7th Grade List 2013

Reading Log

 Summer 7 2013

Gary D. Schmidt. The Wednesday Wars. (core novel to be read by all incoming Seventh Graders) Newbery Honor Book

Seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood, stuck in Mrs. Baker's classroom during the 1967 school year while his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, learns much of value about the world in which he lives from the study of the plays of William Shakespeare.    Book Trailer

Additional titles: Choose four

Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.


The classic story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in nineteenth-century New England.     Book Trailer

Blue Balliett. Chasing Vermeer; The Wright Three; The Calder Game. (only one can count)


When seemingly unrelated and strange events start to happen and a precious Vermeer painting disappears, eleven-year-olds Petra and Calder combine their talents to solve an international art scandal.      Book Trailer 1      Book Trailer 2

Baseball Crazy: Ten Short Stories That Cover All the Bases.

A collection of ten short stories from popular, contemporary authors that celebrate the joys of America's favorite pastime and the wonder, frustration, and delight of its fans.

Chris Bradford. Young Samurai: the Way of the Warrior; Young Samurai: the Way of the Sword; Young Samurai: The Way of the Dragon. (Young Samurai series) (only one can count) several others

Orphaned by a ninja pirate attack off the coast of Japan in 1611, twelve-year-old English lad Jack Fletcher is determined to prove himself, despite the bullying of fellow students, when the legendary sword master who rescued him begins training him as a samurai warrior.     Book Trailer

Julie Chibarro. Deadly.

Sixteen-year-old Prudence Galewski takes a job in the early 1900s as assistant to the head epidemiologist at New York's Department of Health and Sanitation, who is trying to discover how a seemingly healthy woman can be spreading typhoid fever.   Book Trailer

Eoin Colfer. Airman

This is a fast-paced, highly entertaining tale of flying machines, criminals, martial arts, swordplay, princesses, poisons, and evil villains, mixed with themes of justice, revenge, romance, good triumphing over evil, realizing one's dreams, blackmail, conspiracy, corruption, and betrayal.     Book Trailer

 James Dashner. The Maze Runner; The Scorch Trials; Death Cure; The Kill Order. The Maze Runner series (only one can count)

 Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape. Book Trailer

Erin Dionne. The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet.

All Hamlet Kennedy wants is to be a normal eighth grader. But with parents like hers - Shakespearean scholars who actually dress in Elizabethan regalia . . . in public! – it’s not that easy. As if they weren’t strange enough, her genius seven-year-old sister will be attending her middle school, and is named the new math tutor. Then, when the Shakespeare Project is announced, Hamlet reveals herself to be an amazing actress. Even though she wants to be average, Hamlet can no longer hide from the fact that she - like her family - is anything but ordinary.     Book Trailer

Jasper Fforde. The Last Dragonslayer.

Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs an agency for underemployed magicians in a world where magic is fading away, but when visions of the death of the world's last dragon begin, all signs point to Jennifer--and Big Magic.     Book Trailer

John Flanagan. The Outcasts; The Invaders, The Hunters. (Brotherband Chronicles series) (only one from this series can count)

Hal, Stig, and the other outcasts do not have the size and strength of the Skandians, but when they face off against the Wolves and the Sharks in an ultimate race for survival, they hope that their courage and cunning are enough to help them win in a game that everyone seems to think is a matter of life and death.     Book Trailer

Cornelia Funke. Reckless.

Jacob and Will Reckless have looked out for each other ever since their father disappeared, but when Jacob discovers a magical mirror that transports him to a warring world populated by witches, giants, and ogres, he keeps it to himself until Will follows him one day, with dire consequences.     Book Trailer

Kerstin Gier. Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue. (only one can count)

Sixteen-year-old Gwyneth Shepherd unexpectedly travels through time to the eighteenth century, and she must find out why her mother lied about her date of birth to hide her ability, research her history, and work with Gideon, another time traveler.     Book Trailer

Will Hobbs. Take Me to the River.

When North Carolina fourteen-year-old Dylan Sands joins his fifteen-year-old cousin Rio in running the Rio Grande River, they face a tropical storm and a fugitive kidnapper. Author Book Talk

Phillip Hoose. Moonbird: a Year on the Wind With the Great Survivor B95. 2013 Kyle Likover Memorial Visiting Author.

