous girl from a poor village, buys a magical goldfish, and then joins a dragon who cannot fly on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon in hopes of bringing life to Fruitless Mountain and freshness to Jade River.

Lord, Cynthia. Rules.
Frustrated at life with an autistic brother, twelve-year-old Catherine longs for a normal existence but her world is further complicated by a friendship with an young paraplegic.

Preus, Margi. Heart of a Samurai.
In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.

Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Ninth Ward.
In New Orleans' Ninth Ward, twelve-year-old Lanesha, who can see spirits, and her adopted grandmother have no choice but to stay and weather the storm as Hurricane Katrina bears down upon them.

Sedgwick, Marcus. Revolver.
Teenaged Sig Andersson, who lives in an isolated cabin in the Arctic Circle, confronts a stranger who has come to take revenge on Sig's dead father for his actions when the two men knew each other during the Alaska Gold Rush.

Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me.
As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, "The 20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

Vanderpool, Clare. Moon Over Manifest.
Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past.

Williams-Garcia, Rita. One Crazy Summer.
In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Woodson, Jacqueline. Feathers.
When a new, white student nicknamed "The Jesus Boy" joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie's growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.