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All Middle School students are required to read during the summer. Incoming eighth graders must read Rebecca. Each student must select two additional books from a list of recommendations. We have given you a description of the books, and if you have any questions, please stop by the library to see us! Enjoy!
Click here for a summer reading letter from Mr. Robinson, coordinator of Middle School English.
For a printable list of books, click here.
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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. A shy young woman is the nameless heroine of this intrigue. Why would wealthy widower Maxim deWinter marry such an inexperienced ingénue only 8 months after the tragic death of his beautiful, accomplished first wife, Rebecca? The new mistress of Manderley is caught up in a tale of drama, mystery, love, and unforgettable characters. |
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Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. From an impoverished childhood and adolescence in Limerick, Ireland, author Frank McCourt recalls his life with both realism and poignancy. In spite of the misery of his family’s circumstances, humor and a generous spirit of love dominate this family history. |
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Leap into Darkness by Leo Bretholz. Young Leo Bretholz survived the Holocaust by escaping from the Nazis (and others) not once, but seven times during his almost seven-year ordeal crisscrossing war-torn Europe. He leaped from trains, outran police, and hid in attics, cellars, anywhere that offered a few more seconds of safety. First he swam the River Sauer at the German-Belgian border. Later he climbed the Alps on feet so battered they froze to his socks—only to be turned back at the Swiss border. He crawled out from under the barbed wire of a French holding camp, and hid in a village in the Pyrenees while gendarmes searched it. And in the dark hours of one November morning, he escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz. barnesandnoble.com |
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The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie. "The body of a beautiful blonde is found in the library of Gossington Hall. What the young woman was doing in the quiet village of St. Mary Mead is precisely what Jane Marple means to find out. Amid rumors of scandal, Miss Marple baits a clever trap to catch a ruthless killer." -- Book jacket |
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Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart. "Who was Merlin? Was the famed magician of Camelot and King Arthur's court really a sinister, all-powerful being from another world? Was he truly a Prince of Darkness? Or was he a man with the passions of other mortals? A man with unique intelligence and unusual gifts? Why was he so feared? How did he come by his occult powers? Why was the crystal cave so important to him? Mary Stewart's novel bring to vibrant life one of the world's great legends and sheds a fascinating new light on the turbulence and mystery of fifth-century Britain." -- Book cover |
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My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. This is the story of deeply religious Asher Lev, a young man with an overwhelming need to express his world and his emotions through his drawings and paintings. Asher struggles to master his gift without relinquishing his profound Judaism. |
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The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. from the publisher. |
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My Bridges of Hope by Livia Bitton-Jackson. After liberation from Auschwitz, fourteen-year-old Elli, her brother, and their mother attempt to rebuild their lives in Czechoslovakia. But it doesn't take long for Elli to realize that even though the war is over, anti-Semitism is not, so she and her family decide to escape to America along with thousands of other Jews. Little do they know what agonies and adventures await them still. From the Publisher |
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The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie. Mr. Hercule Poirot—you fancy yourself, don't you, at solving mysteries that are too difficult for our poor thick-headed British police? Let us see, Mr. Clever Poirot, just how clever you can be. Was the anonymous note a brilliant challenge or a crackpot hoax? The answer is as loud and clear as a woman's scream—precisely that of Alice Ascher, a shopkeeper in Andover bludgeoned to death on the job. Next to her corpse, a clue that's as simple as ABC. Alphabetically speaking, the master Belgian sleuth suspects it's now a matter of one down, twenty-five to go... from the publisher. |
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Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton. Rusty-James knows he is a tough teen, but he wants to be even tougher, just like his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy. He wants to stay calm and laugh when things get dangerous, to be the strongest streetfighter and the most respected guy this side of the river. from the publisher. |
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That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton. "Byron, who tells the story...feels Mark is his brother. But when he sees the effect of drugs on a gentle, friendly, young boy and discovers that Mark is a pusher, he calls the police. He hates himself for the betrayal of his friend but he's been a tough kid on the fringe of delinquency and he's aware of what happens beyond the fringe."--Saturday Review. An ALA Notable Children's Book, An ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults. |
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Even After All This Time: A Story of Love, Revolution, and Leaving Iran by Afschineh Latifi, with Pablo F. Fenjves. "In February 1979, when Afschineh Latifi was just ten years old, her father, a colonel under the Shah of Iran, was imprisoned by Khomeini's soldiers. Afschineh and her three siblings were left in the care of their mother, who did everything in her power to free her husband from jail, and who struggled to survive in a newly fundamentalist society that was openly hostile to women. In the torturous weeks and months that followed, Mrs. Latifi and her husband communicated by writing notes to each other on tiny squares of paper, and bribing the guards to pass them back and forth.In late May, Colonel Latifi was executed, shot with little fanfare on a prison rooftop, and the story begins. Fearing for the safety of her daughters, Mrs. Latifi made a heartrending decision: She sent Afschineh and her sister, Afsaneh, abroad, knowing it might be years before she embraced them again - if ever." Even After All This Time is the story of a self-made man and the schoolteacher with whom he fell in love, of a family torn apart by war and violence, and of the two little girls who found themselves on their own in America, forced to become strong young women before they even had a childhood. from the publisher. |
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If I Should Die Before I Wake by Han Nolan. Hilary hates Jews. As part of a neo-Nazi gang in her town, she's finally found a sense of belonging. But when she's critically injured in an accident, everything changes. Somehow, in her mind, she has become Chana, a Jewish girl fighting for her own life in the ghettos and concentration camps of World War II. From the Publisher |
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Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.
But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever. From the Publisher |
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Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen. It is 1968, the dawn of the age of ethnicity: African Americans are turning Chinese, Jews are turning black, and though some nice Chinese girls are turning more Chinese, teenaged Mona Chang is turning Jewish, much to her parents' chagrin. The Chang family has just moved to posh Scarshill, New York, where the rhododendrons are as big as the Chang family's old bathroom, and no one trims the forsythia into little can shapes. This takes some getting used to, especially since there's also a new social landscape, with a hot line, a mystery caller, and a Temple Youth Group full of radical ideas. Mona quickly bleaches her bell-bottoms; then it's off with her friends to reform race relations. They find a cause in Alfred, the handsome black number-two cook at Mona's parents' pancake house, and pretty soon there is a mansion hideout with an underground railroad and a utopia called Camp Gugelstein. Certain love affairs run into trouble, though. And by the end, for better or for worse, unforeseen truths of contemporary America have been memorably revealed From the Publisher. |
