Category Must Read Middle Grade

Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodson  Memoir Ages 9-12 Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in…

Bridge to Terabithia Katherine Paterson Realistic Fiction Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. And he almost is, until the new girl in school, Leslie Burke, outpaces him. The…

Boy Tales of Childhood Roald Dahl Ages 8-12 From his own life, of course! As full of excitement and the unexpected as his world-famous, best-selling books, Roald Dahl’s tales of his own childhood are completely fascinating and fiendishly funny. Did…

Belle Prater’s Boy Ruth White Ages 10-14 Around 5:00 a.m. on a warm Sunday morning on October 1953, my Aunt Belle left her bed and vanished from the face of the earth. Everyone in Coal Station, Virginia, has a theory…

Beauty Robin McKinley Ages 10-14 Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in appearance, she can perhaps make up for in courage. …

An Elephant in the Garden Michael Morpurgo World War II  Age 10+ Lizzie and Karl’s mother is a zoo keeper; the family has become attached to an orphaned elephant named Marlene, who will be destroyed as a precautionary measure so…

All The Lovely Bad Ones Mary Downing Hahn Mystery When Travis and his sister, Corey, learn that their grandmother’s quiet Vermont inn has a history of ghost sightings, they decide to do a little “haunting” of their own. But their…

Afternoon of the Elves Janet Taylor Lisle Fantasy Ages 8-12 Anything might happen in Sara-Kate’s backyard. For that matter, anything was happening. For nine-year-old Hillary Lenox, being friends with Sara-Kate Connolly is a complicated business. Sara-Kate’s clothes don’t match, her…

A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L’ Engle Fantasy 9+ It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset…

A Handful of Stars Cynthia Lord  Ages 8-10 When Lily’s blind dog, Lucky, slips his collar and runs away across the wide-open blueberry barrens of eastern Maine, it’s Salma Santiago who manages to catch him. Salma, the daughter of migrant…