7th Grade
HISTORICAL FICTION
F AVI Crispin: The Cross of Lead. By Avi
Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth‐century England flees his village and meets a larger‐than‐life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.
F SEL The Invention of Hugo Cabret. By Brian Selznick.
When twelve‐year‐old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.
F CUR Bud, Not Buddy. By Christopher Paul Curtis.
Ten‐year‐old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father‐‐the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
F ELL Under a War‐Torn Sky. By L. M. Elliott
When Henry Forrester is shot down during a bombing run over France, the World War II pilot finds himself trapped behind enemy lines.
F BAR The Boy Who Dared. By Susan Campbell Bartoletti
In October, 1942, seventeen‐year‐old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti‐Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people.
F AVI The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. By Avi
Thirteen‐year‐old Charlotte Doyle, the only passenger on a voyage from England to America in 1832, must take serious matters into her own hands when she learns that the captain is murderous.
F PUL Ruby in the Smoke. By Philip Pullman
In nineteenth‐century London, sixteen‐year‐old Sally, a recent orphan, becomes involved in a deadly search for a mysterious ruby.
F RES Pirates! By Celia Rees
At the dawn of the eighteenth century, Nancy Kington and Minerva Sharpe, set sail from Jamaica on a pirate vessel, hoping to escape from an arranged marriage and slavery.
F RYA Esperanza Rising. By Pam Muñoz Ryan.
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labour camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.
F MOR Private Peaceful. By Michael Morpurgo
When Thomas Peaceful's older brother is forced to join the British Army, Thomas decides to sign up as well, although he is only fourteen years old, to prove himself to his country, his family, his childhood love, Molly, and himself.
F HES Stowaway. By Karen Hesse
A fictionalized journal relates the experiences of a young stowaway from 1768 to 1771 aboard the "Endeavor" which sailed around the world under Captain James Cook.
FANTASY
F HAU Godless. By Pete Hautman.
When sixteen‐year‐old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own.
F FUN Thief Lord. By Cornelia Funke
Orphaned brothers Prosper and Bo, having run away from their cruel aunt and uncle, decide to hide out in Venice where they fall in with the Thief Lord, a thirteen‐year‐old boy who leads a crime ring of street children.
F LEV Ella Enchanted. By Gail Carson Levine.
In this novel based on the story of Cinderella, Ella struggles against the childhood curse that forces her to obey any order given to her.
F CAS Fire. By Kristin Cashore.
In a kingdom called the Dells, Fire is the last human‐shaped monster, with unimaginable beauty and the ability to control the minds of those around her, but even with these gifts she cannot escape the strife that overcomes her world.
F SAG Magyk. By Angie Sage
Jenna learns that she is a princess found as a baby by the man she believed was her father and now she and Septimus, who was taken at birth by the midwife, are being threatened by the evil wizard, DomDaniel who intends to finish off the entire royal line.
F YOL Sword of the Rightful King. By Jane Yolen
Merlinnus the magician devises a way for King Arthur to prove himself the rightful king of England‐‐pulling a sword from a stone‐‐but trouble arises when someone else removes the sword first.
F STR The Amulet of Samarkand. By Jonathan Stroud
Nathaniel, a young magician's apprentice, becomes caught in a web of magical espionage, murder, and rebellion, after he summons the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Loveland.
F VAN Heir Apparent. By Vivian Vande Velde
While playing a total immersion virtual reality game of kings and intrigue, fourteen‐year‐old Giannine learns that demonstrators have damaged the equipment to which she is connected, and she must win the game quickly or be damaged herself.
F OPP Airborn. By Kenneth Oppel
Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl travelling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above the Earth's surface.
F NAP Beast. By Donna Jo Napoli
Elaborates on the tale of "Beauty and the Beast," told from the point of view of the beast and set in Persia.
F FAR The Sea of Trolls. By Nancy Farmer
After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half‐troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.
F COV Skull of Truth. By Bruce Colville
Charlie, a sixth‐grader with a compulsion to tell lies, acquires a mysterious skull that forces its owner to tell only the truth, causing some awkward moments before he understands its power.
PB LEW (MS) The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. By C.S. Lewis
Four English school children find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magic land of Narnia and assist Aslan, the golden lion, to triumph over the White Witch who has cursed the land with eternal winter.
