Rising eighth-grade students are required to read three books from the list below: one for fun, one from memories, and one from historical fiction. Students should “actively read” the novels and note important passages of characterization and plot development to prepare from writing assignments in August.
ALL READ ONE for FUN
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME, Mark Haddon. Christopher Boone is fifteen and autistic. He’s a math whiz and gets along with animals, but has a great deal of trouble getting along with people. Drawing on inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, he sets out to find the killer.
Memories Select ONE
LITTLE WOMEN, Louisa M. Alcott. The March family endures trials and tribulations while their father is involved in the Civil War.
GROWING UP, Russell Baker. These were depression years, and Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed. As is often the case, early hardships made the man.
PEACE LIKE A RIVER, Leif Enger. To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben “Rube” Land, the asthmatic 11-year-old boy at the center of Leif Enger’s remarkable first novel. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, in small-town Minnesota circa 1962.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE, Helen Keller. Rendered deaf and blind at 19 months by scarlet fever, she learned to read (in several languages) and even speak, eventually graduating with honors from Radcliff College in 1904.
Historical Fiction Select ONE
FEVER, 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson. Against the backdrop of 1793 Yellow Fever outbreak in Philadelphia, fourteen-year-old Matilda struggles to keep herself and those she loves alive.
CODE TALKER: A NOVEL ABOUT THE NAVAJO MARINES OF WORLD WAR TWO, Joseph Bruchac. After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay is recruited by the Marines to become a Code Talker, sending urgent messages during WW2 in his native tongue.
RIVER BETWEEN US, Peck, Richard. In this thoroughly researched novel, Peck masterfully describes the female Civil War experience, the subtle and not-too-subtle ways the country was changing, and the split in loyalty that separated towns, and even families.