Reading: Book Lists

Books for Middle-Schoolers

In Accelerated Reader Programs

 

Many schools have opted to put their reading program into the format of the Accelerated Reader system. Kids select a book from the school media center, read it, and if they can pass a short test on it afterwards, they gain points toward their classroom grade.

 

This is all well and good EXCEPT that kids tend to take the path of least resistance. Many will choose the easiest books available. Rather than undertaking some challenge to grow their vocabularies and literary appreciation, they simply rack up points using too-easy books of mediocre quality, and call it good.

 

Solution: parents can guide their students toward better quality with higher reading goals. For parents who want their children to read quality books, it might come in handy to have a list like the one below.

 

Here are some quality books, listed in categories to help you mix up the genres, that you can use to advise your child in selecting good books that will help him or her meet those A.R. point goals . . . and still spend a challenging middle-school year reading quality literature instead of glorified comic books, macabre horror stories, anti-Christian New Age mumbo-jumbo, and other selections of questionable lasting value to a young heart and mind.

 

Note that the higher the points per book, the more difficult the reading material is likely to be. You want to stretch your student, but not overwhelm him or her with books that are too difficult.

 

You can look up the reading grade level for each book on the Accelerated Reader lookup site, www.arbookfind.com. Your child's teacher should be able to tell you what your child's reading grade level is. Avoid bad mismatches in this way. Don't shy away from suggesting books that are reasonably ahead of or beneath your child's tested ability; with quality reading material, specifics don't matter as much as the storyline. You may be surprised at how your child's reading skill picks up if he or she regularly reads interesting books that are just a little ahead of his or her tested grade level.

 

Please check with your school's media specialist to make sure tests are available for any of these books on this list. They may not be available from the school. If tests aren't available, ask the media specialist if you can devise a simple test on your own and share results with the media specialist. If they won't allow that, you'll have to forego having your child read that particular book, if no credit is forthcoming.

 

If all tests are available, though, but the books are not, you can try the public library, or get used paperbacks from amazon.com, local garage sales, or families with grown-up kids. That way, your child's book selections aren't limited to whatever's on display in the media center, but choices open up to almost the whole world of books.

 

Most middle schools have a link on their websites with the A.R. titles that you can browse, or if they don't, your school's media specialist will delightedly supply you with the list. They love it when kids pick great books, too! And here are lots of them:

 

Adventure:

 

Call of the Wild, Jack London, 7 points

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George, 6 points

Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling, 9 points

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, 12 points

Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson, 14 points

Moby Dick, Herman Melville, 42 points

Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, 27 points

The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss, 12 points

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 18 points

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain, 12 points

 

Animals:

 

The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 19 points

Old Yeller, Fred Gipson, 5 points

Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls, 11 points

Rascal, Sterling North, 7 points

White Fang, Jack London, 13 points

The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 11 points

The Black Stallion series, Walter Farley, 7 (different points for different books in the series)

The Incredible Journey, Sheila Burnford, 5 points

All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot, 26 points

Justin Morgan Had a Horse and other horse stories, Marguerite Henry, 5 points

Black Beauty, Anna Sewell, 11 points

Gentle Ben, Walt Morey, 8 points

The Red Pony, John Steinbeck, 6 points

 

Fantasy:

 

The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, 6-9 points

The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkein, 16-29 points

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, 10 points

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 7 points

 

History:

 

The Light Beyond the Forest, Rosemary Sutcliff, 6 points

The Sword and the Circle, Rosemary Sutcliff, 15 points

The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King, T.H. White, 41 points

The Trumpeteer of Krakow, Eric Kelly, 10 points  

Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes, 13 points

Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 8 points (different points for different books in the series)

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, 8 points

Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt, 10 points

Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink, 8 points

Emily's Runaway Imagination, Beverly Cleary, 6 points

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi, 8 points

 

Humor:

 

Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren, 4 points

Homer Price, Robert McCloskey, 4 points

Maniac Magee, Jerry Spinelli, 5 points

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson, 2 points

 

Multicultural / Global:

 

Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell, 6 points

The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper, 18 points

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 15 points

The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox, 6 points

Amos Fortune, Free Man, Elizabeth Yates, 5 points

Junebug, Alicia Mead, 3 points

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis, 8 points

Moccasin Trail, Eloise McGraw, 12 points

Baseball in April and Other Stories, Gary Soto, 4 points

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas, 34 points

 

Mystery / Sci Fi:

 

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien, 8 points

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg, 5 points

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, 9 points

The Compound, S.A. Bodeen, 8 points

 

 

 

Understanding Differences:

 

The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White, 6 points

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery, 17 points

Heidi, Johanna Spyri, 16 points

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett, 13 points

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 4 points

A Separate Peace, John Knowles, 10 points

Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther, 8 points

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, 14 points

 

Holocaust:

 

Number the Stars, Lois Lowry, 4 points

The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom, 13 points

The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, 14 points

Letters From Rifka, Karen Hesse, 4 points