Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations
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12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations Robin Mettenbrink <[email protected]> Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations 1 message Book Riot Kids <[email protected]> Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 6:31 AM To: [email protected] DEC 03, 2017 Hi Kid Lit friends! It’s holiday season, which means I am making a list of all the books I need to buy for the kids in my life. There have been so many great books out in 2017, so I thought I’d do a recommendation list of this year’s books, grouped based on themes from classic children’s books. (All book descriptions from Goodreads.) Make your feed all the more bookish by following Book Riot on Instagram. Check us out here, or just click the image below: https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=55cdb9a949&jsver=oadh6Bq9AQ8.en.&view=pt&search=inbox&th=1601c5bfdbda3648&siml=1601c5bfdbda3648 1/35 12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations If you liked A Wrinkle in Time, try… The Dam Keeper by Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi Life in Sunrise Valley is tranquil, but beyond its borders lies certain death. A dangerous black fog looms outside the village, but its inhabitants are kept safe by an ingenious machine known as the dam. Pig’s father built the dam and taught him how to maintain it. And then this brilliant inventor did the unthinkable: he walked into the fog and was never seen again. Zinnia and the Bees by Danielle Davis A colony of honeybees mistakes seventhgrader Zinnia’s hair for a hive ― and that’s the least of her problems. While Zinnia’s classmates are celebrating the last day of seventh grade, she’s in the vice principal’s office, serving detention. Her offense? Harmlessly yarn bombing a statue of the school mascot. When Zinnia rushes home to commiserate with her older brother and best friend, Adam, she’s devastated to discover that he’s gone ― with no explanation. Zinnia’s day surely can’t get any worse . until a colony of honeybees inhabits her hive like hair! Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly In one day, four lives weave together in unexpected ways. Virgil https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=55cdb9a949&jsver=oadh6Bq9AQ8.en.&view=pt&search=inbox&th=1601c5bfdbda3648&siml=1601c5bfdbda3648 2/35 12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations Salinas is shy and kindhearted and feels out of place in his crazyaboutsports family. Valencia Somerset, who is deaf, is smart, brave, and secretly lonely, and she loves everything about nature. Kaori Tanaka is a selfproclaimed psychic, whose little sister, Gen, is always following her around. And Chet Bullens wishes the weird kids would just stop being so different so he can concentrate on basketball. They aren’t friends, at least not until Chet pulls a prank that traps Virgil and his pet guinea pig at the bottom of a well. This disaster leads Kaori, Gen, and Valencia on an epic quest to find missing Virgil. Through luck, smarts, bravery, and a little help from the universe, a rescue is performed, a bully is put in his place, and friendship blooms. The Glass Town Game by Cartherynne M. Valente Inside a small Yorkshire parsonage, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë have invented a game called Glass Town, where their toy soldiers fight Napoleon and no one dies. This make believe land helps the four escape from a harsh reality: Charlotte and Emily are being sent away to a dangerous boarding school, a school they might not return from. But on this Beastliest Day, the day Anne and Branwell walk their sisters to the train station, something incredible happens: the train whisks them all away to a real Glass Town, and the children trade the moors for a wonderland all their own. https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=55cdb9a949&jsver=oadh6Bq9AQ8.en.&view=pt&search=inbox&th=1601c5bfdbda3648&siml=1601c5bfdbda3648 3/35 12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations If you liked Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, try… Refugee by Alan Gratz Josef is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world . Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America . Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe . All three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar In 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi asks Indians to give one family member to the freedom movement, tenyearold Anjali is devastated to think of her father risking his life for the freedom struggle. But it turns out he isn’t the one joining. Anjali’s mother is. And with this change comes many more adjustments designed to improve their country and use “ahimsa”–nonviolent resistance–to stand up to the British government. When Anjali’s mother is jailed, Anjali must step out of her comfort zone to take over her mother’s work, ensuring that her little part of the independence movement is completed. Wishtree by Katharine Applegate Red is an oak tree who is many rings old. Red is the neighborhood “wishtree”―people write their wishes on pieces of cloth and tie them to Red’s branches. Along with a crow named Bongo and other animals who seek refuge in Red’s hollows, this wishtree watches over the neighborhood. https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=55cdb9a949&jsver=oadh6Bq9AQ8.en.&view=pt&search=inbox&th=1601c5bfdbda3648&siml=1601c5bfdbda3648 4/35 12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations You might say Red has seen it all. Until a new family moves in. Not everyone is welcoming, and Red’s experience as a wishtree is more important than ever. One Shadow on the Wall by Leah Henderson Elevenyearold Mor was used to hearing his father’s voice, even if no one else could since his father’s death. It was comforting. It was also a reminder that Mor had made a promise to his father before he passed: keep your sisters safe. Keep the family together. But almost as soon as they are orphaned, that promise seems impossible to keep. With an aunt from the big city ready to separate him and his sisters as soon as she arrives, and a gang of boys from a nearby village wanting everything he has—including his spirit—Mor is tested in ways he never imagined. Midnight Without a Moon by Linda Williams Jackson It’s Mississippi in the summer of 1955, and Rose Lee Carter can’t wait to move north. For now, she’s living with her sharecropper grandparents on a white man’s cotton plantation. Then, one town https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=55cdb9a949&jsver=oadh6Bq9AQ8.en.&view=pt&search=inbox&th=1601c5bfdbda3648&siml=1601c5bfdbda3648 5/35 12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations over, an African American boy, Emmett Till, is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. When Till’s murderers are unjustly acquitted, Rose realizes that the South needs a change and that she should be part of the movement. Linda Jackson’s moving debut seamlessly blends a fictional portrait of an African American family and factual events from a famous trial that provoked change in race relations in the United States. If you liked Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, try… Lily’s Mountain by Hannah Moderow Lily refuses to believe what everyone else accepts to be true: that her father has died while climbing Denali, the highest mountain in North America. Lily has grown up hiking in the Alaskan wilderness with her dad. He’s an expert climber. There’s no way he would let something like this happen. So instead of grieving, Lily decides to rescue him. Her plan takes her to Denali and on a journey that tests her physically and emotionally. Falcon Wild by Terry Lynn Johnson Thirteenyearold Karma is desperate to become a certified falconer. At her dad’s bird education center, she helps give demonstrations to guests and can fly the birds. But when her favorite rescued falcon, Stark, hurts Karma, her parents insist that they return the bird to its previous owner–in Canada. On the way to bring Stark back, a car accident in the middle of nowhere leaves Karma’s dad trapped, and it’s up to Karma to find a way to rescue him and her younger brother. https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=55cdb9a949&jsver=oadh6Bq9AQ8.en.&view=pt&search=inbox&th=1601c5bfdbda3648&siml=1601c5bfdbda3648 6/35 12/4/2017 Grand Island Public Schools Mail - Holiday Gift Giving Guide #1: Middle Grade Book Recommendations Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder On the island, everything is perfect. The sun rises in a sky filled with dancing shapes; the wind, water, and trees shelter and protect those who live there; when the nine children go to sleep in their cabins, it is with full stomachs and joy in their hearts.