7th GradeBattle of the Bestsellers

2015-2016

A Long Walk to WaterLinda Sue Park

• The New York Times bestseller A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours’ walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay.

American Born ChineseGene Luen Yang

• American Born Chinese is made up of three individual plotlines: the determined efforts of the Chinese folk hero Monkey King to shed his humble roots and be revered as a god; the struggles faced by Jin Wang, a lonely Asian American middle school student who would do anything to fit in with his white classmates; and the sitcom plight of Danny, an All-American teen so shamed by his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (a purposefully painful ethnic stereotype) that he is forced to change schools.

Elephant RunRoland Smith

• At the height of the London blitz, Nick’s mother sends him to join his father on the family’s remote, ancestral timber plantation in Burma. Her gambit turns out badly: The invading Japanese soon seize the plantation, imprisoning his father in a brutal POW camp, and leaving 13-year-old Nick to endure hardship under Japanese overseers.

HootCarl Hiaasen

• An ecological mystery, made up of endangered miniature owls, the Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House scheduled to be built over their burrows, and the owls' unlikely allies--three middle school kids determined to beat the screwed-up adult system.

How They CroakedGeorgia Bragg

• Over the course of history men and women have lived and died. In fact, getting sick and dying can be a big, ugly mess- especially before the modern medical care that we all enjoy today. How They Croaked relays all the gory details of how nineteen world figures gave up the ghost. Readers will be fascinated well past the final curtain, and feel lucky to live in a world with painkillers, X-rays, soap, and 911.

Myths and Mysteries of WashingtonL.E. Bragg

• Myths and Mysteries of Washington opens the book on unsolved crimes, legends of lost treasure, supernatural encounters, sea creature sightings, and other unexplained events and unusual occurrences in Evergreen State history.

Phineas GageJohn Fleischman

• The incredible story of the railroad worker who, in 1848, survived the piercing blast of a 13-pound iron rod as it entered below his cheekbone and exited the front of his skull.

PrimatesJim Ottaviani & Maris Wicks

• Primates is a graphic novel that explores the lives and work of scientists Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, who lived with and studied chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, respectively, in their natural habitats, creating between them a body of work that greatly improved our understanding of Primates, including humans.

SavvyIngrid Law

• Savvy Recounts the adventures of Mibs Beaumont, whose thirteenth birthday has revealed her “savvy”- a magical power unique to each member in her family– just as her father is injured in a terrible accident.

Sorta Like a RockstarMatthew Quick

• Living in a school bus with her mom, Amber refuses to give in to despair and continues visiting the elderly at a nursing home, teaching English to Korean women, and caring for a Vietnam veteran and his dog, but a fatal tragedy may prove to be one burden too many for the seventeen-year-old girl.

SpeakLaurie Halse Anderson

• Speak recounts a violent attack near the end of summer that has devastating effects on Melinda’s freshman year in high school.

StormbreakerAnthony Horowitz

• After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6.

The Big FieldMike Lupica

• When fourteen-year-old baseball player Hutch feels threatened by the arrival of a new teammate named Darryl, he tries to work through his insecurities about both Darryl and his remote and silent father, who was once a great ballplayer too.

The Rivalry: Mystery at the Army-Navy GameJohn Feinstein

• Teen sportswriters Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson are assigned to cover the football game between long time rivalries Army and Navy, and, after noticing the actions of secret service agents, they begin to suspect that the president, who is going to attend the event, is in danger.

UngiftedGordon Korman

• Due to an administrative mix-up, troublemaker Donovan Curtis is sent to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction, a special program for gifted and talented students, after pulling a major prank at middle school.

We Are All Made of MoleculesSusin Nielsen

• Thirteen-year-old brilliant but socially-challenged Stewart and mean-girl Ashley must find common ground when, two years after Stewart's mother died, his father moves in with his new girlfriend--Ashley's mother, whose gay ex-husband lives in their guest house.

What Happened to GoodbyeSarah Dessen

• Seventeen-year-old Mclean begins to lose sight of who she really is after she tries to reinvent herself at each school she attends after her parents' divorce and her father moves her from town to town.