St. Luke’s School Reading List For Students Entering Grade 8 The Left Hand of Darkness Fantasy Le Guin Genly Ai is an emissary from the human The Illustrated Man galaxy to Winter, a lost world. His Bradbury mission is to bring the planet back into He is a wanderer whose entire body is a an evolving galactic civilization, but to living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's do so he must bridge the gulf between even more remarkable is that the his own culture and prejudices and illustrations are themselves magically those that he encounters. alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own tale. Black Horses for the King McCaffrey The Ropemaker In this different take on Arthurian Dickinson legendry, McCaffrey tells how Lord When the magic that protects their Artos (King Arthur) procures Libyan Valley starts to fail, Tilja and her horses for his companions to ride into companions journey into the evil battle against the Saxons. The narrator Empire to find the ancient magician is young Galwyn, who with his Faheel, who originally cast those spells. knowledge of horses and affinity for Printz honor. languages leaves his harsh seafaring uncle to serve Artos. Snow in August Hamill Rose Daughter In postwar working-class Brooklyn, Irish McKinley Catholic Michael Devlin, 11, is obsessed McKinley re-explores and expands on with comics, worships Captain Marvel, the tale of Beauty and the Beast. This is and wonders why shouting SHAZAM! not a sequel to her earlier book Beauty, doesn't turn him into a superhero. His but a new treatment with rich naiveté is crucial, since this tale characterizations and a more mystical, transforms unexpectedly into fantasy. darker edge. Dune (series) Sirena Herbert Napoli Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune In this re-imagining that fuses several tells how Paul Atreides becomes the parts of the story of Troy, the mermaid mysterious Muad'Dib. He seeks to Sirena knows that if the song she sings avenge the plot against his noble family with her sisters lures a mortal man to and bring to fruition humankind's most mate with her, she will live forever. ancient and unattainable dream. This is a sweeping blend of adventure and Sabriel mysticism, environmentalism and Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr politics. Abhorsen (series) Nix Sabriel, daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead. 2 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: More Fantasy The Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers Witch World Return of the King Norton Tolkien This is the first book of a multi-volume This epic is the tale of hobbits, staid series about a realm of untamed magic folk who rise to meet the challenges of and limitless adventure, where witches a dark age, and the extraordinary make mountains dance and sorcerers characters of Middle Earth who are draw forces of good and evil from other swept up in the struggle for the Ring of universes. power. Tolkien’s vast world is richly detailed, deepening the humanity of the Sandry’s Book characters, good and evil, and the (Circle of Magic series, #1) realism of the narrative. Pierce In a fantasy set in mythical lands The Raven Ring surrounding the Pebbled Sea, four Wrede young people come to terms with the Wrede returns to the world of Lyra, pain that life has dealt them, the scene of her earlier Dragon novels. She prejudices they've inherited, and their introduces the city of Ciaron, to which unrecognized magical powers. she brings a young woman from Cilhar on comparatively routine family The Golden Compass business, only to have her dragged (His Dark Materials trilogy, #1) more forcibly than not into a tale of Pullman mayhem and magic. Lyra Belacqua is a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Briar Rose Oxford University. But hers is a Yolen different world from ours, where each Rebecca Berlin fondly recalls the odd person has a daemon, the manifestation version of Sleeping Beauty told by her of the soul in animal form, and where grandmother Gemma. Everyone thought science, theology, and magic are closely it was just a bedtime story, but when a allied. box of clippings and photos turns up after Gemma’s death, Becca begins The King Must Die tracing her real story. This book is a Renault provocative retelling of the story of Set in Minoan Crete, this is a vividly Sleeping Beauty as a Holocaust memoir. imagined story of Theseus, mythical king of Athens, who saves the city from Mists of Avalon its ritual tribute of young men and Zimmer women for sacrifice to the Minotaur. Even readers who don’t normally enjoy Arthurian legends will like this retelling The Scent of Magic from the point of view of the women Seaborg behind the throne. Morgaine (Morgan le In this tale of magic and intrigue, a Fay) and Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere) young boy discovers his special gift. struggle for power, using their arts to Forced from his home, he embarks on promote their respective worldviews. an adventure with a powerful magician and a girl with powers of her own. 3 Timeline Science Fiction Crichton Imagine stepping into a time machine, I, Robot faxing yourself through a "quantum Asimov foam wormhole," and stepping out in Stories of robots gone mad, mind- feudal France circa 1357. The heroes reading robots, robots with a sense of are historians, and the story is a humor, robot politicians, and robots swashbuckling adventure with a dash of who secretly run the world are all told science and time paradox to spice the with Asimov's dramatic blend of science mix. fact and science fiction. 2001: A Space Odyssey The Fantastic Voyage Clarke Asimov An enigmatic monolith is found buried Five people, reduced to microscopic on the moon that emits a powerful size, travel through the body of a dying signal aimed at Saturn. A manned man in an effort to dissolve a blood clot spacecraft is sent to investigate, in his brain, but even more is at stake assisted by a self-aware computer, HAL than one man’s life. 9000. The harrowing conflict between HAL and the crew, and its mind-bending Fahrenheit 451 aftermath, have become the stuff of Bradbury legend. In this dark vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires; they start Fade them in order to burn books. Bradbury's Cormier vividly painted society holds up the Paul Moreaux, the 13-year-old son of appearance of happiness as the highest French Canadian immigrants, inherits goal—where trivial information is good, the ability to become invisible, but his and knowledge and ideas are bad. power eventually leads to death and destruction. Ender’s Game (series) Card Time and Again To make sure humans win the next Finney encounter with aliens, the world Simon Morley is selected by a secret government has taken to breeding government agency to test Einstein’s military geniuses and training them in theory of the past co-existing with the the arts of war. The early training takes present—and is transported back to a the form of “games.” Ender Wiggin vividly depicted New York of the 1880s. wins all the games, but is he smart enough to save the planet? Have Spacesuit Will Travel Heinlein Jurassic Park One minute Kip Russell was in his Lost World backyard, testing an old space suit. The (series) next he was out cold, the captive of a Crichton space pirate. The whole thing seems A modern-day scientist brings to life a like a bad dream until Kip discovers horde of prehistoric animals. there are other prisoners on board, and they’re all on their way to the Moon. 4 More Science Fiction Realistic Fiction 1984 How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Orwell Accents 1984 has come and gone, but George Alvarez Orwell's prophetic, nightmare vision of It's a long way from Santo Domingo to the world we were becoming is still the Bronx. Four Latinas, plunged from a compelling. Totalitarian England under pampered life on an island compound the eye of Big Brother, and the struggle into the big-city chaos of New York, of two individuals with the system that rebel against Mami and Papi's old-world traps them, remains convincing and discipline and embrace all that America haunting. has to offer. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Speak Verne Anderson A sea monster is sinking ships. Three A traumatic event near the end of the men—a French scientist, his sidekick, summer has a devastating effect on and a Canadian harpoonist—are thrown Melinda's freshman year in high school. from the deck of their American warship. A door opens on the side of Am I Blue? the monster, and they enter the top- Bauer secret submarine Nautilus, commanded This collection of 16 original short by a madman who carries them into the stories by as many young adult authors depths. won the 1995 ALA Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Task Force (GLBTF) book award The Time Machine for literature. The diverse settings, Wells characters, and styles will entertain a A scientist invents a machine that wide range of readers. transports him far into the future, where he discovers a changed world Joy School inhabited by two unusual races, the Eloi Berg and the Morlocks. Katie has relocated to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father, and The War of the Worlds she feels very much alone: her beloved Wells mother is dead, and her only friends The Martian attack begins with a series fall far short of ideal companions.