Summer Reading 2019: Grades 6 & 7

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing—she is a "free agent" with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?

In Pakistan, Amal holds onto her dream of being a teacher even after becoming an indentured servant to pay off her family's debt to the wealthy and corrupt Khan family.

Leaving Brooklyn for the first time to visit their grandparents in the Virginia countryside, Genie and his big brother, Ernie, discover that their grandfather is blind and ask countless questions about how he copes before realizing that he never leaves the house. Then when the two brothers decide to prove how brave they are, everything backfires--literally.

Elf historian Brangwain Spurge is sent to goblin country to deliver a peace offering to their dark lord and spy on the goblin kingdom, but he and his goblin host commit a series of blunders that might bring their nations to war.

In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel The Crossover (2014), soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.

An adventure inspired by classic video games and favorite modern works of children's literature (Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) follows the experiences of a 12-year-old video game enthusiast who, upon inheriting his uncle's junk treasures, discovers himself in a real-life escape-the-room game.

Trained to sniff out bombs and traps, Cracker the German Shepherd is prepared for action in Vietnam, but when she is teamed up with Rick, a young man whose family doubts he can handle infantry life, the new soldier must find a way to build trust between the two so that they can do their jobs well and make it back alive.

The first book in an illustrated epic fantasy adventure series is set in a world where a space-time cataclysm has torn apart time and space, reshaping the Earth into a place where people from all historical eras and cultures coexist. 13-year old Diego Ribera must rescue his engineer father from an ancient Roman faction that has devised a violent plot to reverse the Collision.

Twelve-year-old Charlie gets a chance to work with a real NFL owner once his skills for picking Fantasy Football winners are discovered. On the field, the game is much more challenging.

Accidentally connected most of his life to a fourth-dimensional being whose presence would prevent him from reaching adulthood, 13-year-old Felix records in his secret blog their last shared month before a procedure that will either separate them or kill them both.

Wade, Lily, Darrell, and Becca fly from Texas to Germany for the funeral of an old family friend. But instead of just paying their respects, they wind up on a dangerous, mind-blowing quest to unlock an ancient, guarded secret that could destroy the fate of the world.

Eleven-year-old Nhamo lives in a traditional village in Mozambique, where she doesn't quite fit in. When her family tries to force her into marrying a cruel man, she runs away to Zimbabwe, hoping to find the father she's never met. But what should have been a short boat trip across the border turns into a dangerous year-long adventure, and Nhamo must summon her innermost courage to ensure her survival.

kson Greene has a reputation as a prankster at Maplewood Middle School, but after the last disaster he is trying to go straight -- but when it looks like Keith Sinclair may steal the election for school president from Jackson's former best friend Gabriela, he assembles a team to make sure Keith does not succeed.

Thirteen- year-old Nikki Demere is an orphan and a kleptomaniac, making her the perfect girl to portray the Trevors' daughter in witness protection; but she soon learns that the biggest threat to her new family's security comes from her own past.

A boy named Mark, tired of being sick with cancer, conceives a plan to climb Mount Rainier, and runs away from home with his dog, Beau--but with over two hundred miles between him and his goal, and only anger at his situation to drive him on, nothing will be easy, and only his best friend, Jessie, suspects where he is heading.

Rose Lee Carter, a thirteen-year-old African-American girl, dreams of life beyond the Mississippi cotton fields during the summer of 1955, but when Emmett Till is murdered and his killers are unjustly acquitted, Rose is torn between seeking her destiny outside of Mississippi or staying and being a part of an important movement.

Surviving a lightning strike that has given her genius-level math skills, 12-year-old Lucy is offered entry into college but reluctantly takes her grandmother's advice to attend one year of middle school, make a friend, join a club and read a non-math book.

A Cuban teen volunteers for Fidel Castro's national literacy campaign and embarks on journeys through the impoverished countryside to teach others how to read, learning about her students' lives while sharing the dangers posed by counterrevolutionaries.

When the Berlin Wall went up, Gerta, her mother, and her brother Fritz are trapped on the eastern side where they were living, while her father, and her other brother Dominic are in the West--four years later, now twelve, Gerta sees her father on a viewing platform on the western side and realizes he wants her to risk her life trying to tunnel to freedom.

"What's for dinner?" seemed like a simple question--until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers' adaptation of Pollan's famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices.

In this action-packed companion series to Flanagan’s Rangers Apprentice books, a sixteen-year-old Skandian-Araluen named Hal and his group of misfit friends compete against two other, more powerful, brotherbands, enduring three months of grueling training in seamanship, weapons, and battle tactics to determine who will win the coveted prize.

Patina needs more than blinding speed to thrive when diabetes disables her mom, leaving her to juggle big sister duties at her aunt and uncle’s house, elite track team practices, and adjustments to a private school as best as she can.

In 1930s England, schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are at Daisy's home for the holidays when someone falls seriously, mysteriously ill at a family party, but no one present is what they seem--and everyone has a secret or two--so the Detective Society must do everything they can to reveal the truth . . . no matter the consequences.

Presents an account of the 1944 civil rights protest involving hundreds of African-American Navy servicemen who were unjustly charged with mutiny for refusing to work in unsafe conditions after the deadly Port Chicago explosion

Up until her twelfth birthday, Kiranmala considered herself an ordinary sixth-grader in Parsippany, New Jersey, but then her parents disappear and a drooling rakkhosh demon shows up in her kitchen, and soon she is swept into another dimension, full of magic, winged horses, talking birds and cute princes--and now she needs to sort it all out, find her parents, and basically save the world.

Widge is an orphan with a rare talent for shorthand. His fearsome master has just one demand: steal Shakespeare's play "Hamlet"--or else. Widge has no choice but to follow orders, so he works his way into the heart of the Globe Theatre, where he searches for his treasure.

Amidst the fervor of Cold War era McCarthyism, Hazel Kaplansky and new student Samuel Butler investigate rumors that a Russian spy has infiltrated their small Vermont town, but more is revealed than they could ever have imagined.

Smuggled onto a naval ship heading to battle in France by his faithful human friend, Stubby earns his place in World War I history by warning troops of gas attacks, killing rats that plagued the soldiers’ barracks, and even capturing a German soldier by biting the seat of his pants.

In 1983 seventh-grader David Da-Wei Horowitz has a lot to worry about--his bar mitzvah is coming soon, his Jewish and Chinese grandmothers argue about everything, his teammates for the upcoming trivia contest, Scott and Hector, do not like each other, he is beginning to notice girls, and Scott has persuaded him to begin digging a fallout shelter just in case the Cold War heats up.

Feo’s mother trains domesticated wolves to be able to fend for themselves in the snowy wilderness of Russia, and Feo is following in her footsteps to become a wolf wilder. But not everyone is enamored with the wolves, or with the fact that Feo and her mother are turning them wild. And when her mother is taken captive, Feo must travel through the cold, harsh woods to save her—and learn from her wolves how to survive.