2 Pent Road East Hartford, CT 06118 Summer Reading 2019
Over the summer, students are asked to log all of the books they read and track them using the attached guide (see packet). Before coming back in the fall, students must complete the outlined book report, described below.
The assignment follows the CT Governor’s 2019 Summer Reading Challenge “A Universe of Stories” outlined on the Connecticut official website. You can find out more about Governor Lamont’s official challenge by going to http://tinyurl.com/ctreads2019
Task 1: Read as many books from the lists provided. There’s no prize for most amount of books read, no pizza party, no sticker, or candy, just read because you want to. The books on these lists are fun, engaging, and about things that matter.
Task 2: Write them down on your Summer Reading Journal.
Task 3: On a 3x5 card or piece of paper about that size (post it note, or similar), rate each book out of 5 stars and create a short “You should read this book next…” sales pitch for a future reader. Save all of these in a Ziploc bag and bring them in on the first day. Model: You should read this book next because it’s a fun read. The characters are really relatable. Especially Atalanta. She just wants to fit in. She never had a home or a family, and so when her dad shows up out of the blue and says she should come home, she just believes him and tries to change everything about herself for him. She learns though, he just wants to use her so he can get money. She shows him. You might like this book if you like books with girls kicking butt. 4/5 stars.
Task 4: Pick ONE (1) book from all of the books you read this summer and create a detailed book review. THIS MUST BE TYPED – SAVE THIS SOMEWHERE LIKE GOOGLE DRIVE OR WHERE YOU CAN ACCESS IT LATER. Outline it like this: Title Write it out Author Write it out Genre Write it out Character Descriptions (Main) Pick 2 characters and describe how they develop over the course of the book. Focus on how they start in the beginning of the book and how they end up. Storyline Describe what your thoughts are on the storyline. Tell your reader what happens, but also what you think about each major event. Is it good? Is it believable? Do you like it? Use evidence from the story. Art: Create a piece of art (original photography is allowed) that captures a key scene from the text. Write a short artist’s statement that accompanies the piece below it. The artist’s statement should be formatted like this: HOW: What is your artistic process? How did you decide on this piece? How does it connect to your novel / scene? WHAT: What exactly does it depict? Be descriptive. WHY: Why did you select this scene? What does this art say about you? What does it say about the book? The scene? What symbols are present? What did you include from the novel? Why did you design it this way. (150 words maximum) Learn more about artist’s statements here: http://tinyurl.com/writeaboutart19 ICUT CT R E E N A N D O 2019 S C
The Governor’s Summer Reading Challenge
A Message to Parents and Students
The State of Connecticut sponsors the Governor’s Summer Reading Challenge because reading is the most important skill. Research shows that reading is crucial to a child’s brain development and intellectual stimulation. And that’s just the beginning:
Reading is a gateway skill. It opens the door to all other learning.
Reading is the processing of information. It requires the student to develop a capacity for conceptual thinking — an ability to think about the nature and signifcance of things.
Reading builds language skills. By becoming more familiar with language through reading, students build a rich vocabulary and an ability to express themselves clearly and creatively.
Reading builds better thinking strategies. Analyzing words, sentences, themes and meaning; concentrating, conceptualizing and visualizing — all these elements of reading are strategies to expand a student’s ability to think.
Reading is active and disciplined. Students learn to choose what they read and when they read, and they learn to discipline themselves to concentrate on the written word.
1 What YOU Can Do to Encourage Reading
Use the library. Make sure everyone in your family has a library card. Help children learn how to use the library’s resources: card catalogs, computer systems, best-seller sections, etc. Visit regularly — as often as you go to the grocery store.
Read every day. Make it a habit to set aside time each day for everyone to read—books, magazines, newspapers, letters. You can even begin by reading television listings, then discussing what you will watch together and why.
Talk about what you’re reading. Children need to see adults reading frequently. They also need to know the benefts of reading. Talk to your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, even young neighbors about what you’re reading. Tell them how much you have enjoyed it, what you have learned, and how you have been inspired.
Ask about summer reading materials. Schools and libraries often provide summer reading lists that highlight excellent books which are readily available, popular and consistent with grade-level reading skills. Call your school or library for information.
Make reading materials part of your home. Buy books at bookstores and tag sales. Borrow books from the library and from friends. Subscribe to newspapers and magazines. Then read, read, read!
