Summer Reading 2016: Grades 8 & 9

A political satire in which a group of barnyard animals revolt against their vicious human master and take over running a farm, only to find their utopian state turning into a dictatorship.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.

Julia and her family awaken to discover that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected and the environment is thrown into disarray. Julia is also coping with the fissures in her family, the loss of friends, the hopeful anguish of love and other normal disasters of everyday life.

The story of two children: a blind French girl who flees Nazi-occupied Paris in 1940 to live with an eccentric great-uncle in the walled city of Saint-Malo, and a German boy whose talent for fixing radios earns him a spot at the National Political Institutes of Education, a training school for Hitler Youth. Linking their stories is a 133-carat jewel thought to bring ill luck.

Finley, a quiet teen, and the only white player on his high school’s basketball team, is asked by his coach to befriend Boy 21, a teen who believes that his parents live in outer space, and will one day return to take him with them. As Finley and Boy 21 become friends, Finley’s starter position is compromised.

Noa Torson is a smart and tough computer hacker. As a runaway teenager, Noa thrives living "off the grid" -- until the day she wakes up on an operating table with no memory of how she got there. Noa teams up with fellow hacker Peter to discover what happened to her, but the pair soon becomes the target of a dangerous corporation determined to keep them from exposing its deadly secrets.

Follows Viola as she survives brutality in war-torn Sudan, makes a perilous journey, lives as a refugee in Egypt, and finally reaches Portland, Maine, where her quest for freedom and security is hampered by memories of past horrors and the traditions her mother and other Sudanese adults hold dear.

Invited to a parent-child weekend chess tournament, freshman Daniel discovers that his father was once one of the country's leading young players but that the intense competition surrounding the game proved to be unhealthy, a past they are forced to confront when they meet a former rival.

In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June, the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common enemy.

In 2137, fourteen-year-old Matt is stunned to learn that, as the clone of El Patron, he is expected to take over as leader of the corrupt drug empire of Opium, where there is also a hidden cure for the ecological devastation faced by the rest of the world.

After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales, discovering disturbing facts about the children who were kept there.

An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor. Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.

Abridged version of the author's adult autobiography, A Leaf in Bitter Wind (1998); This is the true story of the fourth child in a family torn apart by China's Cultural Revolution. After the death of both of her parents, Ting-xing and her siblings endured brutal Red Guard attacks on their schools and even in their home. At the age of sixteen, Ting-xing was exiled to a prison farm far from the world she knew. How she struggled through years of constant terror while keeping her spirit intact is at the heart of this story.

Rory Deveaux, a Louisiana teenager, arrives in London for the start of a year at a London boarding school. Then a series of brutal murders breaks out across the city, gruesome crimes mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper in the autumn of 1888. Soon "Rippermania" takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. Rory spotted the man police now believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him. So why can only Rory see him? And more urgently, why has Rory become his next target?

It is 2035. Ex-rocker Michael gathers together an ex-con, a chess prodigy, an ex-athlete, a do-gooder, a soldier wannabe, and computer whiz Dahlia. Enter Sayeed, terrorist. These American teens travel to England to meet with groups from around the world in hopes of stopping C8, the companies that control nearly everything for their own benefit.

From the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, a discussion of the power of introverts for kids and teens with a focus on school, extracurriculars, family life, and friendship. Read about actual kids and teens who have tackled the challenges of not being extroverted and who have made a mark in their own quiet way.

When her latent supernatural powers manifest in front of a noble court, Mare, a thief in a world divided between commoners and superhumans, is forced to assume the role of lost princess before risking everything to help a growing rebellion.

Fourteen-year-old Sig is stranded at a remote cabin in the Arctic wilderness with his father, who died just hours earlier after falling through the ice, when a terrifying man arrives, claiming Sig's father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold and that he will kill Sig if he does not get his money.

An angry, grieving seventeen-year-old musician facing expulsion from her prestigious Brooklyn private school travels to Paris to complete a school assignment and uncovers a diary written during the French revolution by a young actress attempting to help a tortured, imprisoned little boy--Louis Charles, the lost king of France.

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

After tragic events tear Mickey Bolitar away from his parents, he is forced to live with his estranged Uncle Myron and switch high schools, where he finds both friends and enemies, but when his new girlfriend, Ashley, vanishes, he follows her trail into a seedy underworld that reveals she is not what she seems to be.

When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces an epic high school musical revealing his relationship with them both. This collaborative novel is told in alternating voices from two YA superstars.