Lake Elementary Suggested 4th Grade Summer Reading
Dear Lion Families, We encourage students to choose at least one of the following books to read over the summer. We have selected books that will be interesting for the students and are on the appropriate reading level. This is a great way to get started on your AR points for the next school year! The books in this list are ordered from easiest to more difficult.
BEEZUS AND RAMONA: Beverly Cleary Nine-year-old Beezus is much too grown up to hang out with her little sister, Ramona, who does embarrassingly babyish things like wearing paper bunny ears and dragging around an imaginary pet lizard on a string. Beezus tries to be patient, but Ramona is impossible! This story is more than 50 years old, but today’s kids will still crack up when Ramona powders her nose with a marshmallow and takes a single bite out of every apple in the house. And they’ll sympathize with Beezus, who learns that while she’ll always love her attention-getting little sister, that doesn’t mean she always has like her.
THE MISADVENTURES OF MAUDE MARCH: Audrey Couloumbis Eleven-year-old Sallie March is a whip-smart tomboy and voracious reader of Western adventure novels. When she and her sister Maude escape their self-serving guardians for the wilds of the frontier, they begin an adventure the likes of which Sallie has only read about. This time however, the "wanted woman" isn’t a dime- novel villain, it’s Sallie’s very own sister! What follows is not the lies the papers printed, but the honest-to-goodness truth of how two sisters went from being orphans to being outlaws—and lived to tell the tale!
HOMESICK: Jean Fritz Celebrated children’s author Jean Fritz turns her eye on her own childhood. Born in China of American parents, young Jean feels torn between her homesickness for the America of her grandmother’s letters and the devout love she feels for the Chinese people and their culture.Family photographs and illustrations by Margot Tomes show us the real people behind Jean's vivid and unforgettable stories--memories of picnics on the Great Wall, pranks, holidays in the foreign compound, rebellious moments at her British school. close ties to Chinese friends, and how it felt to be called a "foreign devil" and spat upon in the streets of a turbulent China on the eve of revolution. When her family embarks upon its long journey home, Jean is thrilled, but she wonders: When she arrives in America at last, will she fit in after growing up on "the wrong side of the world?"
SHILOH: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Marty will do anything to save his new friend Shiloh in this Newbery Medal–winning novel from Phillis Reynolds Naylor. When Marty Preston comes across a young beagle in the hills behind his home, it's love at first sight—and also big trouble. It turns out the dog, which Marty names Shiloh, belongs to Judd Travers, who drinks too much and has a gun—and abuses his dogs. So when Shiloh runs away from Judd to Marty, Marty just has to hide him and protect him from Judd. But Marty's secret becomes too big for him to keep to himself, and it exposes his entire family to Judd's anger. How far will Marty have to go to make Shiloh his?