1. In eighth grade you are expected to read a minimum of six books over the summer.

Everyone is expected to read

The Diary of Anne Frank, Ann Frank

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Alvarez, Julia

In the early 1960's in the Dominican Republic, twelve-year-old Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Speak

Having broken up an end-of-summer party by calling the police Melinda Sordino begins the school year as a social outcast.

Anderson, Matthew T.

Titus is an average teen of the future, complete with a computer chip implant--the "Feed"--that lets corporate marketers and government agencies broadcast directly into his brain. Then Titus meets Violet, an anti-Feed hacker with radical ideas.

Anthony, Piers

A Spell for Chameleon

Xanth was an enchanted land where every citizen had a special spell only he could cast except for Bink of North village who is sure he possesses no magic.

When Cynthia Centaur journeys to ask the Good Magician Humfrey a very personal question, she doesn't expect that she will be responsible for the future survival of Xanth itself.

Austen, Jane

Pride and Prejudice

A comedy of manners, detailing the romantic clash between an opinionated woman and her proud beau.

Go Tell it on the Mountain

Rules of the Road

Hired by Madeleine Gladstone, the president of a shoe company, to help prevent a corporate takeover, sixteen-year-old Jenna Boller embarks on an eye-opening adventure that teaches both of them the rules of the road.

Jane Eyre

After a grim and orphaned childhood, Jane becomes a governess in the household of the moody and mysterious Mr. Rochester.

Postcards from No Man's Land

Alternated between two stories--contemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacov visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his Engtlish grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experiences of British soldiers' attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation.

Childress, Alice

A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich

Everyone in Benji's family suffers when Benji turns to drugs.

Cards on the Table

One of four famous sleuths invited to a fatal bridge game, Hercule Poirot finds himself in the company of four additional players each of whom has gotten away with murder.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

This convoluted mystery involving blackmail, suicide, and violent death taxes even Hercule Poirot's "little gray cells."

Fire Bringer

In a Scotland beset by Norse invaders, the deer--the Herla--are fighting their own war against evil and waiting for a hero.

Coman, Carolyn

Many Stones

After her sister Laura is murdered in South Africa, Berry and her estranged father travel there to participate in the dedication of a memorial in her name.

Cooper, James Fenimore

The Last of the Mohicans

Hawkeye and his friend, Uncas, bravely face the changes and challenges brought about by the French and Indian War.

Driver's Ed

Three teenagers' lives are changed forever when the take a late night joy ride and thoughtlessly steal a stop sign from a dangerous intersection.

A fast-paced story set in a city hospital places two young volunteers at the center of life-and-death situations.

When a terrorist hijacks a camp bus full of kids, everyone involved becomes a victim, each confronted with unexpected ways to live--or die.

Trent, an ace interrogator from Vermont works to procure a confession from an introverted twelve-year-old accused of murdering his seven-year-old friend in Monument, Massachusetts.

Tales of the Unexpected

A collection of short stories in which the author reveals the horrific and grotesque happenings which may lurk beneath the ordinary events of everyday life.

Two Years Before the Mast

In 1834, a young man, recently of Harvard, signed on as a common seaman aboard the brig Pilgrim for the perilous voyage around Cape Horn to California. During the next two years he recorded the joys and hardships of a sailor's life in a daily journal.

Krik? Krak!

Nine stories of life in Haiti under dictatorships reveal the linkage of generations of Haitian women through the magical tradition of story telling.

Dreamland

After her older sister runs away, sixteen-year-old Caitlin decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant, and dangerous.

This Lullaby

Raised my a mother who's had five husbands, Remy believes in short-term, no commitment relationships until she meets Dexter, a rock band musician.

Doyle, Arthur Conan

A Study in Scarlet

Dr. Watson meets the brooding Holmes for the first time. Together they locate their now famous apartment at 221B Baker Street and find themselves in the midst of a case that spans two continents.

Great Expectations

After harsh early years, Pip, an orphan growing up in Victorian England, is given the means to become a gentleman by an unknown benefactor and learns that outward appearances can be deceiving.

The Man in the Iron Mask

The concluding story of the swashbuckling Musketeers: Aramis, Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan.

House of the Scorpion

Matt's last name is Alacran which means he belongs to a powerful family that controls the drug farms between the U.S. and the former Mexico. But Matt's different. He's a clone in a world filled with dangers for his kind.

