Ages 8-13
Did you know that middle grade books are the only genre wherein someone else picks the book for the reader?
It can be intimidating to choose books for our emerging middle grade readers, when we hope they enjoy them and develop a passion for reading.
We have put together a list of books that we think will be fun for your middle grade readers to dive into this summer!
Contemporary
Back Cover Blurb
Sisters Abby, Emma, and Ollie have gone from being best friends forever to mortal enemies.
Thanks to their months-long feud, they are sent to Camp Unplugged, a girls’ camp deep in the heart of the Idaho mountains where they will go “back to nature”—which means no cell phones, no internet, and no communicating with the outside world. For two whole weeks. During that time, they had better learn to get along again, their parents tell them. Or else.
The sisters don’t see any way they can ever forgive each other for what they’ve done, no matter how many hikes and campfire songs they’re forced to participate in. But then disaster strikes, and they find themselves lost and alone in the wilderness. They will have to outrun a raging wildfire, make it through a turbulent river, escape bears and mountain lions and ticks. They don’t have training, or food, or enough supplies. All they have is each other.
And maybe, just maybe, it will be enough to survive.
Historical Fiction
Back Cover Blurb
Courage. Imagination. Unbeatable Determination.
The Kentucky frontier was a beautiful place, but it was also a dangerous one. Jemima Boone and John Gass often heard wolves howling, bears growling, and snakes slithering through the tall grasses. There was no store, no school, no doctor at Fort Boonesborough. The settlers were on their own to deal with whatever threats arose. On a sunny summer day in July of 1776, the crisis they faced was a kidnapping . . .
Based on a true event.
A girl, a dare, and a mysterious creature.
Cecilia Blue LaRue is the only girl in her class, the only girl in her family of boys, and mad at her only friend. But the Honey Brooks moves in the neighborhood, and a rare blue lynx is spotted in the woods.
Celie sees adventure. Honey sees colors.
With a dare on the line, Celie and Honey focus on clues to finding the wildcat. The trouble is, finding the lynx among the hues and shadows of the forest is just as tricky as figuring out friendship–and knowing which secrets to tell, and which secrets to keep.
A vivid tale of friendship told through the lens of 1970s film photography
Fantasy
“To Pea, Love Mom”
…reads the necklace twelve-year-old Pea finds stuck high in the willow tree Mom had planted long ago on their ranch. Pea doesn’t know how it got there. If Mom were alive, she would ask her. But when Pea takes the necklace, the tree reveals a secret tunnel to Willowmere—the magical world built by her mom’s stories.
Pea crawls through the tunnel and realizes that Willowmere is crumbling. Frightening dangers lurk behind each tree, and magic is deteriorating into chaos. All she learns seems to contradict everything she knows.
But could Mom still be alive in Willowmere? If Pea can learn to trust her new friends, and harness the power of stories, she might just save the world.
But she’ll have to save herself first.
Speculative
All orphan Avery wants is a dog of her own…
…but her strict stand-in-mom Aunt Laurel absolutely forbids it with ridiculous excuse (dogs drool) after ridiculous excuse (dogs shed). Everything changes the summer before sixth grade. Avery and Aunt Laurel travel to Beaver Island, Lake Michigan—a place Avery’s only heard about in her aunt’s old nursery rhyme. The poem warns of mysterious Scorned Sliders who travel from a different dimension to wreak havoc on the island’s dogs.
But that’s just a silly story. Right?
When Avery finds a scruffy terrier hurt and abandoned at the island’s lighthouse, she jumps to his rescue. But the animal patrol officer he’s fleeing from has a chilling resemblance to the interdimensional villain from Aunt Laurel’s poem.
As Avery uncovers secrets about her past and a sinister plot against dogkind, she must decide where her loyalties lie. Should she break Aunt Laurel’s rules and save the canine species? Or is she doomed to a life as a dogless orphan?
Contemporary Adventure
Thunderation and Toad’s Toes!
How does one nearly thirteen-year-old Montana cowgirl get herself in so much trouble?
Maddie McDowell can’t take it anymore. Running away from boarding school seems like her only choice after feeling betrayed by her family and left out and left alone by everyone else. When the Monte Decker Rodeo Show pulls out of town on the morning train, Maddie intends to be on it, leaving all her hurt behind.
All, however, does not go as planned.
Mistaken for the rodeo’s newest star, who appears to be missing, Maddie must prove she’s got the talent, skills, and guts to make it. But it’s not that simple. There’s the rodeo queen who hates her on sight, the handsome cowboy who seems strangely familiar, a mysterious man in a bowler hat, and a sack full of stolen cash. Is someone trying to hurt her, or the missing cowgirl she’s impersonating?
Yep. Maddie is in deeper than a yearling calf in a sinkhole.
With all this trouble, Maddie must decide if the rodeo life is what she truly wants, or if there’s something else missing, something even bigger pulling her along—not counting that dog, of course.
We hope you find these books as engaging and fun as we do! Happy summer reading!