To learn more about the Summer Reading Challenge, ask your teacher, principal, or school or public librarian, or contact the Connecticut State Department of Education: 860-713-6751 or www.ct.gov/sde.
2 TIC EC UT N L N E O E C 2019
Reto de Lectura de Verano del Gobernador
Un Mensaje para los Padres y Estudiantes
El Estado de Connecticut patrocina el Reto de Lectura de Verano del Gobernador porque la lectura es la destreza más importante. Los estudios demuestran que la lectura es un elemento crucial en el desarrollo y estímulo intelectual del cerebro en los niños. Y eso es solo el principio:
La lectura es una destreza de entrada. Abre las puertas al aprendizaje.
La lectura es parte del procesamiento de información. Requiere que el estudiante desarrolle capacidad de pensamiento conceptual-la habilidad para pensar sobre la naturaleza y el signifcado de las cosas.
La lectura fortalece las destrezas del lenguaje. Al familiarizarse más con el lenguaje, por medio de la lectura, los estudiantes enriquecen su vocabulario y la capacidad de expresarse claramente y con creatividad.
La lectura desarrolla mejores estrategias de razonamiento. Analizar palabras, oraciones, temas y signifcados; concentrarse, conceptualizar y visualizar — todos estos elementos de lectura son estrategias que expanden la capacidad de pensamiento del estudiante.
La lectura es activa y disciplinada. Los estudiantes aprenden a elegir lo que leen y cuando lo leen, y aprenden a disciplinarse para concentrarse en la palabra escrita.
1 Qué puede usted hacer para incentivar la lectura.
Utilice la Biblioteca. Asegúrese de que todos en la familia posean una tarjeta de la biblioteca pública. Enseñe a los niños a utilizar los recursos de la biblioteca: fcheros, sistemas de computadora, las secciones de títulos de mejor venta o más aclamados, etc. Visite regularmente la biblioteca– tan a menudo como usted va al supermercado.
Lea todos los días. Cree el hábito de dedicar tiempo cada día para que todos en su hogar lean -libros, revistas, periódicos, cartas. Usted puede empezar leyendo los listados de programación televisiva, para luego discutir los programas que ustedes observarán y por qué.
Hable sobre lo que estan leyendo. Los niños necesitan ver a los adultos leyendo con frecuencia. Ellos también necesitan saber los benefcios derivados de la lectura. Hable con sus niños, nietos, sobrinas, sobrinos, inclusive con su vecinos jóvenes, acerca de lo que usted esta leyendo. Dígales cuánto ha disfrutado usted de la lectura, lo que ha aprendido, y cómo ha sido inspirado(a).
Pregunte por materiales de lectura de verano. Las escuelas y las bibliotecas a menudo proporcionan listas de lecturas de verano que destacan excelentes libros, fácilmente disponibles, populares y consistentes con las destrezas de lectura para cada nivel de grado. Llame a su escuela o biblioteca para mas información.
Haga que los materials de lectura sean parte de su hogar. Compre libros en librerías y en ventas de rebaja. Pida prestado libros de la biblioteca y de amigos. Subscríbase a periódicos y revistas. ¡Entonces, lea, lea, y lea!
