Summer Reading 2025 Middle Grade Suggestions

Updated May 7, 2025
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Art club
Doucet, Rashad
Paper Book
An ALA Best Graphic Novel of 2024 Inspired by the author's own childhood, this contemporary graphic novel paints a picture of an aspiring young artist on a mission to prove that the arts are worth fighting for.  Dale Donavan...
Art year by year
Bowden, Alice
Paper Book
Travel through time to discover the paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects that enrich our world. Are you seeking a lavishly illustrated timeline that showcases a glorious gallery of art from all around the world? Then SI Art Year By Year may be the book for you!
Chasing Vermeer
Balliett, Blue
Paper Book
This bewitching first novel is a puzzle, wrapped in a mystery, disguised as an adventure, and delivered as a work of art. When a book of unexplainable occurances brings Petra Andalee & Calder Pillay together, strange things start to happen: seemingly unrelated events connect, an...
Lunch money
Clements, Andrew
Audiobook
Greg had started looking around the cafeteria, and everywhere he looked, he saw quarters. He saw kids trading quarters for ice cream sandwiches and cupcakes and cookies at the dessert table. He saw kids over at the school store trading quarters for neon pens and sparkly pencils, and for the little...
National Geographic book of nature poetry : more than 200 poems with photographs that float, zoom, and bloom!
Lewis, J. Patrick
Paper Book
When words in verse are paired with the awesomeness of nature, something magical happens! Beloved former U.S. Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis curates an exuberant poetic celebration of the natural world in this stellar collection of nature poems. From trickling streams to deafening thrunderstorms to...
Radiant child : the story of young artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
Steptoe, Javaka
Paper Book
Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award! Jean-Michel Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen. But before that, he...
Start Here: Draw : How to Be an Artist Without Trying
Clinch, Moira.
Paper Book
If you've always wished you could draw, but have no idea where to start, this guide is the place-offering progressive art activities that develop skill and confidence.
Upstaged (A Graphic Novel)
Easter, Robin.
Vincent's starry night and other stories : a children's history of art
Bird, Michael
Paper Book
Go on an enthralling journey through 40,000 years of art and learn about everything from cave paintings to Cubism! Written by educator and art historian Michael Bird, and illustrated by Kate Evans, Vincent's Starry Night and Other Stories is made up of 68 chapters of stories...
Zia erases the world
Barton, Bree
Paper Book
"Luminous, empowering, and full of heart-healing truths, this is a novel that belongs on every shelf."-Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award winning author For fans of Crenshaw and When You Trap a Tiger comes the extraordinary tale of a headstrong girl and the...

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