Chippewa Middle School

Summer Reading Assignment:

Read at least one book off the Rebecca Caudill book list.

Gotta Keep Reading

Here’s a video created by teachers and students at Ocoee Middle School in Orange County, Florida to promote wide reading.The music is from the Black-Eyed Peas song, “I Got a Feeling.”“Gotta Keep Reading”

Rebecca Caudill Book Award

What is the Award?The Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award is an Illinois award.Books are nominated by children in grades 4-8. A list of 20 titles is sent to participating elementary and middle schools. Students read books on the list and vote for their favorites each February. The winning title is announced in March. The March 2012 winner was Powerless, by Matthew Cody.

Your TaskYou will learn about the 20 books nominated for the March 2013 award. As you watch, write notes on your reference page to help you make your decision. Pay attention to Lexile numbers. Your most recent MAP printout tells your recommended Lexile range.Don’t worry if a book’s Lexile is lower than what you can handle. You don’t always have to be reading at the top of your Lexile range. The books were chosen because they are interesting to students your age. Point of Reference: The Lexile of Powerless, the 2012 winner, is 800. The Lexile of Hunger Games, the 2011 winner, is 810.

Anything But Typical Author: Nora Raleigh Baskin

Summary: Jason, a twelve-year-old autistic boy who wants to become a writer, befriends a girl who posts stories to the same online site as he does. But as desperate as Jason is to meet her, he's terrified that if they do meet, Rebecca will only see his autism and not who Jason really is.

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Lexile: 640

Video

Black Radishes Author: Susan Lynn Meyer

Summary: In this WWII novel, Gustave, who was forced to move from Paris to the countryside after his parents decided it was not safe for Jews to live in the city, meets a Catholic girl named Nicole, whose family is part of the French Resistance. Together they devise a plan to rescue his best friend, his cousin, and their families from the Nazi-occupied territory.

Genre: Historical Fiction (WWII)

Lexile: 790

When Paris is captured by the Nazis, Gustave knows that Marcel, Jean-Paul, and their families must make it out of the occupied zone. And when he learns that his new friend Nicole works for the French Resistance, he comes up with a plan that just might work. But going into Occupied France is a risky thing to do when you are Jewish. And coming back alive? That is nearly impossible.

Born to Fly Author: Michael Ferrari

Summary: In 1942, Bird McGill, an eleven-year-old tomboy obsessed with flying, withholds judgment when her classmates maintain that the new Japanese-American student Kenji Fujita is a spy. Bird realizes that Kenji is just as American as she is when together they find evidence of real spy activity during their research for a class project.

Genre: Historical Fiction (WWII time period)

Lexile: 760

Video … about what inspired the author to write the book

Bounce Author: Natasha Friend

Summary: Thirteen-year-old Evyn's world is turned upside-down when her father, widowed since she was a toddler, suddenly decides to marry a woman with six children. Even worse is his decision to move with Ev and her older brother from Maine to Boston, where he enrolls her in a private school.Evyn wonders…

Does her dad still love her mom even though he married Eleni?

How is she going to get the mean girls at school to leave her alone?

Why does her best friend Jules seem to have changed so much?

Her stepmom is pregnant. Where are they going to put another kid?

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Lexile: 570

Countdown Author: Deborah Wiles

Summary: As eleven-year-old Franny Chapman deals with drama at home and with her best friend, she tries to understand the larger problems in the world. This documentary novel, full of historic quotations and photographs, takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in the weeks after President Kennedy announces that Russia is sending nuclear missiles to Cuba.

Genre: Historical Fiction (1960’s)

Lexile: 800

Video

Dark Life Author: Kat Falls

Summary: When fifteen-year-old Ty, who has always lived on the ocean floor, joins Topside girl Gemma in the frontier's underworld to seek and stop outlaws who threaten his home, they learn that the government may pose an even greater threat than the outlaws.

Genre: Science Fiction

Lexile: 690

Video

As Easy As Falling Off the

Face of the Earth

Author: Lynne Rae Perkins

Summary: A teenage boy on the way to summer camp encounters one comedic calamity after another when the train he’s riding leaves him behind, in the middle of nowhere. He has $83.00, a cell phone, and the clothes on his back. He can’t reach his family. From now on, everything comes down to luck.

Genre: Adventure / Humor

Lexile: 530

Video

The Graveyard Book Author: Neil Gaiman

Summary: At the age of eighteen months, an orphan named Bod, short for Nobody, is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard after his family is murdered. Bod is raised lovingly and carefully to the age of eighteen years by the graveyard’s community of ghosts and otherworldly creatures.

