SUGGESTED NOVELS FOR SUMMER READING

Students who read regularly cultivate their imaginations and improve their vocabularies-- which results in significantly enhanced opportunities to succeed in secondary school English and Humanities courses.  While we do not want students entering Pinetree to preread any of the books they will study in their high school classes, we do want to encourage students to read during their summer months.  The following list includes a variety of types of novels which would be appropriate for summer reading but which you may not have had the opportunity to read during your middle and elementary school years.  Select a few books that interest you!  If you find a novel you really enjoy, check at the public library for other books by that author!  Ask the librarians at the public library for additional suggestions.  The following novels are arranged in ascending order of difficulty by genre (although there is some overlap):

ADVENTURE

• Flight #116 is Down (Caroline Cooney)
• King of the Wind (Marguerite Henry)
• Call it Courage (Armstrong Sperry)
• Julie of the Wolves (Jean Craighead George)
• Banner in the Sky (James R. Ullman)
• Yukon Adventure (Franklin McClaughlin)
• Witch’s Fang (Heather Kellerhals-Stewart)
• Hatchet  and  The Island  (Gary Paulsen)
• Kit's Wilderness  (David Almond)
• Downriver  and  Far North (Will Hobbs)
• City of the Beasts  (Isabel Allende –magic realism)
• Castaways of the Flying Dutchman  and  The Angel’s Command (Brian Jacques)

 CLASSICS

• Sounder  (William Armstrong)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O’Dell)
• Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls)
• Copper Sunrise (Bryan Buchan)
• The Wizard of Oz (Frank Baum)
• The Secret Garden (Francis Hodgson Burnett)
• The Black Stallion (Walter Farley)
• Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
• Call of the Wild (Jack London)
• 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Jules Verne)
• Anne of Green Gables (and other novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery)

FANTASY

• Holes  (Louis Sachar)
• Clever Lazy (Joan Bodger)   
• Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt)
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe  (and other novels in C.S. Lewis's  “Narnia Tales” series)
• The Singing Stone (O. R. Melling)
• Tom’s Midnight Garden  (Philippa Pearce)
• Redwall  (and other novels in this series by Brian Jacques) 
• Silverwing  and  Sunwing  and  Firewing  (Kenneth Oppel)
• A Wrinkle in Time (and other novels by Madeline L’Engle)
• The Sword in the Stone (T. H. White)
• Dragonsong  and  Dragonsinger  (Anne McCaffrey)
• The Belgariad series (David Eddings)
• The Golden Compass Trilogy (Philip Pullman)
• The Hobbit  and  Lord of the Rings Trilogy (J. R. R. Tolkien)

THE FUTURE / SCIENCE FICTION

• The Giver  and Gathering Blue (Lois Lowry)
• Galax-Arena (Gillian Rubinstein)
• Eva (Peter Dickinson)
• The Keeper of the Isis Light (Monica Hughes)
• Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
• Have Spacesuit Will Travel (Robert Heinlein)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)

HISTORICAL FICTION

• Catherine, Called Birdie  and Matilda Bone (Karen Cushman)
• Margy (Margaret Smith)
• A Circle of Silver (Maxine Trottier)
• The Shakespeare Stealer (Gary Blackwood)
• Anna of Byzantium (Tracy Barrett)
• Girl with the Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier)
• The Upstairs Room (Johanna Reiss)
• Number the Stars (Lois Lowry)
• Nothing to Fear (Jackie French Koller)
• Underground to Canada (Barbara Smucker)
• Night (Elie Wiesel)

HUMOUROUS FICTION

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach (and other books by Roald Dahl)
• A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag (Gordon Korman)
• The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole  (Sue Townsend)
• Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging : Confessions of Georgie Nicholson  (Louise Rennison)
• Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy (Douglas Adams)                            

MYSTERIES

• Face on the Milk Carton  and  Whatever Happened to Janie? (Caroline Cooney)
• The Watcher (Margaret Buffie)
• Vancouver Nightmare  and  The Unmasking at K’san (Eric Wilson)
• Locked in Time (Lois Duncan)
• The Other Side of Dark (Joan Nixon Lowery)
• Murder on the Orient Express (and other mysteries by Agatha Christie)

REALISTIC FICTION /SOCIAL ISSUES

• The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 (Christopher Paul Curtis)
• Mama’s Going to Buy You a Mockingbird (Jean Little)
• The Breadwinner (Deborah Ellis)
• The Friends (Guy Rosa)        
• Hoops (Walter Dean Myers)
• Daniel’s Story (Carol Matas)
• Circling Vultures (Sylvia Sikundar)
• Walkabout (James Vance Marshall)
• Silent Boy (Lois Lowry)
• Homecoming (and other novels by Cynthia Voigt)
• Out of the Blue (Sarah Ellis)
• Children of the River (Linda Crew)
• The Outsiders (and other novels by S. E. Hinton)
• The Other Side of Truth (Beverley Naidoo)
• Park’s Quest (Katherine Paterson)
• Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin)