Academic year marshall Middle School 7th Grade Seminar reading list

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Albom, Mitch* The Five People You Meet in Heaven/Fiction/I 150

Eddie is an eighty-three-year-old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life fixing rides at an amusement park. After a tragic accident kills him, he awakes in the afterlife where he learns that heaven is a place where your life is explained to you by five people. One by one, Eddie’s five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his “meaningless” life and revealing the purpose of his life on earth.

Mitch Albom rediscovers Morrie, his college professor from nearly twenty years previous, in the last months of the Morrie's life. Even though Morrie was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class": lessons in how to live.

Alcott, Louisa Little Women/Fiction/I 550

While their father is away in the Civil War, the four sisters and their mother work hard to maintain a happy and peaceful home.

A teenage girl struggles to find her place in a high school where she has become an outcast because of a dark secret she holds within her.

A young boy tries to deal with a newfound high school reputation after being arrested the semester previous. He struggles with having a crush on his enemy’s sister, fighting with his father and trying to live up to everyone’s expectations.

Warriors Don't Cry (unabridged) 325

In 1957, Melba Pattillo turned sixteen and became a warrior on the front lines of a civil rights firestorm. Following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board Education, she was one of nine teenagers chosen to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. This is her remarkable story.
Bechard, Margaret* Hanging on to Max/Contemporary Teen Fiction/B 200

A high school boy tries to raise his baby alone. This is a realistic and touching novel.

When his father killed another brave, Thomas Black Bull and his parents sought refuge in the wilderness. There they took up life as it had been in the old days, hunting, fishing, and battling for survival.

In Fahrenheit 451, firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. Guy Montag knew what he had to do.

Pitting scientific terrorists against the cardinals of Vatican City, this thriller is full of Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama.

Intense is the word for Ender's Game. Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has taken to breeding military geniuses and then training them in the arts of war.

Janie's life finally seems to be settling down. However, she really misses Reeve Shields, her boyfriend who is away at college. Reeve is overwhelmed by his new college life, and when he is asked to host a late-night radio show, he cannot turn it down.

On his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers he is the last of the Old Ones, dedicated to fighting the forces of evil. Will searches for the six magical signs that will be needed for the battle between the Dark and the Light.

Christopher, Matt, and Stout, Glenn..Muhamad Ali/Biography/B 115

Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight champion, is one of the most recognized and beloved sports figures in the world. Read about his amazing career in this biography.

David Faber: Polish-born Holocaust survivor; Nazi victim from 1939-45, survivor of eight concentration camps; witness to the Nazi murders of his parents, brother Romek, and five of his six sisters; partisan resistance fighter at age 14; liberated from Bergen-Belsen 1945, age 18, weight 72 pounds; author and award-winning lecturer and educator.

The experiences of a boy caught in a futuristic world of cloning, drugs, and violence.

This is a story of a young boy’s journey to self-realization through a court-imposed anger management course after hitting his girlfriend.

The autobiographical reminiscences of a young Jewish girl coming of age during World

War II describes her life in hiding from the Nazis and offers a poignant study of the

tragedy of the Holocaust.

Twelve-year-old Helen Keller lived in a prison of silence and darkness. Born deaf, blind, and mute, with no way to express herself or comprehend those around her, she flew into primal rages against anyone who tried to help her, fighting with a strength born of furious, unknowing desperation.

Gibson, William* Neuromancer/Science Fiction/A 290

Case was the best interface cowboy who ever ran in earth's computer matrix. Then he double-crossed the wrong people.

Giles, Gail*………………………Shattering Glass/Fiction/B…………………………………………….225

Rob sets out to make the school nerd the most popular guy in school, but when things do not go exactly as he planned, Rob’s rage takes over.

Golding, William* Lord of the Flies/Fiction/I 220

Lord of the Flies is a classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane- wrecked on a deserted island. The fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted.

This best-selling classic tells the story of one of the world's greatest scientific adventures. Jane Goodall was a young secretarial school graduate when the legendary Louis Leakey chose her to undertake a landmark study of chimpanzees in the wild.

When German prisoners of war are brought to her Arkansas town during World War II, twelve-year-old Patty, a Jewish girl, befriends one of them and must deal with the

consequences of that friendship.
Griffin, John Howard* Black Like Me/Nonfiction/I 175

The author tells of his experiences after he darkened his skin and traveled through the South in order to find out how it feels to be black.

A charming and enlightening look at how a dog can affect a family’s life.

Helfer, Ralph* Modoc/Nonfiction/B 325

Spanning seven decades and three continents, this sweeping saga follows the life and

times of a remarkable elephant and her faithful companion and trainer. Ralph Helfer,

founder of Eden International, owned Modoc for the last 20 years of her life and

witnessed the joyous reunion of the elephant and her trainer.
Hemingway, Ernest For Whom the Bell Tolls/Fiction/I 470

Drawing on his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, this is a story of an American fighting in Spain, and his suicidal stand for his beliefs.

