This is a list of suggested summer reading. Most of these authors have written other books from which you may choose. In sixth grade you are required to read a minimum of six books over the summer.

The six books include:

Two of the following seven:

Write the author, title, and a brief summary of the plot for the two books you pick from the required list. For all the other books you read over the summer, please keep a log with author and title.

Adams, Richard

Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.

Alcott, Louisa May

Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.

Adventures in Jo March and her husband, Professor Bhaer's school for boys; a place of light, warmth, comfort and delights; where self-knowledge and self-control are acquired along with book learning.

Gypsy Rizka

Living alone in her wagon on the outskirts of a small town while waiting for her father’s return, Rizka, a gypsy and trickster, exposes the ridiculous foibles of some of the townspeople.

The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen

When Prince Jen volunteers to search for the legendary court of Tien-kuo, a mysterious old man chooses six gifts for him to bear in homage: a saddle, a sword, a paint box, a bowl, a kite, and a flute.

Armstrong, William Howard

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read with the help of the devoted dog, Sounder.

Avi

In Providence, Rhode Island in 1848 Edgar Allen Poe reluctantly investigates the problems of eleven-year-old Edmund, whose family has mysteriously disappeared and whose story suggests a new Poe tale with a ghastly final twist.

Nothing But the Truth

A ninth-grader is suspended for humming "The Star-Spangled Banner" during homeroom and finds himself the focus of a national news story.

Babbitt, Natalie

When eleven-year-old Jenny goes to stay with her widowed grandmother who lives by the seaside, she learns a great deal about the nature of love and the ways of the sea.

Bagnold, Enid

A fourteen-year-old English girl wins a horse in a raffle, trains it and rides it in the Grand National steeplechase.

Angela and Diabola

Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbertson-Jones are surprised when their expected baby turns out to be twin girls and distressed when they find that one of them is perfectly good and the other perfectly evil.

Anna of Byzantium

Destined to be empress of the Byzantine Empire, Anna Commena finds her future profoundly altered in a power struggle over the succession.

Sticks

With the help of his grandmother and his dead father's best friend, a math genius, Mickey prepares to compete in the most important pool championship of his life, despite his mother's reservations.

Beagle, Peter

The last unicorn's quest for the rest of her fellows takes her to the castle of evil King Haggard where she encounters the terrifying Red Bull and the heroic Prince Lir.

Shakespeare's Scribe

In a plague-ridden 1602 England, a fifteen-year-old orphan boy, who has become an apprentice actor, goes on the road with Shakespeare's troupe, and finds out more about his parents on the way.

Blume, Judy

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private god.

Boyd, Candy Dawson

School has just started and Joey Davis has problems. He has to deal with a teacher who doesn't like him, a class bully, and a new stepfather who hopes for Joey's help in launching his contracting business.

Brooks, Bruce

After his mother divorces his father and remarries, Asa's sharp intellect and capacity for forgiveness help him deal with the instabilities of his new world.

Spying on Miss Muller

Just before World War II, Jessie and her friends at a boarding school in Belfast wonder if their teacher, Miss Muller, is a Nazi spy.

Bingo Brown's Guide to Romance

Bingo Brown's work on his definitive "Guide to Romance" hits a snag when his long-distance girl friend, Melissa, returns unexpectedly from Oklahoma.

A teen-age girl gains new insight into herself and her family when her mentally retarded brother gets lost.

Carroll, Lewis

A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical and amusing characters.

Behind the Attic Wall

In the bleak, forbidding house of her great-aunts, neglected twelve-year-old, orphan Maggie hears ghostly voices and finds magic that awakens in her the capacity to love and be loved.

A Dusk of Demons

In a future world where civilization has collapsed, Ben sets out on a journey to discover his birthright, and meets members of a technologically advanced remnant, who use machines to foster belief in Demons among the people of Ben's homeland.

Thirteen-year-old Luke has no reason to suspect that anything will change in the primitive society of the future in which he lives.

Conly, Jane Leslie

Timothy Frisby, a field mouse teams up with Rasco as together they try to prevent the destruction of a secret community of rats that can read and write.

Cooper, Susan

Three children on a holiday in Cornwall find an ancient manuscript, which sends them on a dangerous quest for a grail that would reveal the true story of King Arthur.

On his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers he is the last of the Old Ones, destined to seek the six magical signs that will enable the Old Ones to triumph over the evil forces of the Dark.

King of Shadows

A young actor travels back in time to 1599 and performs at the Globe Theater alongside Shakespeare himself.

Cormier, Robert

A high-school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

Walk Two Moons

Salamanca Tree Hiddle travels from Ohio to Idaho with her eccentric grandparents. She traces her mother's steps on a similar journey from which she hasn't returned.