Fowles, John

A timid young man tries to add a beautiful young woman to his collection by kidnapping her.

Cold Mountain

The tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of war, and journeys back home to his pre-war sweetheart, Ada.

Troy

The last weeks of the Trojan War told from the point of view of the women of Troy when women are sick of tending the wounded, men are tired of the fighting, and bored gods and goddesses find ways to stir things up.

Gilbert, Barbara Snow

Broken Chords

While practicing relentlessly for an important competition, seventeen-year-old Clara wonders if she had the dedication to pursue a career as a concert pianist.

Guest, Judith

The Maltese Falcon

Nick and Nora Charles search for a wealthy inventor who has become a prime suspect in a notorious New York City murder case.

Mr. Was

After his dying grandfather tries to strangle him, Jack Lund discovers a door that leads him fifty years into the past and involves him in events that determine his own future.

Stowaway A fictionalized journal relates the experiences of a young stowaway from 1768 to 1771 aboard the Endeavor which sailed around the world under Captain James Cook.

Hobbs, Valerie

Sonny's War

In the late 1960's fourteen-year-old Corin's life is greatly changed by the sudden death of her father and her brother's tour of duty in Vietnam.

Hoffman, Alice

Longing to escape the Massachusetts hometown that has always blamed their family for whatever goes wrong, Gillian and Sally respectively marry and run away but are drawn back by a seemingly magical force.

Jack

Fifteen-year-old Jack's confused feelings for his father, who left him and his mother four years earlier, are further complicated when he finds that his father is gay.

Farewell to Manzanar

The true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention during World War II.

Howe, James

Watcher

As she sits watching a seemingly perfect family and a handsome lifeguard on the beach, a lonely, troubled girl projects herself into the fantasy lives she has created for them.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

Abandoned as a child and a bitter veteran of too many foster homes, Sara expects the worst when she is sent to the Huddleston farm, but somehow she discovers that it is not easy to escape from people you love.

Deliver Us From Evie

Parr Burrman and his family face some difficult times when word spreads through their rural Missouri town that his older sister is a lesbian, and she leaves the family farm to live with the daughter of the town's banker.

A young man from the wrong side of the tracks, John Fell, investigates spies, drug dealers, murders, and a decade old disappearance case all of which are connected to his exclusive prep school's mysterious club, Sevens.

Kim, Helen

On a six-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland wanders off by herself. When she tries to catch up with her mother and brother by attempting a shortcut, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.

A series of poetic journal entries from 15 students chronicles the sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and ultimately chilling lives of fictional high school students in contemporary America.

A portrait of Chris McCandless chronicles his decision to withdraw from society and adopt the persona of Alexander Supertramp, offering insights into his belief about the wilderness and his tragic death in the Alaskan wilds.

The Ghost Boy

An albino 14-year-old, Harold, is an outcast in his dead-end town. When he runs away to join a small struggling circus he come to see beneath the surface of things.

For Joanna and her family the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true, for behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret.

Lipsyte, Robert

The Contender

How Green Was My Valley

Huw Morgan recalls his childhood as one of a large family whose livelihood depended on mining in a small village in South Wales.

Lynch, Chris

Will lives with his grandparents and attends a school that the locals call Hopeless High, a vocational school for kids who have problems. There, instead of learning to become a pilot, which is his dream, Will is enrolled in a woodworking program.

Iceman

When overweight, thirteen-year-old Elvin Bishop is sent to camp at St. Paul's Seminary Retreat Center he and his two best friends are forced to try out various sports in order to find out where they belong.

Malamud, Bernard

The Natural

The wildly comic and ultimately heartbreaking adventures of Roy Hobbs, the mythical baseball prodigy.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The absorbing personal story of Malcolm X's rise from hoodlum, dope peddler and ex-convict to dynamic leader of the black revolution.

Checkers

Speaking from the inside of a mental hospital, a teenage girl recounts the tremendous media pressure that preceded the breaking scandal of her father's unethical business dealings.

Tomorrow, When the War Began

Seven Australian teenagers return from a camping trip in the bush to find that their country has been invaded and they must hide to stay alive.

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida

For Manuel Hernandez, the year leading up to his test of courage, his initiation into a gang, is a time filled with the pain and tension, awkwardness, and excitement of growing up in a mixed-up, crazy world.