Para indagar más sobre el Programa de Reto de Lectura de Verano, pida información a su maestro(a), principal, escuela y/o bibliotecario(a), o comuníquese con el Departamento de Educación del Estado de Connecticut: 860-713-6751 o visite la página del web www.ct.gov/sde
2 Summer Reading List* A Universe of Stories! ~ Grades 7-8 Suggested space-themed summer reading titles compiled for the Connecticut State Department of Education by Linda Williams, Connecticut State Library
-playing, movie-obsessed geek until beautiful, FICTION friendly, and impossible to ignore Camilla Carter starts him wondering if he has been Honor Among Thieves by Rachel watching all the wrong movies. | ALA | Lexile: Caine & Ann Aguirre 740 A savvy young criminal with antisocial What Goes Up by Katie Kennedy behavior is recruited to attend the Honors space Teenagers Rosa and Eddie, trainees in a top- program and joins a team on a sentient secret space exploration and research program, spaceship destined for the far reaches of the must thwart the aliens' Earth-destroying mission galaxy only to discover dangerous secrets by stealing their spacecraft and traveling extra- hidden among the stars. | Nutmeg 2020 | dimensionally to an alternate Earth. | Lexile: Lexile: 720 650 by Sally Gardner Maggot Moon The Diabolic by S. J. Kincaid Following a stray football to the other side of a Nemesis is a Diabolic, a humanoid teenager and wall where there is a secret, Standish Treadwell discovers the galaxy's most deadly weapon, who masquerades as Sidonia, astonishing truths about a moon landing that the overseeing a senator's daughter, and becomes a hostage of the galactic Motherland, a ruthless regime, is determined to hide. | ALA | court. | ALA | Lexile: 810 Lexile: 690 Exo by Fonda Lee by Claudia Gray Defy the Stars Donovan Reyes is a loyal member of an alien security force Teenaged soldier Noemi and an enemy robot, Abel, who is on Earth, but after a routine search and seizure goes bad, programmed to obey her commands, set out on an Donovan finds himself a captive of the human revolutionary interstellar quest to save her home planet, Earth colony group, Sapience, terrorists who seem to prefer war to alien Genesis. | Nutmeg 2020 | Lexile: 830 rule. | ALA | Lexile: 810 by Shannon Hale Dangerous Across the Universe by Beth Revis When aspiring astronaut Maisie Danger Brown, who was Teenaged Amy, a cryogenically frozen passenger on the born without a right hand, and the other space camp spaceship Godspeed, wakes up to discover that someone students get the opportunity to do something amazing in may have tried to murder her. | ALA | Lexile: 720 space, Maisie must prove how dangerous she can be and how far she is willing to go to protect everything she has ever loved. | ILA | Lexile: 680 GRAPHIC NOVELS Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman & Lowriders in Space by Cathy Jay Kristoff Told in separate voices, eighteen-year-old Tyler Camper Jones, top graduate of Aurora Academy, and a Lupe, Flapjack, and Elirio customize their group of misfits and troublemakers embark on car into a low rider for the Universal Car their first mission with Auri, a stowaway from Competition to win the cash prize that will the distant past. | Lexile: 800 enable them to buy their own garage. | ALA | Lexile: 430 Illuminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay The Far Side of the Moon: Kristoff The planet Kerenza is attacked, and Kady and Ezra The Story of Apollo 11's Third find themselves on a space fleet fleeing the enemy, Man by Alex Irvine while their ship's artificial intelligence system and a This graphic retelling of the Apollo 11 deadly plague may be the end of them all. | ALA, moon-landing mission follows astronaut Nutmeg 2019 | Lexile: 780 Michael Collins, commander of the lunar orbiter, to the far side of the moon.| ALA | Lexile: 920 Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil Sixteen-year-old Sam Kinnison is perfectly happy as a game
April 2019 Summer Reading List*
GRAPHIC NOVEL of 3 months and sending back invaluable images of the environmentally hostile planet. | ALA, NCTE, NSTA | Lexile: 950 Space Dumplins by Craig Thomp- son Countdown: 2979 Days to the For Violet Marlocke, family is the most im- Moon by Suzanne Slade portant thing in the whole galaxy. So when Told in free verse, the story of the American her father goes missing while on a hazardous effort to land the first man on the moon job, she can't just sit around and do nothing. comes to life. | NSTA | Lexile: 940 To get him back, Violet throws caution to the Team Moon: How 400,000 People stars and sets out with a group of misfit Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by friends on a quest to find him. But space is big and dangerous, and she soon discovers Catherine Thimmesh that her dad has been swallowed by a giant, Culled from direct quotes from the people planet-eating whale. With her father's life on behind the scenes, NASA transcripts, the line, nothing is going to stop Violet from national archives and NASA photos, the trying to rescue him and keep her family to- whole story of Apollo 11 and the first moon gether. | ALA | Lexile: 390 landing emerges. | ALA, NCTE, NSTA | Lexile: 1060
NONFICTION BIOGRAPHY Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl
Red Planet by Buzz Aldrin Scout to Rocket Scientist by Sylvia Acevedo The Apollo 11 astronaut invites curious youngsters to The inspiring memoir for young readers about a Latina evaluate Mars as a potential planet for human colonization, rocket scientist whose early life was transformed by joining describing what Mars residents might experience while the Girl Scouts and who currently serves as CEO of the Girl traveling to and living on the Red Planet. | NSTA | Lexile: Scouts of the USA. | ALA | Lexile: 960 900 Endurance: My Year in Space and How I Got Exploring Space: From Galileo to the Mars There (Young Readers Edition) by Scott Kelly Rover and Beyond by Martin Jenkins Adapted from the memoir of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, Presents a brief history of space exploration, who spent a record-breaking year in space. | covering such topics as the first human NSTA | Lexile: 1070 missions, life on the International Space Station, and settling on Mars. | NSTA Chasing Space (Young Readers To the Moon!: The True Story of Edition) by Leland Melvin the American Heroes on the Apollo 8 A memoir by the former NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver traces his personal Spaceship by Jeffrey Kluger journey from the gridiron to the stars, ex- Recounts the first crewed spaceship to travel amining the intersecting roles of commu- to the Moon, describing how the Cold War nity, perseverance, and grace that create and the tragedy of Apollo 1 shaped the opportunities for success. | NSTA | Lexile: Apollo 8 mission and offering facts about 1020 living in a spaceship. | NCTM, NSTA | Lexile: 1180 Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's Pioneering Woman in The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Space by Tam O'Shaughnessy Incredible Adventures of Spirit and A biography of the famous astronaut draw- Opportunity by Elizabeth Rusch ing on personal and family photographs from The story of the two robot vehicles, Spirit and Opportunity, that her childhood, school days, college, life in the astronaut were sent to explore Mars, lasting far past their projected lives corps, and afterward. | NSTA | Lexile: 870
*Many of the listed books were selected as exemplary books by one or more of the following organizations: the American Library Association (ALA), the International Literacy Association (ILA), the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the National Sci- ence Teachers Association (NSTA), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) or the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY). Other awards as noted. Summer Reading New Favorites & Classics For Grades 7 &8
READ NUTMEG AWARD NOMINEES! Find the Middle School Nutmeg list at: http://nutmegaward.org
FAVORITES & CLASSICS Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts When their owner dies at the start of the and other supernatural residents agree to Revolution, Isabel and her younger sister raise him as one of their own. | Lexile: 820 are sold to Loyalists in New York, where Chomp by Carl Hiaasen Isabel is offered the chance to spy for the When the difficult star of the reality Patriots. | Lexile: 780 television show "Expedition Survival" City of Orphans by Avi disappears while filming an episode in the In 1893 New York, thirteen-year-old Florida Everglades using animals from the Maks, a newsboy, teams up with Willa, a wildlife refuge run by Wahoo Crane's homeless girl, to clear his older sister, family, Wahoo and classmate Tuna Gordon Emma, from charges that she stole from set out to find him while avoiding Tuna's the brand new Waldorf Hotel, where she gun-happy father. | Lexile: 800 works. Includes historical notes. | Lexile: Standing Against the Wind by 570 Traci L. Jones Zombie Baseball Beatdown As she tries to escape her poor Chicago by Paolo Bacigalupi neighborhood by winning a scholarship to a While practicing for their next baseball game, thirteen-year- prestigious boarding school, shy and studious eighth-grader old friends Rabi, Miguel, and Joe discover that the nefarious Patrice discovers that she has more options in life than she activities of the Delbe, Iowa, meatpacking plant have previously realized. | Lexile: 780 caused cows to turn into zombies. | Lexile: 650 Hey, Kiddo* by Jarrett Krosoczka Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis The powerful, unforgettable graphic memoir from Jarrett In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born Krosoczka, about growing up with a drug-addicted mother, child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing a missing father, and two unforgettably opinionated the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring grandparents. | ALA | Lexile: 510 to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom. | Lexile: 1070 The Giver by Lois Lowry Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Eva by Peter Dickinson Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one After a terrible accident, a young girl wakes up to discover other in his community and discovers the terrible truth that she has been given the body of a chimpanzee. | Lexile: about the society in which he lives. | Lexile: 760 1010 Far Far Away* by Tom McNeal Whirligig by Paul Fleischman When Jeremy Johnson Johnson's strange ability to speak to While traveling to each corner of the country to build a the ghost of Jacob Grimm draws the interest of his whirligig in memory of the girl whose death he caused, classmate, Ginger Boltinghouse, the two find themselves at sixteen-year-old Brian finds forgiveness and atonement. | the center of a series of disappearances in their hometown. | Lexile: 760 ALA, Nutmeg 2017 | Lexile: 790 The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler
April 2019 *New to the list in 2019 Summer Reading New Favorites & Classics For Grades 7 &8
Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen nonconformity, and the thrill of first love, an eccentric After his anger erupts into violence, Cole, in order to avoid student named Stargirl changes Mica High School forever. | going to prison, agrees to participate in a sentencing Lexile: 590 alternative based on the native American Circle Justice, and Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne he is sent to a remote Alaskan Island where an encounter Fisher Staples with a huge Spirit Bear changes his life. | Lexile: 670 When eleven-year old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the only merely surviving through her enormous courage and custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father's self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her wishes. | Lexile: 970 solitary life. | Lexile: 1000 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Hatchet by Gary Paulsen D. Taylor After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four A black family living in the South during the 1930s are days in the Canadian wilderness, learning to survive with faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and don't understand. | Lexile: 920 learning also to survive his parents' divorce. | Lexile: 1020 The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien The River Between Us by Richard Peck Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure Orleans to come north to Illinois. | Lexile: 740 from which he may never return. | Lexile: 1000 The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Tiffany, a young witch-to-be in the land of Discworld, Jones teams up with the Wee Free Men, a clan of six-inch-high Eldest of three sisters in a land where it is considered to be a blue men, to rescue her baby brother and ward off a sinister misfortune, Sophie is resigned to her fate as a hat shop invasion from Fairyland. | Lexile: 680 apprentice until a witch turns her into an old woman and she * by Holly Goldberg Sloan finds herself in the castle of the greatly feared wizard Howl. Counting by 7s | Lexile: 800 Twelve-year-old genius and outsider Willow Chance must figure out how to connect with other people and find a The Book Thief by Markus Zusak surrogate family for herself after her parents are killed in a Death tells the story of a young German girl, Liesel, whose car accident. | ALA, NCTE, Nutmeg | Lexile: 770 book-stealing and story-telling talents during World War II by Jerry Spinelli help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, Stargirl as well as their neighbors. | Lexile: 730 In this story about the perils of popularity, the courage of
FAVORITE SERIES The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman Young Wizards by Diane Duane Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth The Rangers Apprentice by John Flanagan Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer Michael Scott The Squire's Tales by Gerald Morris The Tillermans by Cynthia Voigt The News Crew by Walter Dean Myers Leviathan by Scott Westerfield Summer Reading List* A Universe of Stories! ~ Grades 9-12 Suggested space-themed summer reading titles compiled for the Connecticut State Department of Education by Linda Williams, Connecticut State Library
FICTION On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2034, a comet is due to The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum hit the Earth within the hour. Denise, who's sixteen years After a horrific accident brings loners Ryann and old and autistic, must try to find her missing sister and also Alexandria together, Ryann learns that Alexandria's mother help her neglectful, undependable mother safely aboard a is an astronaut who volunteered for a one-way trip to the spaceship. | ALA | Lexile: 640 edge of the solar system. 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn In 2019, teens Mia, Antoine, and Midori are selected by lottery to join experienced astronauts on a NASA mission to Anderson the once top-secret moon base, DARLAH 2, In the months before her one-way trip to Mars, while in a Florida nursing home, a former Adri Ortiz is sent to Wichita to live with a astronaut struggles to warn someone of the elderly cousin and finds herself fixating on terrible danger there. where she came from and the stories of two women who lived more than a hundred years We Are the Ants by Shaun David earlier. | ALA | Lexile: 810 Hutchinson Landscape with Invisible After the suicide of his boyfriend, Henry deals with depression and family issues, all while Hand by M. T. Anderson wondering if he was really abducted and told An artistic youth stages creative romantic he has 144 days to decide whether or not the scenes as entertainment for the Earth's alien world is worth saving. | ALA, Nutmeg 2018 | overlords to support his unemployed family, Lexile: 800 a situation that is compromised by an estrangement from his girlfriend. | ALA | Unearthed by Amie Kaufman & Lexile:730 Meagen Spooner Scholar Jules Addison and scavenger