The Wanderer

Despite family misgivings all around Sophie is determined to join her three uncles and two (boy) cousins on their transatlantic sail from Connecticut to England.

The Watsons Go to Burmingham

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African-American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

The Midwife's Apprentice

Brat, a homeless waif in fourteenth century England, becomes a midwife's apprentice, a person with a name and place in the world.

Young Joan

This novel tells about the everyday life of a simple farm girl in medieval France before she became the legendary Joan of Arc.

Dickens, Charles

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

After a terrible accident a young girl wakes up to discover that she has been given the body of a chimpanzee.

Doyle, A. Conan

Sherlock Holmes and Watson must solve a mystery involving a supernatural hound and a family curse.

So You Want to Be a Wizard

When they embark on a mission to locate an ancient book that holds the key to preserving the universe, Nita Calahan and her pal Kit discover an eerie alternate Manhattan populated with eating helicopters, wolf like creatures, and a dragon.

The Breadwinner

Because the Taliban rulers of Kabul, Afghanistan impose strict limitations on women's freedom and behavior, eleven-year-old Parvana must disguise herself as a boy so that her family can survive after her father's arrest.

Ellis, Sarah

Out of the Blue

After discovering that she has a twenty-four-year-old half sister, twelve-year-old Megan finds the well-defined edges of her life disappearing into confusion.

The Ear, the Eye and the Arm

It is 2194 in Zimbabwe. Tendai and his younger sister and brother have been kidnapped by the Fist and Knife and put to work in a one-time toxic waste dump mining plastic. It is there that the mutant Ear, Eye, and Arm attempt to rescue them.

A homeless boy finds he must fend for himself when his father fails to return one day.

The Abracadabra Kid

Fleischman tells how he worked his way from boy magician to Hollywood scriptwriter to award-winning writer. His experiences and his dozen tips all combine to provide useful and inspiring fodder for aspiring young writers.

The 13th Floor ghost

Newly orphaned Buddy Stebbins stumbles onto the 13th floor of a shabby old building and finds himself transported aboard a leaking pirate ship in a howling storm-300 years in the past! He eventually finds himself in New England where his ancestor, ten-year-old Abigail, is about to be hanged as a witch.

Forbes, Esther

After injuring his hand, a silversmith's apprentice in Boston becomes a messenger for the Sons of Liberty in the days before the American Revolution.

One-Eyed Cat

An eleven-year-old shoots a stray cat with his new air rifle, subsequently suffers from guilt, and eventually assumes responsibility for it.

Kidnapped by the crew of an Africa bound ship, a thirteen-year-old boy discovers to his horror that he is on a slaver, and his job is to play music for the exercise periods of the human cargo.

The Thief Lord

Two brothers having run away from an aunt who plans to adopt the younger one are sopught by a detective hired by their aunt, but they have found shelter with--and protection from--Venice's "Thief Lord."

Furlong, Monica

Juniper

Juniper is the pampered only child of King Mark in this fantasy set in ancient Cornwall. She is sent to study white magic with her harsh but wise godmother, magic that she must use to fight a terrible curse laid by her evil aunt.

Wise Child

Wise Child is adopted by Juniper, a humble sorceress of white magic. When Wise Child's real mother, a student in the black arts, shows up, she tempts Wise Child with a life of luxury.

When Joey Pigza meets his dad for the first time in years, he meets a grown-up version of his old out-of-control self. Carter Pigza is as wired as Joey used to be—before his stint in special ed and before he got his new meds.

Black Jack

Having unwittingly resurrected the gigantic Black Jack, a hanged criminal, Bartholomew becomes his unwilling companion.

The Strange Adventure of Adelaide Harris

Two 18^th century school boys experiment to see if a wolf will adopt a baby.

A Year with Butch and Spike

Seating Jasper, a straight A, by-the-book sixth grader between Spike and Butch, the Couture cousins, causes repercussions their teacher could never have imagined.

When JFK Was My Father

Feeling neglected by her father in Brazil and her mother in Washington, D.C., Georgia Hughes tries to cope with boarding school in Connecticut by imagining relationships with John Kennedy and Miss Beard, the ghost of the former head mistress of the school.

Reaching Dustin

When Carly Cameron picks Dustin Groat’s name for a class interview assignment, she feels like screaming. Almost everyone in the community fears the Groats—a gun-toting, law breaking clan that lives on the edge of town.

Stepping on the Cracks

In 1944, while her brother is overseas fighting in World War II, Margaret gets a new view of the school bully, Gordy, when she finds him hiding his own brother, an army deserter.

Hamilton, Virginia

As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.

Desperate, driven, harassed to the breaking point, Slake decides to go underground-into the sheltering depths of the New York City subway.

Hunt, Irene

During the Civil War, Jethro is left behind to take care of the farm when the men go off to fight.