This story portrays a classic Byronic hero who finds an old Cuban fisherman in a relentless battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Paul Atreides moves with his family to the planet Dune and is forced into exile when his father's government is overthrown.

Hiassen, Carl…………………………Hoot/Fiction/I…………………………………………………………..300

A young boy fights the building of a chain restaurant in order to save an endangered species of owl.
Hickam, Homer October Sky/Autobiography/I 400

Looking back after a distinguished NASA career, Hickam shares the story of his youth in a coal mining town and his interest in rocketry.

A young girl tells the story of her life and her family’s as they are uprooted during the Khmer Rouge takeover in Cambodia.

According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.

Rusty-James is not book-smart; he relies on his fists instead of his brains. So far whenever he gets into trouble, his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy, has bailed him out. Then one day Rusty-James's world comes apart in an explosive chain of events and this time the Motorcycle Boy is not around to pick up the pieces.

Easy going, thoughtless, and direct, Tex at 15 likes everyone and everything. Life with his 17-year-old brother, Mason, would be just about perfect if only Mason would stop complaining about Pop, who has not been home in five months. Mason just wants to leave Oklahoma for good. Can Tex keep it all together?

Mark and Bryon are practically brothers—they have no family to speak of, but they eventually come to a point in their lives where they have difficult choices to make; choices that might separate them forever.

An enthralling tale of a boy growing up before and during the political turmoil in Afghanistan (1970’s-1980’s).

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes vividly the life in the camp and the humiliations

suffered by the detainees during World War II in the United States.
Jenkins, A.M*…………………..Damage/Fiction/B………………………………………………………..210

A high school senior has had a feeling of depression, the source of which is unknown to him. He struggles with balancing sports, his friends, and his new girlfriend, and his depression continues to deepen regardless of the good in his life.

After moving to California from Mexico, fourteen-year-old Francisco works in the fields and faces poverty and discrimination, but he fights to improve his life and complete his education.

Keller, Helen* The Story of My Life/Autobiography/B 200

Helen Keller would not be bound by conditions. Rendered deaf and blind at 19 months by scarlet fever, she learned to read (in several languages) and even speak, eventually graduating with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904, where as a student she wrote The Story of My Life.

Keyes, Daniel* Flowers for Algernon/Fiction/I 220

In this classic story that inspired the hit movie Charlie, Charlie Gordon, a retarded adult who cleans floors and toilets, becomes a genius through an experimental operation.

A young girl lives with the guilt of accidentally killing her mother when she was a child. Her father is mean and abusive, so she runs away with her housekeeper. She ends up living with a trio of sisters who used to know her mother. She learns the truth about her mother while creating deep bonds with the sisters.

Kingsolver, Barbara* The Bean Trees/Fiction/I 230

Young, bright Taylor Greer leaves her poverty-stricken life in Kentucky and heads west, picking up an abandoned Native American baby girl whom she names Turtle and finds a new home in Tucson with Mattie, an old woman who takes in Central American refugees.

Kingsolver, Barbara* Pigs in Heaven/Fiction/I 450

Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, leading to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's moment of celebrity draws her into a crisis of historical proportions that will envelop not only her and her mother, Taylor, but everyone else who touched their lives in a complex web connecting their future with their past.

Knowles' classic story tells of two friends at boarding school during World War II. This is one of the most starkly moving parables ever written about the dark forces that brood over the tortured world of adolescence.

This is a story of a young man’s journey to Alaska where he met his death.

The author of Into Thin Air describes his spring 1996 trek to Mt. Everest, an expedition that ended in disaster, claiming the lives of eight climbers, and explains why he survived, in a definitive, firsthand account of the tragedy.

Four English schoolchildren find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magical land of Narnia, where they come to the aid of Aslan, the golden lion, in his battle against the White Witch, who has cursed the land with eternal winter.

Polly and Digory discover that Digory’s uncle has an interesting form of magic. They are able to transport between worlds and find fun and danger. They are witness to the creation of the land of Narnia, which is where their story ends, but the world of Narnia continues to live on.

Limon, Graciela………………The Song of the Hummingbird/Historical Fiction/I……….220

From Aztec princess to slave and concubine, Hummingbird, recounts her life during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. With a sense of confidence and freedom, she relates her tale to Father Benito and forces him to see the conquest through the eyes of the conquered.

Lipsyte, Robert The Contender/Fiction/B 165

Struggling to live respectably in a rundown ghetto, Alfred Brooks defends himself against junkies, thieves, and gangs.

