ZM Summer Reading for NCCS Middle School Students 2018: Top 10 List (Booklist Magazine)

An epic fantasy about a young girl raised by a witch, a swamp monster, and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, who must unlock the powerful magic buried deep inside her. Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and delivers them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey. One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinarymagic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge onschedule--but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her--even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she's always known. The acclaimed author of The Witch's Boy has created another epic coming-of-age fairy tale destined to become a modern classic. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 640L)

Two children captured by a band of rebel soldiers in the Congo vow to protect an orphaned gorilla baby in this powerful, thought-provoking, and vividly compelling novel from award-winning storyteller Gill Lewis.
Deep in the heart of the Congo, a baby gorilla is captured by a group of rebel soldiers. Imara and Bobo are also prisoners in the rebels' camp. When they learn that the gorilla will be sold into captivity, they swear to return it to the wild before it's too late. But the consequences of getting caught are too terrible to think about. Will the bond between the gorilla and the children give them the courage they need to escape? Grade 5-8

Repeatedly landing in trouble at her finishing school because of her preference for practicing magic instead of manners, Chantel enlists her friends to protect the kingdom when her teacher goes missing along with the city's protective magic. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 660L)

When Kid accompanies her parents to New York City for a six-month stint of dog-sitting and home-schooling, she sees what looks like a tiny white cloud on top of their apartment building.
Rumor says there's a goat living on the roof, but how can that be? Grade 5-8

A flea becomes a giant-slayer, proving that mighty heroes can come in small packages. Grade 5-8

eeling most alive when he's playing the blues with his grandfather, Clayton is devastated when his grandfather dies and his mother forbids him from playing music, losses that compel him to run away and join bluesmen on the road. Grade 5-8

Up until her twelfth birthday, Kiranmala considered herself an ordinary sixth-grader in Parsippany, New Jersey, but then her parents disappear and a drooling rakkhosh demon shows up in her kitchen, and soon she is swept into another dimension, full of magic, winged horses, talking birds (very annoying), and cute princes--and somehow Kiranmala needs to sort it all out, find her parents, and basically save the world. Grade 5-7 (Lexile: 730)

Acclaimed author and Pura Belpré Award honoree Lulu Delacre's beautifully illustrated collection of twelve short stories is a groundbreaking look at the diverse Latinos who live in the United States.

In this book, you will meet many young Latinos living in the United States, from a young girl whose day at her father's burrito truck surprises her to two sisters working together to change the older sister's immigration status, and more.

Turn the pages to experience life through the eyes of these boys and girls whose families originally hail from many different countries; see their hardships, celebrate their victories, and come away with a better understanding of what it means to be Latino in the U.S. today. Grade 3-7

Bugs, of all kinds, were considered to be "born of mud" and to be "beasts of the devil." Why would anyone, let alone a girl, want to study and observe them?

One of the first naturalists to observe live insects directly, Maria Sibylla Merian was also one of the first to document the metamorphosis of the butterfly. In this visual nonfiction biography, richly illustrated throughout with full-color original paintings by Merian herself, the Newbery Honor-winning author Joyce Sidman paints her own picture of one of the first female entomologists and a woman who flouted convention in the pursuit of knowledge and her passion for insects. Grade 4-7

The enthralling story of how we made the great leap into space and what we've discovered there. Find out what life is like on the International Space Station, what the chances are that we will ever settle on Mars, where in the solar system we might find alien life, and why visiting other stars will almost certainly remain a dream. Budding astronomers, junior astronauts, and anyone who has ever gazed up at the stars in fascination will pore over this beautifully intricate yet accessible glimpse of the infinite wonders of space. Grade 4-7

African penguins waddle around nesting colonies in lower numbers than ever before. Despite South African government efforts to protect the penguin colonies and their ocean fish supply, young penguins still struggle to survive. Fuzzy chicks waiting for food in open nests may overheat in the sun or become prey. Others simply may not get enough food to survive on their own once their parents leave. But new conservation methods, including rescuing and hand-feeding vulnerable chicks, are giving experts hope. Can volunteers and scientists help save Africa's only penguins before it's too late? Grade 4-6

Part history, part chemistry, part whodunit, Poison- Deadly Deeds, Perilous Professions, and Murderous Medicines traces the role poisons have played in history from antiquity to the present and shines a ghoulish light on the deadly intersection of human nature . . . and Mother Nature. Grade 5-8

