6th Grade: Find Your Battle Books in the Catalog!

6th Grade

The Extraordinary Adventures of Aldfred Kropp by Rick Yancy - Through a series of dangerous and violent misadventures, teenage loser Alfred Kropp rescues King Arthur’s legendary sword Excalibur from forces of evil.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - When eleven-year-old Gregor and his two-year-old sister are pulled into a strange underground world, they trigger and epic battle involving men, bats, rats, cockroaches, and spiders while on a quest foretold by ancient prophecy.

Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby - When thirteen-year-old Joey Willis, deaf since the age of six, meets Dr. Charles Mansell and his chimpanzee Sukari, who uses sign language, her world blooms with possibilities, but that of the chimp begins to narrow.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke - Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can “read” fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.

Listen! by Stephanie Tolan - During her solitary convalescence from a crippling accident, twelve-year-old Charley finds a wild dog, and the arduous process of training him leads her to explore her feelings about her mother’s death two years earlier.

The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale - Bobby Pendragon is a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy. He has a family, a home, and even Marley, his beloved dog. But there is something very special about Bobby. He is going to save the world. Before he can object, he is swept off to an alternate dimension known as Denduron, a territory inhabited by strange beings, ruled by a magical tyrant, and plagued by dangerous revolution.

The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh - After fourteen-year-old classics prodigy Jack Peru has a near fatal accident he meets Euri, a young ghost who introduces him to New York’s Underworld, where those who died in New York reside until they are ready to move on, and Jack vows to find his dead mother there.

Once Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris - A young man with a mysterious past and a penchant for inventing things leaves the troll who raised him, meets an unhappy princess he has loved from afar, and discovers a plot against her and her father.

Rules by Cynthia Lord - Frustrated by her life with an autistic brother, twelve-year-old Catherine longs for a normal existence but her world is further complicated by a friendship with a young paraplegic.

Shackleton’s Stowaway by Victoria McKernan - A fictionalized account of the adventures of eighteen-year-old Perce Blackborow, who stowed away for the 1914 Shackleton Antarctic expedition and, after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice, endured many hardships, including the loss of the toes of his left foot to frostbite, during the newly two-year journey across the sea and ice.

7th & 8th Grade: Find Your Battle Books in the Catalog

7th & 8th Grade

Alphabet of Dreams by Susan Fletcher - Fourteen-year-old Mitra, of royal Persian lineage, and her five-year-old brother Babak, whose dreams foretell the future, flee for their lives in the company of the magus Melchoir and two other Zoroastrian priests, traveling through Persia as they follow star signs leading to a new-born king in Bethlehem.

Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez - In the early 1960’s in the Dominican Republic, 12-year-old Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.

Day of Tears by Julius Lester - When gambling debts and greed enter into the Butler household, Pierce Butler decides to host a slave auction, breaking his promise not to sell Emma, his most-valued slave and the caretaker of his children–a decision that brings about unexpected consequences.

Dragon’s Keep by Janet Lee Carey - In 1145 AD, as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the 21st Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from people the dragon’s claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother’s dark secrets.

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick - When his younger brother is diagnosed with leukemia, thirteen-year-old Steven tries to deal with his school life, complicated emotions, and his desire to support his desire to support his family.
family.

Heat by Mike Lupica - Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches don’t believe he is only 12 years old and he has no parents to offer them proof.

Leonardo’s Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo da Vinci’s Servant by Christopher Grey - Fifteen-year-old Giacomo, servant to Leonardo da Vinci, helps his procrastinating master finish painting “The Last Supper” while also trying to find clues to his parentage and pursue his onw career as an artist in late fifteenth-century Milan.

Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer - Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family’s struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riodan - After learning that the father he never knew is Poseidon, the God of the Sea, Percy Jackson is transferred from boarding school to Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp for demigods, and becomes involved in a quest to stop a war between the gods.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve - In the distant future, when cities move about and consume smaller towns, a fifteen-year-old apprentice is pushed out of London by the man he most admires and must seek answers in perilous Out-Country, aided by one girl and the memory of
another.