SCIENCE FICTION
F COL The Hunger Games. By Suzanne Collins.
Sixteen‐year‐old Katniss Everdeen accidentally becomes a contender in the annual Hunger Games, a grave competition hosted by the Capitol where young boys and girls are pitted against one another in a televised fight to the death.
F FAR. The House of the Scorpion. By Nancy Farmer
In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patrón, the 142‐year‐old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.
F HAD Among the Hidden. By Margaret Petersen Haddix
In a future where the Population Police enforce the law limiting a family to only two children, Luke has lived all his twelve years in isolation and fear on his family's farm, until another "third" convinces him that the government is wrong.
F SHU The Schwa Was Here. By Neal Shusterman.
A Brooklyn eighth‐grader nicknamed Antsy befriends the Schwa, an "invisible‐ish" boy who is tired of blending into his surroundings and going unnoticed by nearly everyone.
REALISTIC FICTION
F AND Wintergirls. By Laurie Halse Anderson.
Eighteen‐year‐old Lia comes to terms with her best friend's death from anorexia as she struggles with the same disorder.
F MAZ When She Was Good. By Norma Fox Mazer.
The death of her abusive, manipulative older sister prompts seventeen‐year‐old Em to remember their unpleasant life together, with their parents and then later on their own.
F RAP Punkzilla. By Adam Rapp.
A runaway teenager, having overcome his addiction to meth, travels across the country from Portland to Memphis in order to reconnect with his dying brother and meets a colorful cast of characters along the way.
F HIN The Outsiders. By S.E. Hinton
Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders."
F MYE Monster. By Walter Dean Myers
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen‐year‐old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
F FOR If I Stay. By Gayle Forman.
While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen‐year‐old Mia, a gifted cellist, weights whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.
F BOO Tyrell. By Coe Booth
Fifteen‐year‐old Tyrell, who is living in a Bronx homeless shelter with his spaced‐out mother and his younger brother, tries to avoid temptation so he does not end up in jail like his father.
F WEE So B. It. By Sarah Weeks
After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbour, twelve‐year‐old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is.
F HAM M.C. Higgins, the Great. By Virginia Hamilton.
As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen‐year‐old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.
F KAD Kira‐Kira. By Cynthia Kadohata
Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese‐American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.
F JOH The First Part Last. By Angela Johnson
Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.
F FRI Perfect. By Natasha Friend
Following the death of her father, a thirteen‐year‐old uses bulimia as a way to avoid her mother's and ten‐year‐old sister's grief, as well as her own.
F HOR Slam. By Nick Hornby.
At the age of fifteen, Sam Jones's girlfriend gets pregnant and Sam's life of skateboarding and daydreaming about Tony Hawk changes drastically.
F KOE Stoner & Spaz. By Ron Koertge
A troubled youth with cerebral palsy struggles toward self‐acceptance with the help of a drug‐addicted young woman.
F DEV How My Private, Personal Journal Became a Bestseller. By Julia DeVillers.
A young woman accidentally turns in a private story from her journal instead of an English assignment and becomes a best‐selling author almost overnight.
F MAR Jellicoe Road. By Melina Marchetta.
Abandoned by her drug‐addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia.
F COH You Know Where to Find Me. By Rachel Cohn.
In the wake of her cousin's suicide, overweight and introverted seventeen‐year‐old Miles experiences significant changes in her relationships with her mother and father, her best friend Jamal and his family, and her cousin's father, while gaining insights about herself, both positive and negative.
F FRI Lush. By Natasha Friend
Unable to cope with her father's alcoholism, thirteen‐year‐old Sam corresponds with an older student, sharing her family problems and asking for advice.
F LIM Girl, 15, Charming but Insane. By Sue Limb
Fifteen‐year‐old Jess, living with her mum, separated from her father in Cornwall, and with a best friend who seems to do everything perfectly, finds her own assets through humour.
F COH Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. By Rachel Cohn & David Levithan.
High school student Nick O'Leary, member of a rock band, meets college‐bound Norah Silverberg and asks her to be his girlfriend for five minutes in order to avoid his ex‐sweetheart.
