Middle School Reads!

by Thanhha Lai Lexile:  800 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Mai is looking forward to spending the summer with her friends at the beach when she finds out from her parents that (surprise!) she is going to Vietnam with her dad and grandmother.  Her grandfather disappeared many years ago and her grandmother has never had a full understanding of how his life ended.  Now a detective has found a guard that claims to have known her grandfather when he was captured as a prisoner.  It will be up to Mai to travel with her grandmother in a country she has never been to and whose language and culture she barely knows.  Mai is convinced that this will be her worst summer ever.

by Ashley Herring Blake Lexile:  740 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Ivy Aberdeen and her family just lost everything, except each other.  A tornado roared through their family home early one morning and now nothing is the same.  Ivy loves to express herself through her drawings and now even her notebook and special drawing brushes are gone.  But then Ivy starts to receive pages from her notebook in her locker at school.  Who has her personal drawings?  And who is the person that knows Ivy's most private secrets?  Life is so confusing for Ivy right now as her family tries to get back on their feet and as Ivy tries to figure out who she is and what her place in the world should be.

by John David Anderson Lexile:  750 Genre:  Realistic Fiction Life has just changed for the students at Branton Middle School.  Administration just announced that cell phones are now completely banned from the school.  The students decide this is very unfair and resort to using post it notes to communicate the information they previously did by texting.  For Wolf, Bench, Deedee and Frost, this poses some new challenges, but basically the foursome is continuing to survive middle school just fine.  Until a new girl, Rose, arrives at their school and decides to join them at their private lunch table.  It is clear that Rose is unlike anyone they have ever met before and are unprepared for what her addition to their group will mean.  At the same time, the post-it note craze is getting out of hand.  What will school administration do to reign the students back under control?  Nobody ever said that surviving middle school was easy...   ...

by Alan Gratz Lexile:  800 Genre:  Historical Fiction, Realistic Fiction Josef and his family are trying to escape the Nazis by traveling from Germany to Cuba in 1933.  Isabel and her family are trying to escape Castro by traveling from Cuba to the United States in 1994.  Mahmoud and his family are trying to escape the war in Syria and are traveling to Germany in 2105.  All 3 are refugees at different times in history and all 3 face overwhelming obstacles in their quests to find freedom.  From Germany in 1933 to Germany in 2015, this is the story of 3 families whose stories overlap and intersect in a surprising way.

by Lisa Bunker Lexile:  940 Genre: Science Fiction Felix is not your average middle schooler.  When he was 3, an accident happened that left him meshed together with an alien being.  Xyz lives inside of Felix and communicates with him through typing on the computer.  Felix doesn't remember life without xyz, but now doctors have determined that in order for one or both of them to survive, they will need to be separated.  Felix is getting nervous as the day for The Procedure approaches and if that wasn't enough, he is struggling with getting to know his mom's new boyfriend and figuring out new friendships at school.  What will life be like without xyz , if Felix survives?

by Jewell Parker Rhodes Lexile:  360 Genre:  Realistic Fiction/Fantasy Jerome was tired of being bullied so his friend Carlos brings a toy gun to school and scares them away.  Jerome is in awe of how powerful that toy gun made Carlos so when Carlos offers to loan it to him, Jerome accepts the offer.  Jerome decides to play with the toy gun in the vacant lot near his home.  He was just a boy, playing with a toy gun, until a police officer arrives on the scene and sees his interpretation of the scene - a young black man waving a real gun in the air.  In a matter of seconds, Jerome's life as he knew it is over because now he has become one of the ghost boys.

by Svetlana Chmakova Lexile:  360 Genre:  Realistic Fiction, Graphic Novel Jensen is struggling with the daily challenges of being a middle schooler.  He wants the bullies to stop bothering him and his friends to be nicer.  He thought he was part of the art club, but lately he is questioning whether or not the people in that club are treating him the way friends should.  He is thrilled when the newspaper club asks him to help out, but they seem to be giving him tasks that no one else wants to do.  Where does Jensen belong in the crazy world of Berrybrook Middle School?