Middle School Reads!

by David Barclay Moore Lexile:  650 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Lolly is angry that his brother Jermaine is dead.  The last time they spoke, they argued and now Lolly will never have the chance to talk to him again.  He deals with his anger by building.  Building with Legos.  When he is building, he can escape from all the feelings he is keeping bottled up inside.  His creations take over his apartment and soon spread to his after school program too.  The more Lolly builds, the better he feels, and in the process has made some new friends.  Lolly and his friends have some tough decisions to make.  Do they seek revenge on the person who killed Jermaine and join a gang for protection or do they try a different path that might get them farther in life than Jermaine?

by Lauren Wolk Lexile:  770 Genre:  Realistic Fiction, Mystery Crow has lived her entire life on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts with Osh, the only family she has ever known.  The story is that when she was just a few days old she washed ashore in a boat and Osh found her.  No one who where she came from so he decided to name her Crow and raise her as his daughter.  But the older Crow gets, the more questions she has.  Where did she come from?  Does she have another family somewhere who is also wondering what happened to her?  Osh agrees to help her investigate her past.  Neither one of them is prepared for all that they will find.

by Jason Reynolds Lexile:  710 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Patina, or Patty, is one of the fastest runners around.  She is a new member of the Defenders track team and she is ready to prove to everyone just how fast she can run.  Patty lives with her aunt and uncle because her father died and her mother has some serious medical issues.  Patty also has a younger sister that she feels responsible for.  It's a lot of pressure for a young runner and Patty is not sure that she will be able to hold up, but she knows one thing for sure, she is going to try her best, no matter what.

by Kenneth Oppel Lexile: 640 Genre:  Fantasy Steve has a new brother, but something isn't quite right with him.  He knows that his parents are very worried and there are lots of doctor appointments and visits to the hospital.  His parents don't want him to worry, but Steve wants to know what is going on.  He has been having strange dreams.  Dreams that involve talking wasps.  The queen wasp in his dream knows so much information about him that she seems real.  The queen is trying to talk him into agreeing to replace his sick brother with a healthy one that the wasps have secretly begun constructing in the nest attached to Steve's house.  Steve is struggling with figuring out what is real and what is fantasy.