F FRE The True Meaning of Cleavage. By Mariah Fredericks
When Jess and Sari, best friends since seventh grade, begin their freshman year of high school and Sari becomes obsessed with a senior boy, Jess wonders if their friendship will survive.
F HAU Stone Cold. By Pete Hautman
Sixteen‐year‐old Denn finds himself alienating both friends and family when he becomes obsessed with playing high‐stakes poker with adult gamblers.
F KOJ Buddha Boy. By Kathe Koja
Justin spends time with Jinsen, the unusual and artistic new student whom the school bullies torment and call Buddha Boy, and ends up making choices that impact Jinsen, himself, and the entire school.
F CRE Walk Two Moons. By Sharon Creech
After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen‐year‐old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.
F GAL The Opposite of Invisible. By Liz Gallagher
Artistic Seattle high school sophomore Alice decides to emerge from her cocoon and date a football player, which causes a rift between her and her best friend, a boy who wants to be more than just friends.
F COM What Jamie Saw. By Carolyn Coman
Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine‐year‐old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.
F BRA Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature. By Robin Brande.
Mena, ostracized at church, home, and school for writing a letter of apology to a gay teen who was harassed into trying to kill himself by her fundamentalist friends, struggles to find her way when new friends and school experiences force her to think about what she really believes.
F PIX Freak. By Marcella Pixley.
Twelve‐year‐old Miriam, poetic, smart, and quirky, is considered a freak by the popular girls at her middle school, and she eventually explodes in response to their bullying, revealing an inner strength she did not know she had.
F REN Angus, Thongs, and Full‐Frontal Snogging. By Louise Rennison.
Presents the humorous journal of a year in the life of a fourteen‐year‐old British girl who tries to reduce the size of her nose, stop her mad cat from terrorizing the neighborhood animals, and win the love of handsome hunk Robbie.
HORROR/MYSTERY
F DUN I Know What You Did Last Summer. By Lois Duncan
Four teenagers who have desperately tried to conceal their responsibility for a hit‐and‐run accident are pursued by a mystery figure seeking revenge.
F YAN The Monstrumologist. By William James Henry.
In 1888, twelve‐year‐old Will Henry chronicles his apprenticeship with Dr. Warthrop, a scientist who hunts and studies real‐life monsters, as they discover and attempt to destroy a pod of Anthropophagi.
F GAI Coraline. By Neil Gaiman
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.
F LAR Liar. By Justine Larbalestier.
Compulsive liar Micah promises to tell the truth after revealing that her boyfriend has been murdered.
F COR In the Middle of the Night. By Robert Cormier
Sixteen‐year‐old Denny lives in the shadow of a deadly accident with which his father was connected when he was Denny's age, a disaster for which some of the survivors still blame his father.
F HIA Hoot. By Carl Hiassen
Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.
PB CHR (YA) And Then There Were None. By Agatha Christie.
Ten strangers – each with a sordid past – are summoned by an absent millionaire to a private island off the coast of Devon and begin to die one by one upon arrival.
F HIA Scat. By Carl Hiaasen.
Nick and Marta are both suspicious when their biology teacher, the feared Mrs. Bunny Starch, disappears, and try to uncover the truth despite the police and headmaster's insistence that nothing is wrong.
SURVIVAL/ADVENTURE
F CHO Al Capone Does My Shirts. By Gennifer Choldenko
A twelve‐year‐old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.
F BRA Going Bovine. By Libba Bray.
Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen‐year‐old diagnosed with mad cow disease, sets off on a road trip with a death‐obsessed, video‐gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.
F MYE Survival of the Fittest. By Edward Myers
Rus, Jodie, and Matt survive the crash of a small plane in the Peruvian rainforest and must endure a multitude of physical and psychological hardships as they attempt to reach safety.
F ARM The Kindling. By Jennifer Armstrong
In 2007, a small band of children have joined together in a Florida town, trying to survive in a world where it seems that all the adults have been killed off by a catastrophic virus.
F CAR I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. By Ally Carter.
As a sophomore at a secret spy school and the daughter of a former CIA operative, Cammie is sheltered from "normal teenage life" until she meets a local boy while on a class surveillance mission.