The Last Mission

In 1944, Jack Raab, a 15-year-old who dreams of being a hero, lies his way into the U.S. Air Force. From their base in England, Jack and his crew fly 24 treacherous bombing missions over occupied Europe. Hitler is near defeat, when Jack is shot down behind enemy lines and taken to a German POW camp.

After the Rain

It takes a dying old man, her grandfather, to show Rachel she has very special abilities. With love and compassion she the reaches the heart of an old tyrant and comes to a better understanding of her family, her friends and herself.

Missing Pieces

Jessie Wells seeks a missing part of her life and self. Her quest centers on her father who abandoned her years ago.

Cut

When she arrives at Sea Pines, Callie is self-destructive, unresponsive and withdrawn. Her parents have placed her in this residential treatment facility because she cuts herself.

A Knot in the Grain

A mute healer who meets the one man who can hear her thoughts, an abandoned princess, and a modern girl who finds the knot in the grain which leads her on her own magical mission are a few of the characters in these short stories.

The infant princess, Briar Rose, is cursed on her name day by Pernicia, an evil fairy, and then whisked away by a young fairy to be raised in a remote part of a magical country, unaware of her real identity and hidden from Pernicia's vengeful powers.

Mohr, Nicholasa

El Bronx Remembered

In the South Bronx anything can happen. A migrant from Puerto Rico can become somebody on the mainland, pursue the American Dream -- and maybe even make it come true.

Never Cry Wolf

The true story of a brash young scientist's incredible adventures with a family of wolves in the Canadian wilderness.

Night Flying

As the time for her solo flight on the sixteenth birthday approaches, Georgia begins to question the course of her life and her relationships with the other women in her unusual family.

Myers, Walter Dean

Fallen Angels

A gripping war novel, tough and true, that shows the price five men pay for their tour of duty in Vietnam.

Monster

While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

The Haunting

Despite claims that Graymoss mansion is haunted, Lia’s mother is determined to turn it into a foster home for unwanted children.

Mutiny on the Bounty

The historic voyage from England to Tahiti in 1788-89 that ended in Fletcher Christian's mutiny against Captain Bligh.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Many of the French nobility have been condemned to death by guillotine in the Revolution of 1792. The last hope for escape lies with the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.

1984

Big Brother rules a collectivist society where Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth, joins the underground, and has a forbidden love affair.

Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom

Abducted from his home by bandits, fifteen-year-old Wang Lee is rescued from slavery by a mysterious girl who introduces him to the Taiping Tienkuo, a secret society partly based on Christian principles and dedicated to the overthrow of the Manchu government.

The Graduation of Jake Moon

Fourteen-year-old Jake recalls how he has spend the last four years of his life watching his grandfather descent slowly but surely into the horrors of Alzheimer's disease.

Paulsen, Gary

Nightjohn

Sarny, a twelve-year-old slave risks terrible punishment as Nightjohn, an adult slave, teaches her how to read.

Trav, Kate, and Buck make up a trio during their freshman year in high school but their special friendship may not be enough to save Trav as he pressures himself relentlessly to succeed in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of his parents and the world.

The Chosen

The odyssey of two young men journeying from boyhood to manhood, set against the background of the conflicts and traditions of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews.

Zebra and Other Stories

Six stories in which children face moments of crisis or grief and see themselves, their parents, and their world around them anew.

Halinka

World War II has been over for seven years, but for 12-year old Halinka, resident of a children’s home in Germany for neglected or abused girls, it’s still all about survival.

His Dark Materials Trilogy

Follows the lives of two special children, Lyra and Will as they search for Dust which has the power to dissolve universes and a magical knife.

In London in 1881, twenty-four-year-old Sally finds her young daughter and her possessions assailed by an unknown enemy while a shadowy figure known as the Tzaddik involves her in his plot to defraud and exploit the hordes of Jewish immigrants pouring into the country.

Galex-Arena

Peter, Joella, and Lianne are forced onto a spaceship and taken to the planet Vexa where they are made to perform death-defying stunts for their alien captors.

When I Was Puerto Rican

The author shares her memories of her Puerto Rican childhood and her bewildering years of transition in New York City.

The Human Comedy

The story of an American family coping with World War II.

Tibet: Through the Red Box

A grown man reads through the diary of his father's travels in China and Tibet, written long ago and kept locked away for many years in a red box.