When her mother is wrongly imprisoned for a crime committed by her boyfriend, 12-year-old Ruby and her pet pig are sent to Ruby's estranged Aunt Eleanor's home on a peach orchard where she endeavors to heal family wounds and clear her mother's name. Grade 5-7 (Lexile: 730)

Traveling between camps in the magical forests of the Hinterlands, a young girl with gold-flecked eyes and hair as white as summer snow survives on items pillaged by her gang of bandits while being tracked by a witch hunter who wants to cleanse the forest of anyone who is different. Grade 5 - 8 (Lexile: 700)

With the help of some unexpected, and rather ghostly, allies, Lockwood & Co. must battle their greatest enemy yet, as they move ever closer to the moment when the earth-shattering secret of 'the problem' will finally be revealed, Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 710)

In this story set in the 18th-century, Caleb is the mixed race son of a poor puppeteer. When his father is wrongfully accused of theft and sentenced to transportation, Caleb is forced to seek out his estranged aunt in Devon. When a body washes up on a nearby beach, a shattered Caleb finds himself involved in a plot that places him and his newfound family in mortal danger. Grade 6-9

Twelve-year-old Candice Miller is spending the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, in the old house that belonged to her grandmother, who died after being dismissed as city manager for having the city tennis courts dug up looking for buried treasure--but when she finds the letter that sent her grandmother on the treasure hunt, she finds herself caught up in the mystery and, with the help of her new friend and fellow book-worm, Brandon, she sets out to find the inheritance, exonerate her grandmother, and expose an injustice once committed against an African American family in Lambert. Grade 4-6 (Lexile: 610)

When AIDS devastates thirteen-year-old Auma's village in Kenya during the 1980s, Auma must choose between staying to help her family and working toward a track scholarship that will take her away from home. Grade 5+ (Lexile: 740)

A newbie to the track team, Patina "Patty" Jones must learn to rely on her family and teammates as she tries to outrun her personal demons. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 710)

Native American Jim Thorpe became a super athlete and Olympic gold medalist. Indomitable coach Pop Warner was a football mastermind. In 1907 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football," they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work. Sheinkin provides an true underdog sports story-- and an unflinching look at the U.S. government's violent persecution of Native Americans and the school that was designed to erase Indian cultures. Grae 6-9 (Lexile: 980L)

When twelve-year-old Rachel learns that her scoliosis has worsened and she will need to wear a back brace to keep her spine straight, she is devastated; afraid that she will not be able to play soccer, and terrified that she will not be able to hide her condition from her friends and classmates--but her mother is determined to spare her the spinal fusion surgery that she herself had as a teenager. Grade 4-7

The phenomenon of desperate refugees risking their lives to reach safety is not new. For hundreds of years, people have left behind family, friends, and all they know in hope of a better life. This book presents five true stories about young people who lived through the harrowing experience of setting sail in search of asylum: Ruth and her family board the St. Louis to escape Nazism; Phu sets out alone from war-torn Vietnam; José tries to reach the U.S. from Cuba; Najeeba flees Afghanistan and the Taliban; Mohamed, an orphan, runs from his village on the Ivory Coast. Aimed at middle grade students, Stormy Seas combines a contemporary collage-based design, sidebars, fact boxes, timeline and further reading to produce a book that is ideal for both reading and research. Readers will gain new insights into a situation that has constantly been making the headlines. Grade 4-7 (Lexile: 890)

Amid the scholars, poets, authors, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance stood an Afro-Puerto Rican named Arturo Schomburg. This law clerk's life's passion was to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora and bring to light the achievements of people of African descent through the ages. When Schomburg's collection became so big it began to overflow his house (and his wife threatened to mutiny), he turned to the New York Public Library, where he created and curated a collection that was the cornerstone of a new Negro Division. A century later, his groundbreaking collection, known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has become a beacon to scholars all over the world. Grade 4-7 (Lexile: 1100)

A leader among the Lakota during the 1860s, Chief Red Cloud deeply opposed white expansion into Native American territory. He rejected treaties from the U.S. government and instead united the warriors of the Lakota and nearby tribes, becoming the only Native American to win a war against the U.S. Army. Despite his military successes, Red Cloud recognized that continued conflict would only bring destruction to his people. He made the controversial decision to make an agreement with the U.S. government, and moved his people to a reservation. The effects of his decision--as well as the conflicts that arose from those who rejected the agreement and continued fighting against white expansion, such as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull--shaped much of the history of Native American relations with the U.S. in years to come. Grade 4-7 (Lexiel: AD880)

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is one of the most famous pieces of civic architecture in the world. But most people are not as familiar with the reserved college student who entered and won the design competition to build it. This accessible biography tells the story of Maya Lin, from her struggle to stick with her vision of the memorial to the wide variety of works she has created since then. The carefully researched text, paired with ample photos, crosses multipleinterests--American history, civic activism, art history, and cultural diversity--and offers a timely celebration of the memorial's 35th anniversary as well as providing an important contribution to the current discussion of the role of women and minorities in society. Grade 4-7 (Lexile:980)

Gandhi asks for one member of each family to join the fight for independence from the British, and when ten-year-old Anjali's mother is jailed for doing so, Anjali must step out of her comfort zone to take over her mother's work. Grade 4-7 (Lexile:830)

When the Phillipine government takes over Culion, an island for people with leprosy, Ami is put in an orphanage on another island, where she finds a friend willing to help her return before her mother dies. Grade 4-7 (Lexile:770)

In this story set in the 18th-century, Caleb is the mixed race son of a poor puppeteer. When his father is wrongfully accused of theft and sentenced to transportation, Caleb is forced to seek out his estranged aunt in Devon. When a body washes up on a nearby beach, a shattered Caleb finds himself involved in a plot that places him and his newfound family in mortal danger. Grade 6-9

It s 1965, Los Angeles. All twelve-year-old Sophie wants to do is write her book, star in the community play, and hang out with her friend Jennifer. But she s the new black kid in a nearly all-white neighborhood; her beloved sister, Lily, is going away to college soon; and her parents marriage is rocky. There s also her family s new, disapproving housekeeper to deal with. When riots erupt in nearby Watts and a friend is unfairly arrested, Sophie learns that life and her own place in it is even more complicated than she d once thought. Leavened with gentle humor, this story is perfect for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 680L)

It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but the odds are against her until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 730)

1919. Mama is ill. Father has taken a job abroad. Nanny Jane is too busy to pay any attention to Henrietta and the things she sees - or thinks she sees - in the shadows of their new home, Hope House. All alone, with only stories for company, Henry discovers that Hope House is full of strange secrets: a forgotten attic, ghostly figures, mysterious firelight that flickers in the trees beyond the garden. One night she ventures into the darkness of Nightingale Wood. What she finds there will change her whole world... Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 730)

ere is the true story of Ricky Richard Anywar, abducted at age fourteen in 1989 to fight with Joseph Kony's rebel army in Uganda’s decades-long civil war. Ricky is trained, armed, and sent to battle government forces alongside his brutal kidnappers. After witnessing unimaginable horror, he manages to escape.
Here also is the story, set twenty years later, of a fictionalized character named Samuel, representative of the thousands of child soldiers Ricky eventually helped rehabilitate as founder of the internationally acclaimed charity Friends of Orphans. Grade 5-8

Intrigued by the activities of a young band of pickpockets who steal from him and others in a busy square in Marseille, lonely Charley Fisher, the son of an American diplomat, infiltrates the group before enrolling in the mysterious School of Seven Bells to learn the tricks of the trade to become an elite Whiz Mob thief. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 840)

In 1350, a boy with a large hump on his back becomes the servant of a shadowy pilgrim on his way to Rome, who pulls the boy into a dangerous expedition across Europe to gather the seven precious relics of Saint Peter. Grade 5-8

All aboard for a fast-paced, Jazz Age-era murder mystery set aboard a Chicago-bound train! It's 1923, and thirteen-year-old Bobby Lee Claremont is leaving the Sisters of Charitable Mercy orphanage in New Orleans, certain a better life awaits in Chicago's glamorous-sounding mob scene. But his plans unravel when he boards his train and meets the recently widowed Nanette O'Halloran, her two traveling companions, and a cop who suspects the trio of murdering Nanette's husband. Bobby Lee is sure Nanette's innocent. But what about her companions? As Bobby Lee digs for answers, he discovers the mob, Prohibition, segregation, and a famed jazz band are all pieces of an increasingly dangerous puzzle. Grade 4-7 (Lexile: 790L

Coming of age on an island where people prepare for the afterlife before entering a turbulent whirlpool from which nobody returns, orphan Wren dreams of escaping her home on a trading boat only to be accidentally sucked into the whirlpool, where she discovers a reality beyond the abyss that is worse than anyone could have imagined. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 690)

Whisked away to a magical historical land of their own invention as they are about to depart for boarding school, sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë find themselves fighting Napoleon to obtain a potion that raises the dead, a situation that is complicated by the abduction of their siblings. Grade 4-7