Amelia Red Rising by Pierce Brown Radcliffe join forces to unravel secrets of a long-extinct A tale set in a bleak future society torn by class divisions civilization, only to discover something that could spell the follows the experiences of secret revolutionary Darrow, end of the human race. | Lexile: 960 who after witnessing his wife's execution by an oppressive government joins a revolutionary cell and attempts to Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer infiltrate an elite military academy. | Nutmeg 2018 | Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes Lexile: 630 her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke eruptions. | ALA, Nutmeg 2010 | Lexile: 770 Two astronauts find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an extraordinary Rabbit & Robot by Andrew Smith computer named Hal.| Lexile: 1060 Stranded aboard the lunar cruise ship Tennessee, Cager Messer and his best friend, Billy, both sixteen, are A Conspiracy of Stars by Olivia A. Cole surrounded by insane robots while watching thirty Octavia is excited to study the plants and animals of Faloiv simultaneous wars turn Earth into a toxic wasteland. | until she witnesses one of the planet's indigenous people Lexile: 870 being attacked and begins to question her own family history and the scientists she has always admired. | ALA When Light Left Us by Leah Thomas Not long after Hank, Ana, and Milo Vasquez's father leaves, Waste of Space by Gina Damico an alien named Luz arrives and uses them to satisfy his Cram ten hormonal teens into a spaceship and blast off: curiosity, then leaves them forever changed. | ALA that's the premise for the ill-conceived reality show Waste of Space. The kids who are cast know everything about drama--and nothing about the fact that the production is fake. | ILA | Lexile: 700
April 2019 Summer Reading List*
The Martian by Andy Weir How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Stranded on Mars by a duststorm that compromised his Coming by Mike Brown space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, The astronomer who inadvertently triggered the "demotion" astronaut Mark Watney struggles to survive in spite of of Pluto in his effort to officially recognize the solar sys- minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that tem's tenth planet describes the ensuing debates and public test his ingenuity in unique ways. | ALA | Lexile: 680 outcry while revealing the behind-the-scenes story of his The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey discovery. | OBFTCB | Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien Packing for Mars: The Curious invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be Science of Life in the Void by Mary one of them. | ALA | Lexile: 690 Roach Describes the weirdness of space travel, answers questions about the long-term ef- fects of living in zero gravity on the human body, and explains how space simulations GRAPHIC NOVELS on Earth can provide a preview to life in space. | OBFTCB | Lexile: 1070 Laika by Nick Abadzis Apollo 8: The Mission That This is the journey of Laika, the abandoned Changed Everything by Martin W. puppy destined to become Earth's first space traveler. With the blending of fact and fiction, Sandler this story intertwines three compelling lives. Complemented by full-color photos includ- Along with Laika, there is Korolev, a driven ing the iconic Earthrise image, a middle- engineer at the top of the Soviet space program and Yelena, grade introduction to the historic Apollo 8 the lab technician responsible for Laika's health and life. | mission describes the mid-20th-century Space Race and the ALA | Lexile: 370 heroic achievements of NASA scientists and astronauts. | NCSS | Lexile: 1200 How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial by Darryl Cunning- BIOGRAPHY ham Explores scientific controversies, including fracking, the Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the moon landing, and evolution, examining the history of each Untold Story of the Black Women and the facts that do or do not support claims made. | ALA Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race Grease Monkey: A Tale of Growing Up in by Margot Lee Shetterly Orbit by Tim Eldred An account of the previously unheralded but pivotal Mac Gimbensky is an eight hundred pound intelligent go- contributions of NASA's African-American women rilla and expert fighter mechanic on the flagship Fist of mathematicians to America's space program describes how Earth, where, with the help of his cadet assistant Robin Plot- they were segregated from their white counterparts by Jim nik, he maintains the ships of the all-female Barbarian Crow laws in spite of their groundbreaking successes. | Squadron. | ALA NCTM
NONFICTION Rocket Boys: A Memoir by Homer Hickam The author traces the boyhood enthusiasm for rockets that American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and eventually led to a career at NASA, describing how he built model rockets in the family garage in West Virginia, the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley inspired by the launch of the Soviet satellite "Sputnik" | Draws on new primary source material and firsthand inter- ALA views in a reassessment of the space program that examines the political, cultural, and scientific factors that launched NASA and the space race.