Genre: Fantasy (Ghost Story)

Lexile: 820

Video

How to Survive Middle

School Author: Donna Gephart

Summary: When eleven-year-old David Greenberg's best friend makes the start of middle school even worse than he feared it would be, David becomes friends with Penny, who shares his love of television shows. David and Penny post one of their skits on YouTube, making them wildly popular--online, at least.

Genre: Realistic Fiction / Humor

Lexile: 660

Video

Inside Out & Back Again

Author: Thanhha Lai

Summary: Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam because of the war and resettle in Alabama.

Genre: Poetry/ Historical Fiction (Vietnam War Era)

Lexile: 800

Video

Love, Aubrey

Author: Suzanne LaFleur

Summary: Eleven-year-old Aubrey finds herself living alone after losing her father and sister in a car accident and being abandoned by her grief-stricken mother. Later, she moves in with her Gram. Aubrey cannot talk about what happened, so she writes letters as a way of dealing with her loss.

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Lexile: 570

Link to website where you can listen to an audio clip from the book. (Listen to as much as you want; it’s long!)

One Crazy Summer Author: Rita Williams-Garcia

Summary: In the summer of 1968, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters travel from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know. They arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, resents the intrusions and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Genre: Historical Fiction (Civil Rights)

Lexile: 750

Video of Rita Williams-Garcia talking about how she uses her life experiences in her writing

Out of My Mind Author: Sharon M. Draper

Summary: Considered by many to be mentally retarded, a brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time.

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Lexile: 700

Video

Ninth Ward Author: Jewell Parker Rhodes

Summary: In New Orleans' Ninth Ward, twelve-year-old Lanesha, who can see spirits, and her adopted grandmother have no choice but to stay and weather the storm as Hurricane Katrina bears down upon them.

Genre: Realistic Fiction (Hurricane Katrina)

Lexile: 470

Video

Shooting Kabul

Author: N. H. Senzai

Summary: Fleeing in 2011 from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in a truck with other refugees, eleven-year-old Fadi’s family loses his six-year-old sister Mariam. When they immigrate to the San Francisco Bay Area, efforts to find Mariam are further complicated because of the 9-11 tragedy. Fadi enters a photo contest in hopes of winning a way back to find his sister.

Genre: Realistic Fiction / Survival Story

Lexile: 800

Question: Why would the 9-11 attacks hinder the family’s efforts to go back and find Mariam?

Smile Author: Raina Telgemeier

Summary: The author relates, in graphic form, her experiences with surgeries, braces, and embarrassing headgear after she injures her two front teeth. During this time, she is also dealing with the trials and tribulations of the middle school years.

Genre: Autobiography / Graphic Novel

Lexile: 419

Video

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

Author: Tom Angleberger

Summary: In this funny portrait of the dynamics of a sixth-grade class and of the greatness that sometimes comes in unlikely packages, Dwight, a loser, talks to his classmates via an origami finger puppet of Yoda, a Star Wars character. If that weren't strange enough, the puppet is uncannily wise and prescient.

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Lexile: 760

Video

Trash Author: Andy Mulligan

Summary: In an unnamed Third World country, in the not-so-distant future, three "dumpsite boys" make a living picking through the mountains of garbage on the outskirts of a large city. One unlucky-lucky day, they find something very special and very mysterious that brings with it terrifying consequences.

Genre: Mystery

Lexile: 850

Video

Turtle in Paradise

Author: Jennifer L. Holm

Summary: In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida

Genre: Historical Fiction (The Depression)

Lexile: 610

Video

The Year Money Grew on Trees Author: Aaron Hawkins

Summary: In early 1980s New Mexico, thirteen-year-old Jackson Jones recruits his cousins and sisters to help tend an elderly neighbor's neglected apple orchard for the chance to make big money and perhaps, to own the orchard.

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Lexile: 810

Excerpt: "Jackson, how much is each apple worth?"  I looked back at her like she had asked me to build a TV.  I had no idea how much an apple was worth.  All I knew was we needed enough of them to add up to the $8,000 that the contract said I owed Mrs. Nelson.

Reading’s a Good Time

Under the direction of Eric Williams, CEO of Out of the Box Entertainment, teens from De Soto, Texas produced the De

Soto Public Library's project of the summer, entitled "Reading's a Good Time.” Their goal was to promote literacy in teens and

children.Make an investment in your future! Choose some good books,

and enjoy your summer reading!

“Reading’s a Good Time!”