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)