Chronicles a year in the life of rufa red knot B95, also called Moonbird, following him through his migration pattern, flying from Tierra del Fuego to the  breeding grounds in the Canadian Arctic, 9,000 miles away.     Author talk

S. J. Kincaid. Insignia ; Vortex. Insignia Series. (only one can count)

Tom, a fourteen-year-old genius at virtual reality games, is recruited by the United States Military to begin training at the Pentagon Spire as a Combatant in World War III, controlling the mechanized drones that do the actual fighting off-planet.     Book Trailer

Caitlin Kittredge. The Iron Thorn, The Nightmare Garden. The Iron Codex series (only one can count)

In an alternate 1950s, mechanically gifted fifteen-year-old Aoife Grayson, whose family has a history of going mad at sixteen, must leave the totalitarian city of Lovecraft and venture into the world of magic to solve the mystery of her brother's disappearance and the mysteries surrounding her father and the Land of Thorn.     Book Trailer

Gordon Korman. No More Dead Dogs.

Eighth-grade football hero Wallace Wallace is sentenced to detention attending rehearsals of the school play where, in spite of himself, he becomes wrapped up in the production and begins to suggest changes that improve not only the play but his life as well.     Book Trailer

Kristen Landon. The Limit.

When his family exceeds its legal debt limit, thirteen-year-old Matt is sent to the Federal Debt Rehabilitation Agency workhouse, where he discovers illicit activities are being carried out using the children who have been placed there.     Book Trailer

Andy Lane. Death Cloud; Rebel Fire  (only one can count)

In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously "unwell," fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain.     Book Trailer

Jack London. The Call of the Wild.

Buck, who is half St. Bernard and half Scotch shepherd, is abducted and taken to the Klondike where he reverts to the wild and becomes a leader of a pack of wolves.     Book Trailer

Mary Losure. The Fairy Ring, Or, Elsie and Frances Fool the World.

Relates the story of Francis and Elsie, cousins who concocted a story and photographs about fairies because nobody believed Francis could see the tiny men and were surprised when their photographs were found by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who truly believed in fairies.     Book Trailer

Marie Lu. Legend; Prodigy. Legend series (only one can count)

In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June, the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common enemy.     Book Trailer 1     Book Trailer 2

Mike Lupica. Travel Team; Summer Ball; Travel Team & the Big Field. (only one can count)

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.      Book Trailer

Marissa Mayer. Cinder, Scarlett. Lunar Chronicles series. (Only one can count)

Cinder, a gifted mechanic and a cyborg with a mysterious past, is blamed by her stepmother for her stepsister's illness while a deadly plague decimates the population of New Beijing, but when Cinder's life gets intertwined with Prince Kai's, she finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle.     Book Trailer

Annabel Monaghan. A Girl Named Digit.

After identifying a terrorist plot, a brilliant seventeen-year-old girl from Santa Monica, California, gets involved with the young FBI agent who is trying to ensure her safety.     Book Trailer

Andy Mulligan. Trash.

A group of fourteen-year-old boys, who make a living picking garbage from the outskirts of a large city, finds something special and mysterious that brings terrifying consequences.     Book Trailer

Jim Murphy. Truce: the Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting.
Tells the story of the December 25, 1914, truce between German and British soldiers as they laid down their weapons and met in No Man's Land to celebrate Christmas.     Book Trailer

Jennifer A. Nielsen. The False Prince, The Runaway King. Ascendance series (only one can count)

In the country of Carthya, a devious nobleman engages four orphans in a brutal competition to be selected to impersonate the king's long-missing son in an effort to avoid a civil war.     Book Trailer

Gary Paulsen. Harris and Me: a Summer Remembered.


Sent to live with relatives on their farm because of his unhappy home life, an eleven-year-old city boy meets his distant cousin, Harris, and is given an introduction to a whole new world.     Book Trailer

Laura Amy Schlitz. A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: a Melodrama.

In the early twentieth century, young orphan Maud Flynn hopes to finally be loved when she is adopted by the elderly Hawthorne sisters, but she is instead roped into the family's crooked seance business.    

Arthur G. Slade. The Hunchback Assignments; The Dark Deeps, Empire of Ruins, Island of Doom. (The Hunchback Assignments series) (only one can count)

In Victorian London, fourteen-year-old Modo, a shape-changing hunchback, becomes a secret agent for the Permanent Association, which strives to protect the world from the evil machinations of the Clockwork Guild.     Book Trailer

Jerry Spinelli. Hokey Pokey.

Ever since they were Snotsippers, Jack and the girl have fought, until one day she steals his bike and as he and the Amigos try to recover it, Jack realizes that he is growing up and must eventually leave the "goodlands and badlands of Hokey Pokey."    

Rebecca Stead. When You Reach Me. Newbery Award Winner

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.     Book Trailer

Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island.
While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of an inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.     Book Trailer