Oddballs

Covering early childhood through high school, these wickedly witty stories capture perfectly the sometimes excruciating, sometimes hysterical process of growing up.

Shiva’s Fire

Born during the worst storm ever seen by her small village in India, Parvati is both blessed and cursed by mysterious powers that confound her people.

Kidnapped

After being kidnapped by his villainous uncle, sixteen-year-old David Balfour escapes and becomes involved in the struggles of the Scottish highlanders against the English rule.

Dracula

The famous Gothic horror story of courageous people who set out to destroy vampires.

The Joy Luck Club

Life in China and America as seen by four mothers and their daughters.

Brat Farrar

Simon Ashby is about to turn twenty-one and inherit his family's small country estate. Enter Brat Farrar, who has been carefully schooled to impersonate Simon's twin brother, Patrick, long thought to be drowned although his body was never recovered.

Surviving the Applewhites

When Jake Semple is kicked out of yet another school, the Applewhites, an eccentric family of artists offer to let him live with them and attend their unstructured creative academy.

Tomlinson, Theresa

The Forest Wife

Mary, 15 years old and an orphan, must fell into Sherwood Forest to avoid an arranged marriage. There he life truly begins as part of a community of heroic outlaws.

Stuck in Neutral

Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from severe cerebral palsy and cannot function, relates his perceptions of his life, his family, and his condition especially as he believes his father is trying to kill him.

Twain, Mark

A young boy reaches manhood while fleeing down the Mississippi with Jim, a runaway slave.

In this funny but bitter novel, a young slave woman exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's.

In was a Sunday night in 1944, when Pearl's husband left their little row house in Baltimore, abandoning her to raise their three children alone. Now grown, they gather together again--with anger, hope, and a dazzling story to tell.

Ian Bedloe believes himself to be responsible for the death of his older brother so he drops out of college to help take care of the orphaned children.

Vande Velde, Vivian

Heir Apparent

While playing a total immersion virtual reality game of kings and intrigue, fourteen-year-old Geannine learns that demonstrators have damaged the equipment to which she is connected, and she must win the game quickly or be damaged herself.

Never Trust a Dead Man

Wrongly convicted of murder and punished by being sealed in the tomb with the dead man, seventeen-year-old Selwyn enlists the help of a witch and the resurrected victim to find the true killer.

Voigt, Cynthia

Elske

Thirteen-year-old Elske escapes certain death at the hands of the leaders of her barbaric society and later become handmaiden to a rebellious noblewoman whose rightful throne together they reclaim.

Wells, H.G.

The Invisible Man

Under the mask, the wig, the bandages, there is...empty space! Not a ghost, but a real man-a mad scientist who has discovered the secret of making himself invisible. Will it make him the most powerful person in the world, as he has dreamed, or prove a curse beyond his wildest nightmares?

Blitzcat

During World War II a black cat journeys all across war-ravaged England in an effort to track down her beloved master.

The Once and Future King

The story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

When 13-year-old Lyric, her older sister Summer and their father move from rural Virginia to Flint, Michigan, Summer (who has always been a little odd) makes a swift and frightening slide into full-fledged schizophrenia.

Like Sisters on the Home Front

When Gayle gets into trouble with her boyfriend, her mother sends the street smart fourteen-year-old and her baby, Jose--down to Georgia to live with relatives.

Dawn

A young survivor of Nazism faces an unbearable moral dilemma when ordered to execute a British hostage in reprisal for the murder of a Palestinian prisoner.

Probably Still Nick Swanson

Sixteen-year-old, learning-disabled Nick struggles to endure a life in which other kids make fun of him, he has to take special classes, his date for the prom makes an excuse not to go with him, and he is haunted by the memory of an older sister who is drowned while he was watching.

At 15, La Vaughn already knows that life is hard and that getting ahead takes a strong mind and an even stronger will. Surrounded by poverty and violence, she strives every day not to be just an inner-city statistic.

Native Son

Caught up by forces of racism he can't understand or control, Bigger Thomas turns to violence.

Some of the Kinder Planets

Cluny wants to publish a magazine for people with funny names, while Fletcher pastes the names of all the places he wants to visit on his body in this collection of nine wacky short stories.

Stephen Fair

Recurrent nightmares and a strong feeling that his mother is hiding something haunt teenager, Stephen Fair.