Buck, half St. Bernard, half Shepherd, is kidnapped form his safe California home and thrown into a life-and-death struggle on the frozen Artic wilderness. Buck learns many hard lessons as a sled dog: the lesson of the leash, of the cold, of near-starvation and cruelty. The greatest lesson he learns from his last owner, John Thornton is the power of love and loyalty. Yet always, even at the side of the human he loves, Buck feels the pull in his bones, an urge to answer his wolf ancestors as they howl to him.

Humphrey Van Weyden, rescued by the crew of the Ghost, becomes an unwilling sailor under the command of Wolf Larsen.

This is an absorbing, minute-by-minute account of the demise of the Titanic, the massive luxury liner that housed a French sidewalk cafe and a grand staircase, among

other extravagances, but failed to provide enough lifeboats for the 2,207 passengers on board.
Lowry, Lois* The Giver/Science Fiction/B 190

In a world without social ills, a boy approaches the time when he will receive a life

assignment from the Elders, but his selection leads him to a mysterious man who reveals the dark secrets behind the utopian facade.
Marshall, Catherine* Christy/Fiction/B 500

Christy is the story of a nineteen-year-old girl who goes to the Smoky Mountains to teach school.
McBride, James* The Color of Water/Autobiography/I 290

A loving memoir tells the true story of a young woman who was raised as a rabbi's daughter, fled from Poland to the United States, married a man from Harlem, founded a church, and put twelve children through college.

A boy is on trial for felony murder. He is terrified of jail, the trial, and everyone around him. To escape, he tells the story as if it were a movie. In his script, the reader sees his journal entries as well as the courtroom drama unfold.

Enrique’s mother leaves him as a young boy to find work in America. After getting into trouble and missing his mother for a decade, Enrique decides to try to sneak into the United States illegally. This story follows his struggles as he rides atop trains, is beaten, and goes hungry, all to see his mother again. When he finally reaches her, their reunion is not as wonderful as they thought it would be.

Black Elk tells the tale of his lost Indian nation and its values.

Nguyen, Kien* The Unwanted/Fiction/I 340

The Unwanted is a memoir of a biracial Vietnamese boy who experiences the fall of South Vietnam, which serves to document his struggles to get to the United States.
Nolan, Han* Dancing on the Edge/Fiction/B 240

A young girl from a dysfunctional family creates for herself an alternative world which

nearly results in her death but which ultimately leads her to reality.

O’Dell, Scott*……………….Island of the Blue Dolphins/Historical Fiction/B 185

A haunting and unusual story based on the fact that in the early 1800s an Indian girl

spent 18 years alone on a rocky island far off the coast of California. A quiet acceptance of fate characterizes her ordeal.

The Spanish slavers were an ever present threat to the Navajo way of life. This historical novel is about a young Navajo girl who is kidnapped and enslaved by Spaniards and then rescued by her husband-to-be.

In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always watching and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions.

Peck, Richard Something For Joey/Biography/B 175

Something for Joey is a true-life story of pro-football star John Cappelletti and his younger brother Joey, stricken with leukemia.

Pelzer, Dave* A Child Called It/Nonfiction/B 184

The Chosen is the story of the friendship that develops between two Jewish boys in New York City.

Fighting off a pack of starving wolves, wrestling alligators in the swamp, romping with bear cubs, drawing off the venom of a giant rattlesnake bite with the heart of a fresh- killed deer—it is all in a day's work for the Baxter family of the Florida scrublands. But young Jody Baxter is not content with these electrifying escapades, or even with the cozy comfort of home with Pa and Ma. He wants a pet, a friend with whom he can share his quiet cogitations. Jody gets his pet, a frisky fawn he calls Flag, but that's not all. With Flag comes a year of life lessons, frolicking times, and achingly hard decisions.

This is the story of fourteen-year-old Jay Berry Lee, his dog Rowdy, and their unforgettable summer along an old Ozark river.

Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains, and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley. Glory and victory were coming to them, but sadness waited too.

A teenage deaf girl finds solace in her friendship with an old man and his chimpanzee. With a mother who adamantly refuses to let her learn sign language, she realizes that she desperately needs to move beyond the limitations of her family and pursue her goals while embracing her disability. When the elderly man dies, his chimpanzee is left to fate until the deaf girl finds the strength to rescue the animal.

The story of the greatest baseball player who ever lived, told in his own words, spans his life and includes the highs and lows, friendships, loves, and feuds, and career milestones of the man who symbolizes America's favorite game.

A young girl from a wealthy Mexican family loses her father. Her mother chooses to cross the border illegally to escape from the controlling family, and the girl and her mother are forced to adapt to living as immigrant workers.

Sebold, Alice* The Lovely Bones/Mystery/I 320

A murdered girl looks down from heaven, watching her family change as her murderer is sought.