*Many of the listed books were selected as exemplary books by one or more of the following organizations: the American Library Association (ALA), the International Literacy Association (ILA), the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the National Sci- ence Teachers Association (NSTA), ALA Outstanding Books for the College Bound (OBFTCB), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) or the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY). Other awards as noted. Summer Reading New Favorites & Classics For Grades 9-12
NUTMEG AWARD HIGH SCHOOL NOMINEES
Find the High School Nutmeg list at: http://nutmegaward.org
FAVORITES & CLASSICS The Poet X* by Elizabeth Acevedo The House on Mango Street by Sandra When Xiomara Batista, who pours all her frustrations and Cisneros passion into poetry, is invited to join the school slam poetry A young girl living in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago club, she struggles with her mother's expectations and her ponders the advantages and disadvantages of her need to be heard. | ALA, NBA | Lexile: 800 environment and evaluates her relationships with family and Children of Blood and Bone* by Tomi friends. | Lexile: 850 Adyemi Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper Seventeen-year-old Zelie, her older brother Tzain, and Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try activate a new generation of magi, but they are to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves. | believes the return of magic will mean the end Lexile: 820 of the monarchy. | ALA | Lexile: Picture Us in the Light* by Kelly Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Loy Gilbert A traumatic event near the end of the summer Daniel, a Chinese-American teen, must grapple has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman with his plans for the future, his feelings for his year in high school. | Lexile: 690 best friend Harry, and his discovery of a family Feed by M. T. Anderson secret that could shatter everything. | ALA | Lexile: In a future where most people have computer 890 implants in their heads to control their The Fault in Our Stars by John environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who Green is in serious trouble. | Lexile: 770 Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting Set in the near future, America has become a puritanical with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine theocracy and Offred tells her story as a Handmaid under her perspective on love, loss, and life. | Lexile: 850 the new social order. | Lexile: 750 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Love in the Time of Global Warming by Nighttime by Mark Haddon Francesca Lia Block Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, After a devastating earthquake destroys the West Coast, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year- causing seventeen-year-old Penelope to lose her home, her old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's parents, and her ten-year-old brother, she navigates a dark dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. | world, holding hope and love in her hands and refusing to Lexile: 1180 be defeated. | Lexile: 890 Seraphina by Rachel Hartman Kindred by Octavia Butler In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy A young African-American woman is mysteriously truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, transferred back in time leading to an irresistible curiosity whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her about her family's past. | Lexile: 580 own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical talents. | Lexile: 760
April 2019 *New to the list in 2019 Summer Reading New Favorites & Classics For Grades 9-12
March: Book One* by John Lewis Buried Onions by Gary Soto Presents in graphic novel format the life of Georgia When nineteen-year-old Eddie drops out of college, he congressman John Lewis, focusing on is youth in rural struggles to find a place for himself as a Mexican American Alabama, his meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. and the living in a violence-infested neighborhood of Fresno, birth of the Nashville Student Movement. | ALA | :Lexile: California. | Lexile: 850 760 Marcelo in the Real World by Monster by Walter Dean Myers Francisco X. Stork While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his on the high-functioning end of the autistic experiences in prison and in the courtroom in spectrum, faces new challenges, including the form of a film script as he tries to come to romance and injustice, when he goes to work terms with the course his life has taken. | for his father in the mailroom of a corporate Lexile: 670 law firm. | Lexile: 700 The Astonishing Color of On the Come Up* by Angie After* by Emily X. R. Pan Thomas After her mother's suicide, grief-stricken Sixteen-year-old Bri hopes to become a great Leigh Sanders travels to Taiwan to stay with rapper, and after her first song goes viral for grandparents she never met, determined to all the wrong reasons, must decide whether to find her mother who she believes turned into sell out or face eviction with her widowed a bird. | | Lexile: 670 mother. | | Lexile: 550 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Contains black-and-white comic strip images in which the Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia author shares the story of her life in Tehran, Iran, where she The lives of Leticia, Dominique, and Trina are irrevocably lived from ages six to fourteen while the country came intertwined through the course of one day in an urban high under control of the Islamic regime. | Lexile: 380 school after Leticia overhears Dominique's plans to beat up Trina and must decide whether or not to get involved. | Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick Lexile: 600 Seven linked vignettes unfold on a Scandinavian island inhabited--throughout various time periods--by Vikings, How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr vampires, ghosts, and a curiously powerful plant. | Lexile: Told from their own viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Jill, in 770 grief over the loss of her father, and Mandy, nearly A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith nineteen, are thrown together when Jill's mother agrees to adopt Mandy's unborn child but nothing turns out as they Young Francie Nolan, having inherited both her father's had anticipated. | Lexile: 710 romantic and her mother's practical nature, struggles to survive and thrive growing up in the slums of Brooklyn in the early twentieth century. | Lexile: 810
SERIES Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman Finishing School by Gail Carriger Divergent by Veronica Roth The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Shiver trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater The Maze Runner by James Dashner Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin Uglies by Scott Westerfeld