Reading Recommendations
from Mrs. Nicodemo
Embedded Files
The Fort by Gordon Korman
The morning after Hurricane Leo rips through the town of Canaan, residents awaken to widespread destruction -- power outages, downed branches, uprooted trees, broken windows and damaged roofs. Four 8th grade friends -- Evan, Jason, Mitchell, and CJ -- meet to explore the devastation. The tight-knit group is dismayed to find that Evan has been forced (by his grandmother) to bring along Ricky, who is new to their town and school and doesn’t have any friends yet.
Ricky is the one to find the strange trap door (unearthed by the hurricane) that leads to an old, underground bomb shelter that hasn't ever been used. Inside, the boys find a completely untouched underground hideout, complete with electricity, food, and entertainment (in the form of videocassettes). The boys vow to keep the place a secret!
However, keeping that secret is tougher and tougher. Some trouble-making older kids keep snooping around. And what started out as a fun place to escape soon becomes a safe place for one of the kids who is trying to avoid an abusive stepdad. In order to save the shelter, the friends must keep its secret -- but in order to save themselves, they’re going to have to share their personal secrets and build the safest place they can.
Linked by Gordon Korman
Link, Michael, and Dana live in a quiet town. But it's woken up very quickly when someone sneaks into school and vandalizes it with a swastika.
Nobody can believe it. How could such a symbol of hate end up in the middle of their school? Who would do such a thing?
Because Michael was the first person to see it, he's the first suspect. Because Link is one of the most popular guys in school, everyone's looking to him to figure it out. And because Dana's the only Jewish girl in the whole town, everyone's treating her more like an outsider than ever.
The mystery deepens as more swastikas begin to appear. Some students decide to fight back and start a project to bring people together instead of dividing them further. The closer Link, Michael, and Dana get to the truth, the more the mystery deepens.
Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
Most trees are introverts at heart. So says Red, who is over 200 years old and should know. Not to mention that they have complicated relationships with humans. But this tree also understands the many animal friends who live IN the tree and the people who live near the tree--—not just seeing, but also telling the tales of young people coming to this country alone or with family. An Irish woman named Maeve is the first, and a young 10-year-old Muslim girl named Samar is the most recent. Red becomes the place where people leave wishes for generations; this includes both observing Samar’s longing wish as well as the hateful word that another young person carves into their bark as a protest to Samar’s family’s presence. (from Amazon)
The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The year is 1939 and Hitler is on the move. Ten-year-old Ada manages to slip out of her horrible living situation (think Harry Potter) with her six-year-old brother Jamie to join other London children who are being evacuated to the country. The children are promised that the families awaiting their arrival will care for them. Unfortunately, no one seems to want Ada and Jamie, and they are sent to live with Susan Smith, a single woman who neither has experience with children nor any desire to take care of them. Ada and Susan don't always get along, even though the living arrangement appears to be better than anyone thought. While their relationship builds amid hardship from the ensuing war, an unexpected event ultimately tests their bond of love.
I REALLY liked this book and so did Mrs. Deitle. And there's a sequel!
The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Spoiler alert for above novel!
When Ada’s clubfoot is surgically fixed at last, she knows for certain that she’s not what her mother said she was—damaged, deranged, crippled mentally as well as physically.
World War II rages on, and Ada and her brother, Jamie, move with their guardian, Susan, into a cottage with the iron-faced Lady Thorton and her daughter, Maggie. Life in the crowded home is tense. Then Ruth moves in. Ruth, a Jewish girl, from Germany. A German? Could Ruth be a spy?
As the fallout from war intensifies, calamity creeps closer, and life during wartime grows even more complicated. Who will Ada decide to be? How can she keep fighting? And who will she struggle to save?
This sequel to The War That Saved My Life is as good as the first one! Both books won lots of award.
You Go First by Erin Entrada Kelly
Twelve-year-old Charlotte Lockard and eleven-year-old Ben Boxer are separated by more than a thousand miles. On the surface, their lives seem really different—Charlotte lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while Ben is in the small town of Lanester, Louisiana. Charlotte wants to be a geologist and keeps a rock collection in her room. Ben is obsessed with Harry Potter, presidential history, and recycling. But the two have more in common than they think. They’re both highly gifted. They’re both experiencing family turmoil. And they both sit alone at lunch.
Over the course of a week, Charlotte and Ben—online friends connected only by a Scrabble game—will intersect in unexpected ways, as they struggle to navigate the turmoil of middle school.
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