Up until her twelfth birthday, Kiranmala considered herself an ordinary sixth-grader in Parsippany, New Jersey, but then her parents disappear and a drooling rakkhosh demon shows up in her kitchen, and soon she is swept into another dimension, full of magic, winged horses, talking birds (very annoying), and cute princes--and somehow Kiranmala needs to sort it all out, find her parents, and basically save the world. Grade 5-7 (Lexile: 730)

Sequel to: The wild robot.
After being captured by the Recons and returned to civilization for reprogramming, Roz is sent to Hilltop Farm where she befriends her owner's family and animals, but pines for her son, Brightbill.

When her parents, the great marine scientists Dr. and Dr. Quail, are killed in a tragic accident, eleven year old Fidelia Quail is racked by grief. But she is forced out of her mourning when she's kidnapped by Merrick the Monstrous, a pirate whose list of crimes stretches longer than a ribbon eel. Her task? Use her marine know-how to retrieve his treasure, lost on the ocean floor. As Fidelia and the pirates close in on the prize, with the navy hot on their heels, she realizes that Merrick doesn't expect to live long enough to enjoy his loot. Could something other than black-hearted greed be driving him? Will Fidelia be able to master the perils of the ocean without her parents - and piece together the mystery of Merrick the Monstrous before it's too late? Grade 4-7

When her best friend, the sailor Henry Koskela, is falsely accused of murder, a gorilla named Sally Jones visits the run-down docks of Lisbon, embarks on a dizzying journey across the seven seas, and calls on the Maharaja of Bhapur's magnificent court--all in an attempt to clear Henry's name. Grade 6-9

After Nadia is separated from her family while fleeing the civil war, she spends the next four days with a mysterious old man who helps her navigate the checkpoints and snipers of the rebel, ISIS, and Syrian armies that are littering Aleppo on her way to meeting her father at the Turkish border. Grade 4-7

Garvey’s father has always wanted Garvey to be athletic, but Garvey is interested in astronomy, science fiction, reading—anything but sports. Feeling like a failure, he comforts himself with food. Garvey is kind, funny, smart, a loyal friend, and he is also overweight, teased by bullies, and lonely. When his only friend encourages him to join the school chorus, Garvey’s life changes. The chorus finds a new soloist in Garvey, and through chorus, Garvey finds a way to accept himself, and a way to finally reach his distant father—by speaking the language of music instead of the language of sports. This emotionally resonant novel in verse by award-winning author Nikki Grimes celebrates choosing to be true to yourself.

Ghost wants to be the fastest sprinter on his elite middle school track team, but his past is slowing him down in this first electrifying novel of a brand-new series from Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award–winning author Jason Reynolds.

Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team—a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves.

Eleven-year-old Zomorod, originally from Iran, tells her story of growing up Iranian in Southern California during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis of the late 1970s. Grade 5-8

Pinmei, a storyteller's granddaughter, must find the Luminous Stone that Lights the Night to rescue her grandmother, who has been kidnapped by the Tiger Emperor. Grade 3-6 (Lexile: 750L)

Fannie Sellins (1872-1919) lived during the Gilded Age of American Industrialization, when the Carnegies and Morgans wore jewels while their laborers wore rags. Fannie dreamed that America could achieve its ideals of equality and justice for all, and she sacrificed her life to help that dream come true. Fannie became a union activist, helping to create St. Louis, Missouri, Local 67 of the United Garment Workers of America. She traveled the nation and eventually gave her life, calling for fair wages and decent working and living conditions for workers in both the garment and mining industries. Her accomplishments live on today. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 1020L)

Pete Seeger, the iconic folk musician and multiple Grammy winner, discovered early in life that what he wanted to do was make music. His amazing career as singer, songwriter, and banjo player spanned seven decades, and included both low points (being charged with contempt of Congress) and highlights (receiving the Kennedy Center Honor from President Clinton). An activist and protester, Seeger crusaded for the rights of labor, the rights of people of color, and the First Amendment right to let his voice be heard, and launched the successful campaign to clean up the Hudson River. Grade 5-8 (Lexile: 1050L)

SOME PIG,” Charlotte the spider’s praise for Wilbur, is just one fondly remembered snippet from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. In Some Writer!, the two-time Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet mixes White’s personal letters, photos, and family ephemera with her own exquisite artwork to tell his story, from his birth in 1899 to his death in 1985. Grade 2-5 (Lexile: 1030) (176 p)