F ALL Forest of the Pygmies. By Isabel Allende
Eighteen‐year‐old Alexander Cold and his grandmother travel to Africa on an elephant‐led safari, but discover a corrupt world of poaching and slavery.
F SAC Holes. By Louis Sachar
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
PB HED (YA) Once Upon a Crime. By Carol Hedges
Jazmin Dawson would love to be a secret agent like her mum, but right now she's having to deal with less‐than‐exciting homework deadlines and discipline issues. Her mum is busy investigating the seemingly accidental death of a young freerunner. But soon Jaz herself will be on the run for her life.
F KOR Son of the Mob. By Gordon Korman
Seventeen‐year‐old Vince's life is constantly complicated by the fact that he is the son of a powerful Mafia boss, a relationship that threatens to destroy his romance with the daughter of an FBI agent.
F HOB Far North. By Will Hobbs
After the destruction of their float plane, sixteen‐year‐old Gabe and his Dene friend, Raymond, struggle to survive a winter in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories of Canada.
F HOR Snakehead. By Anthony Horowitz
When Alex Rider crash‐lands off the coast of Australia, the Australian Secret Service recruits him to infiltrate one of the ruthless gangs operating across Southeast Asia.
F LAW B is For Buster. By Iain Lawrence
Sixteen‐year‐old Kaka, desperate to escape his abusive parents, lies about his age in the spring of 1943 to enlist in the Canadian Air Force and soon finds himself based in England as part of a crew flying bombing raids over Germany.
NON-FICTION
001.9 GEE
Encyclopedia Horrifica: The Terrifying Truth About Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, and More. By Joshua Gee.
A collection of interviews, rare images, and eyewitness accounts of paranormal and unexplained phenomena, with topics ranging from UFOs to psychic activity and sea monsters.
133.43 NAR The Salem Witch Trials. By Don Nardo.
Presents a history of the Salem witch trials that occurred in Massachusetts in 1692; and profiles those responsible for the hysteria and those who were martyred.
391.6 GAY Body Marks: Tattooing, Piercing, and Scarification. By Kathlyn Gay
Discusses the history of various forms of body marking, current popularity of body piercing and tattoos, how and why these are done, and some things to think about before choosing to be pierced or tattooed.
364.15 CRO Getting Away With Murder. By Chris Crowe
Presents a true account of the lynching murder of fourteen‐year‐old, Emmett Till, in Mississippi, in 1955.
551.46 BUR Tracking Trash. By Loree Griffin Burns
Describes the work of a man who tracks trash as it travels great distances by way of ocean currents.
569.9 DEE Bodies from the Bog. By James M. Deem
Describes the discovery of prehistoric bog bodies in northern Europe and the evidence which their remains reveal about themselves and the civilizations in which they lived.
597.31 CAP Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916. By Michael Capuzzo.
Re‐creates the events of the summer of 1916, when a rogue great white shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore.
741.2 MIL Scared!: How to Draw Fantastic Horror Comic Characters. By Steve Miller Shows how to draw several types of horror comic characters including the dead and undead, werewolves, human monsters, "science gone wrong," space aliens, femmes fatales, and animals, providing step‐by‐step sketches, and presents a history of horror comics and guidance on creating a creepy illustrated atmosphere.
921 HOU Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini. By Sid Fleischman
A biography of the magician, ghost chaser, aviator, and king of escape artists whose amazing feats are remembered long after his death in 1926.
921 BUR Anthony Burns: The Defeat & Triumph of a Fugitive Slave. By Virginia Hamilton.
A biography of the slave who escaped to Boston in 1854, was arrested at the instigation of his owner, and whose trial caused a furor between abolitionists and those determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts.
921 HIT The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler. By James Cross Giblin.
Chronicles the life of Adolf Hitler and describes the consequences his quest for German dominance and his hatred of the Jews brought upon the entire world.
921 LEW I Was a Teenage Professional Wrestler. By Ted Lewin
A memoir of the author's early days supporting himself as a professional wrestler.
943.086 BAR Hitler Youth. By Susan Campbell Bartlett
A look at the youth organizations Adolf Hitler founded and used to meet his socio‐political and military ends, including profiles of individual Hitler Youth members as well as young people who opposed the Nazis, such as Hans and Sophie Scholl.
