Middle School Reads

Updated November 20, 2024
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Winnie Nash is not your sunshine
Melleby, Nicole
Paper Book
In this powerful novel by an award-winning author, 12-year-old Winnie Nash is forced to live with her grandma for the summer and finds herself torn between her family's secrets and the joy of celebrating Pride. Winnie Nash never used to have so many secrets. ...
Listen to this
Blecher, Jennifer
Paper Book
Secrets, rumors, shifting friendships, overbearing parents, and, on top of all that, a first dance--how does anyone survive seventh grade? Told from dual points of view, this novel about two tweens finding their voices and standing up for themselves is for fans of Lisa Yee, Leslie Connor, and...
The tenth mistake of Hank Hooperman
Choldenko, Gennifer
Paper Book
Readers will be rooting for a happy ending for Hank in Newbery-Honor-winner Gennifer Choldenko's gripping story of a boy struggling to hold his family together when his mom doesn't come home. When eleven-year-old Hank's mom doesn't come home, he takes care of his toddler sister,...
The color of sound
Isler, Emily Barth
Paper Book
"[A] salient celebration of family, music, and neurodiversity." --starred, Publishers Weekly "A top pick for any middle school collection; a perfect book club pick and a reminder to all that patience and understanding can change lives." --starred, School Library Journal Twelve-year...
The deadly daylight
Harrier, Ash
Paper Book
12-year-old Alice has a hard time making friends. Maybe it's because she works in a funeral home and receives messages from the dead. While the kids at school taunt her and call her "Alice in Zombieland," Alice England finds refuge at her father's funeral home, where the dead...
Summer at Squee
Wang, Andrea
Paper Book
From Newbery Honor-winning author Andrea Wang, a new middle grade novel about a Chinese American tween who attends a Boston-based Chinese cultural overnight camp-and the many ways it transforms her. Phoenny Fang plans to have the best summer ever. She's returning to Summertime...
Walkin' the dog
Lynch, Chris
Paper Book
"Lynch is back and better, smarter, and funnier than ever." --Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award Winner A boy learns how to be a friend from man's best friend in this "funny, fetching" (Booklist, starred review) middle grade novel about humans being able to change...
Olivetti
Millington, Allie
Paper Book
A heartfelt novel praised by Tom Hanks in the New York Times as including "a conclusion nearly impossible to divine and yet so perfect it includes that most tactile of memories..." Being a typewriter is not as easy as it looks. Surrounded by books (notorious attention...
Emma and the love spell
Ireland, Meredith
Paper Book
Witchlings meets The Parent Trap in this contemporary fantasy about a girl who tries to use her fickle witchy powers to keep her best friend (and secret crush!) from moving away. Twelve-year-old, Korean American adoptee Emma Davidson has a problem....
Not the worst friend in the world
Rellihan, Anne
Paper Book
Can Lou Bennett keep a secret? She'll do just about anything to prove herself to her new friend-and the best friend she betrayed-in this debut middle grade mystery with high emotional stakes. It's the thirty-fourth day of sixth grade, and eleven-year-old Lou wishes she could...
Not quite a ghost
Ursu, Anne
Paper Book
From the award-winning author of The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy comes an unforgettable and deeply personal story of the ghosts that surround us--and the ones we carry inside. The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn't fit among...

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