Middle School Reading List

Summer Reading is intended to encourage reading.  Research shows that students’ reading abilities improve the more they read.  In order for our students to be well prepared for their future educational endeavors, it is necessary that they have a broad experience with works of literature that are from different time periods and from different themes.  A major part of being an educated person is to b well read.  FBA has a mandatory reading program through the regular school year and during the summer.

Middle School students are required to read three books over the summer.  Summer books should be a minimum of 150 pages.  Students must bring the three books they read over the summer to class upon their return to school in August.  Teachers will be assigning evaluation activities over these books during the first weeks of school.  Students should be familiar with characters, setting, and plot for the books they have read over the summer. 

Each grade level is assigned a novel, and the student must select both a biography and a third selection of their choice.  The student selections, however, must show literary merit and be at the level of their assigned curriculum.  Examples of appropriate works are listed below.  The student is not, however, limited solely to the titles listed below.  Appropriate grade level books, available at the FBA Book Fair, may also be used for the student selections.

Sixth Grade Required Title
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
by E. L. Konigsburg

Seventh Grade Required Title                 Eighth Grade Required Title
Holes                                                              Hound of the Baskervilles
by Louis Sachar                                            by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 
Biographies
John Adams – David McCullough
The Raven – Marquis James
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin – Benjamin Franklin
The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank
The Last Lecture – Randy Posch

Suggested Titles
Redwall – Brian Jacques (or any title in the series)
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Natural – Bernard Malamud
The Princess Bride – William Goldman
Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
White Fang or Call of the Wild – Jack London
Any Five Short Stores – Edgar Allen Poe
Billy Budd and Other Stories – Herman Melville
The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
Oliver Twist or Great Expectations – Charles Dickens