Recommended books for Grade 7-8

"If you don't have a slot, what are we going to do with you?"

It's called Twenty-One Nights with the Knights. But for Elvin Bishop--fourteen, overweight, and a self-proclaimed nonathlete--this summer sports "retreat" is more like the twenty-one trials of hell.

As everyone around him, including his best friends, slips smoothly into athletic "slots," Elvin is pounded on the football field, slammed on the baseball diamond, and tortured on the wrestling mat--always coming out a complete failure. But appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes real strength comes from breaking the rules rather than playing the game. And sometimes finding acceptance is less about fitting in than about making your own way--with grit and humor.

Bulletin Blue Ribbons 1995 (C)
1996 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1996 Best Books for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (ALA)
Books for Youth Editors' Choices 1995 (BL)
1996 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
Young Adult Choices for 1997 (IRA/CBC)

Anita Lobel was barely five years old when World War II began and the Nazis burst into her home in Kraków, Poland. Her life changed forever. She spent her childhood in hiding with her brother and their nanny, moving from countryside to ghetto to convent—where the Nazis finally caught up with them.

Since coming to the United States as a teenager, Anita has spent her life makingpictures. She has never gone back. She has never looked back. Until now.

Sonny's been an outsider all his life.

He has never fit into either world: the Moscondagas on the Reservation see him as white; whites see him as Indian. So far, Sonny's managed to harness his anger -- what he calls "the monster" -- in the boxing ring. But Sonny wants out of the Res. He's headed for New York City, where nobody can tell him what to do.

Sonny doesn't count on stepping into the middle of a drug war when he gets there -- or on tangling with a tough Harlem boxer-turned-cop named Alfred Brooks. Brooks seems to think that Sonny's got the talent to make it to the top -- to be a contender. But first Sonny's got to learn to be smart, take control of his life, and beat the monster. Only it isn't as easy as it sounds....

After a tumultuous year in New York City, the Austins are spending the summer on the small island where their grandfather lives. He's very sick, and watching his condition deteriorate as the summer passes is almost more than Vicky can bear. To complicate matters, she finds herself as the center of attention for three very different boys.
Zachary Grey, the troubled and reckless boy Vicky met last summer, wants her all to himself as he grieves the loss of his mother. Leo Rodney has been just a friend for years, but the tragic loss of his father causes him to turn to Vicky for comfort―and romance. And then there's Adam Eddington. Adam is only asking Vicky to help with his research on dolphins. But Adam―and the dolphins―may just be what Vicky needs to get through this heartbreaking summer.

That was the truth I came to in that long and frozen moment. This was my life. Not the life of any of the people around me, clamoring for blood, but mine. I had to make the decision, and I had to make it now, or it would be made for me.

OUTSIDERS

Widowed just two days after her marriage to a man twice her age, Marnie finds herself an outsider in the remote seaside village of Torcurra. Spurned by the townsfolk who suspect her involvement in her husband's death, she has only two friends: the local priest and the madman known as Raver, who is even more of an outcast than Marnie.

Marnie makes a remarkable discovery about Raver, whom she renames Raven, and the two forge a deep bond that begins to heal her own bruised heart. But the suspicious villagers see Raven's transformation as evidence of witchcraft, and suddenly Marnie finds herself facing an ordeal that threatens not only her future with Raven, but her very life.

?Scrumptious feasts, rollicking humor, swashbuckling heroes, faithful friends, and treacherous villains magically combine through three intertwined action-packed plots into one unforgettable, spellbinding story.?
?VOYA

The red words painted on the trailer caused quite a buzz around town and before an hour was up, half of Antler was standing in line with two dollars clutched in hand to see the fattest boy in the world.

Toby Wilson is having the toughest summer of his life. It's the summer his mother leaves for good; the summer his best friend's brother returns from Vietnam in a coffin. And the summer that Zachary Beaver, the fattest boy in the world, arrives in their sleepy Texas town. While it's a summer filled with heartache of every kind, it's also a summer of new friendships gained and old friendships renewed. And it's Zachary Beaver who turns the town of Antler upside down and leaves everyone, especially Toby, changed forever.

With understated elegance, Kimberly Willis Holt tells a compelling coming-of-age story about a thirteen-year-old boy struggling to find himself in an imperfect world. At turns passionate and humorous, this extraordinary novel deals sensitively and candidly with obesity, war, and the true power of friendship.

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town is the winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Andy is in a
world of trouble.

On the last day of a sea kayaking trip in southeast Alaska, fourteen-year-old Andy Galloway paddles away from his group to visit the nearby site where his archaeologist father died trying to solve the mystery of the first Americans. A sudden, violent storm blows Andy's kayak off course and washes him ashore on Admiralty Island, an immense wilderness known as the Fortress of the Bears. Struggling to survive, Andy encounters a dog running with wolves and then a man toting a stone-tipped spear. The wild man vanishes into the forest, but the dog reappears and leads Andy to a cave filled with Stone Age tools and weapons. Running for his life, Andy retreats deep into the cave, where danger, suspense, and discovery await.

Nick Abbott and Trent Dawson have nothing in common but basketball. Or so it seems. But as the basketball season progresses, their lives become unexpectedly intertwined. In this story of an unlikely bond, award-winning author Carl Deuker explores that dark and confusing place between loneliness and friendship, between faithfulness and betrayal. Filled with gripping game play, the novel will leave readers wondering how much they themselves would reach out to a kid like Trent.

The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.

Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to "collect organisms and dust for study." One of them falls to earth, landing ina desolate area of Arizona.

Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town's inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.

The terror has begun . . .