Whether working as a carriage horse on a grand country estate, or being ridden

through the night on a lifesaving mission, Black Beauty's loyalty and sweet nature never fail.
Shelley, Mary* Frankenstein/Science Fiction/A 250

Frankenstein is the famous story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the monster.

This is a novel about the survivors of an atomic war, who face an inevitable end as radiation poisoning moves toward Australia from the North.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair's extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is an American masterpiece of a young girl's coming of age and beginnings of wisdom in turn-of-the-century New York.

After a fifteen-year-old Sioux finds a sacred stick, unusual things begin to happen to his family.

A group of kids create an imaginary world based on their fascination with ancient Egypt. After a scare in the town, they begin to wonder how serious their game might actually be.

A young boy loses his family at a young age, so he decides to run away and fend for himself. He becomes the tie between the two racist sides of town – the black side and the white side.

A young orphan girl, Heidi, goes to live with her grouchy grandfather in the Swiss Alps and eventually wins his heart in this classic tale.

This novel chronicles the migration of the “Okies” to California during the 1930’s.

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas

Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
Steinbeck, John……………… The Grapes of Wrath/Fiction/A 620

John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression follows the western movement of one family and a nation in search of work and human dignity.

This is tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him.

This is a story about a great pearl, a Mexican community, and great dreams and powers in a novel of largesse and quiet profundity.

This novel tells a story of a young boy and life on his father's California ranch, raising a sorrel colt.

Danny is a paisano who inherits two houses after he comes back from the war. After his friends burn down one of them, they all crowd into Danny’s house and continually invite new roommates to live with them. Sometimes humorous, sometimes sentimental, Steinbeck weaves their lives together through vignettes broken up by chapter. Although they fight, their loyalty to each other is extraordinary.

Stevenson, R. L.* Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/Science Fiction/I 100

A kind and well-respected doctor can turn himself into a murderous madman by taking a secret drug he has created.

While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.

Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess, Myridden Emrys—or as he would later be known, Merlin—leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents and visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son, taking him from prophesying before the High King Vortigern to the crowning of Uther Pendragon and the conception of Arthur—king for once and always.

This classic gothic novel, is the hypnotic story of the undead creatures of the night— and the human lives they touch—as they relentlessly seek to satiate an accursed craving for their only sustenance: human blood.

Tan, Amy* The Joy Luck Club/Fiction/I 350

In 1949, four Chinese women drawn together by the shadow of their past begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah-jongg, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club—and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

Taylor, Mildred* Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry/Fiction/B 275

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is the vivid story of a black family whose warm ties to each other and their land give them the strength to defy rural Southern racism during the Depression.

After the Germans torpedoed the freighter on which Phillip and his mother are traveling from wartime Curacao to the U.S., Phillip finds himself dependent on Timothy, an old, black West Indian sailor. Shipwrecked, there are just the two of them. This is the story of their struggle for survival and of Phillip's efforts to adjust to his new disability, blindness, and to understand the dignified, wise, and loving old man who is his companion.

Elves, dwarves, hobbits, and men are caught in the spell of an evil ring that corrupts.

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to share in an adventure from which he may never return.

This is a short story about a schizophrenic boy who is caught in the middle of a drug store robbery. It chronicles his fears of being without his medication.

Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from cerebral palsy and cannot function, relates his perceptions of his life, his family, and his condition, especially as he believes his father is planning to kill him.

This book shares the experiences of a severely disabled World War I veteran who relates the horrors of war.

A young Chinese man is sent to his family’s home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis, and this is the story of his adventures with four local residents he meets.

Huck, escaping from the confines of his existence on the shore, has found life to be free and easy living on a raft with Jim, a black man fleeing from slavery. Things become more difficult, however, when Huck is faced with the crucial decision of whether or not to turn over Jim to his rightful owner.

Tom Sawyer has an eye for adventure and is always getting into scrapes with his friends and partners in crime, Huck Finn and Joe Harper. His escapades often lead him into dangerous and desperate situations, but he always turns these to his advantage.

Wells, H. G.* The Time Machine/Science Fiction/B 150

The story begins with a revolutionary Victorian scientist who claims to have invented a machine that allows him to travel through time. Using flashbacks, he recounts his adventures in the futurist world he visits in his time machine to a group of skeptical friends.
Wells, H. G.* The War of the Worlds/Science Fiction/B 200

With advanced machines of destructions, aliens from another planet swoop down on

planet Earth and begin their conquest.
Wiesel, Elie* Night/Fiction/I 120

Night chronicles the atrocities of living as a Jew during the Holocaust.
Yep, Laurence* Dragonwings/Fiction/B 240

In the early twentieth century, a young Chinese boy joins his father in San Francisco and helps him realize his dream of making a flying machine.