Summer Reading 2017: Grade 8

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.

Number Forty-Seven, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.

Reduced to begging and thievery in the streets of London, a thirteen-year-old orphan disguises herself as a boy and connives her way onto a British warship set for high sea adventure in search of pirates.

"Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." Draws on sensationalized, period newspaper articles to recreate the events of the infamous Borden murders and the trial and acquittal of Lizzie Borden, sorting out fact from fiction to explore Lizzie's story and consider what probably happened.

Charles Darwin published 'The origin of species,' his revolutionary treatise on evolution, in 1859. Even today, the theory of evolution creates tension between the scientific and religious communities. This same debate raged within Darwin himself and played an important part in his marriage: Emma's faith gave Charles a lot to think about as he worked on his controversial theory.

A fascinating account for teen readers that captures the history, science, and economic and cultural implications of the harvesting of cacao and creation of chocolate. Readers of Chew On This and The Omnivore's Dilemma will savor this rich exposé.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets Gone Girl in this enthralling murder mystery set in Kenya. Years after her beloved mother is murdered by her corrupt businessman employer, Tina, a girl who fled Congo during childhood, becomes an expert thief in order to support her younger sister and pursue a dangerous opportunity to exact revenge.

When sixteen-year-old orphan Tessa Fell's older brother suddenly vanishes, her search for him leads her into Victorian-era London's dangerous supernatural underworld, and when she discovers that she herself is a Downworlder, she must learn to trust the demon-killing Shadowhunters if she ever wants to learn to control her powers and find her brother.

Madeline Whittier, a biracial 18-year-old, has severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare condition that renders her allergic to nearly everything and requires her to live inside a carefully sealed environment. When handsome Olly moves in next door. Madeline falls for him from her window and begins disobeying the rules that keep her from the outside world.

In 2100, oceans engulf the earth. After her tiny island is submerged, fifteen-year-old Mara leads her community to an elevated city surrounded by dying refugees. Denied entry above, she joins a counterculture living in the wreckage below and seeks answers in cyberspace.

One morning fourteen-year-old Alex wakes up to find himself in the wrong bedroom, in an unfamiliar house, in a different part of the country. Six months have disappeared overnight. The family at the breakfast table? Total strangers. And when he looks in the mirror, another boy's face stares back. A boy named Philip, known as Flip. Unless Alex finds out what's happened and how to get back to his own life, he'll be trapped forever inside a body that belongs to someone else.

Max is learning-disabled and unusually large for his age; brilliant Kevin's birth defect prevents him from growing. Together the two become "Freak the Mighty," pooling their brains and brawn to conquer their world.

In 1943 Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, teenage Hanneke--a 'finder' of black market goods--is tasked with finding a Jewish girl a customer had been hiding, who has seemingly vanished into thin air, and is pulled into a web of resistance activities and secrets as she attempts to solve the mystery and save the missing girl.

In a post-apocalyptic world where nothing is as it seems, seventeen-year-old Amy and Baby, a child she found while scavenging, struggle to survive while vicious, predatory creatures from another planet roam the Earth. After years of hiding, they are miraculously rescued and taken to New Hope. It appears to be a safe haven for survivors, but there are dark and twisted secrets lurking beneath.

In Ireland in the early 1970s, twin brothers Pat and Dom Finnerty have their world turned upside down when their house and all they possess are burned to the ground. When they must move to their family's isolated seashore cottage, the twins see a strange boy, possibly a ghost, and Pat realizes his twin is dying and only he can help by finding clues in his dreams and his grandmother's memory.

Nolan has two lives. On earth he struggles with what everyone thinks is epilepsy, but when he closes his eyes, he is pulled into the mind of Amara, a mute servant girl in another world, charged with protecting a princess in hiding. When Nolan discovers how to control Amara, she is furious, but working together might lead to freedom for both.

In a tale set against the backdrop of a near-future America where an oppressive political party has assumed control over the government in the wake of the president's assassination, young Radley struggles through difficult travel restrictions to return home only to discover that her parents have gone missing and her credit cards are not working.

In an alternate world where industrialization has caused many species of carbon-eating dragons to thrive, Owen, a slayer being trained by his famous father and aunt, and Siobahn, his bard, face a dragon infestation near their small town in Canada.

Sixteen-year-old Bernardo, who is eight feet tall and suffers from a condition called gigantism, leaves the Philipines to live with his mother's family in London, much to the delight of his thirteen-year-old half sister Andi, a passionate basketball player.

Serving as Whidbey Island's unofficial search-and-rescue team, the brawny Gray quintuplets embark on a search for a missing boy and realize that something sinister has happened when they discover the body of the child's mother instead.

In 1934, Vango, a young Frenchman who is about to take his priestly vows, finds himself falsely accused of murder. To clear his name, he must travel across Europe in search of clues to his hidden past.

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.

This edition of The Weather Makers for young adults offers a clear look at the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what we can do to prevent a cataclysmic future. It includes interviews with people whose livelihoods have been directly affected by climate change, as well as individuals who make new technology and renewable resources a part of daily life. Newly featured are twenty-five practical tips that give readers the tools for living a greener lifestyle -- at home, in school, in the community, and ultimately, on Earth.