Stevie can’t wait to get away from her parents – parents who don’t share the same beliefs that she does. They work for a Senator that Stevie can’t stand. So when she finds out about an old Cold Case – a murder that hasn’t really ever been solved, and it is at a school – she decides she has nothing to lose and applies to it. However, Ellingham Academy is filled with students who are exceptional in some way. And Stevie isn’t sure how she made it in. Other than the fact that she is pretty obsessed with the Ellingham murders.
As she meets her house mates, two other girls and three boys, she wonders if she’ll end up being true friends with any of them. Luckily, she was able to chat with two of them over the summer leading up to their arrival at the school, but still. As the school year gets underway, Stevie is fascinated to be at the place where the murders happened – or at least the kidnappings. She decides to make it her school project to solve the murders. But deciding something and doing it are two different things entirely!
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson is truly devious in that the book creates not one but two mysteries to solve…and doesn’t deliver on either one of them. Instead the reader is left at the end of the book with two cases with some idea of what might have happened, but nothing clear cut. In fact it ends with the dreaded “to be continued.” Ugh. I have to say, as a reader I was seriously annoyed by this fact. However, if you as a reader, love series, then this is the book to start reading, because you will undoubtably want to read the next one.
Recommended for 8th graders and up.
years. Mia is happy to leave Boston and its painful memories behind. Having been sidelined with a badly broken arm is enough to make anyone question going back into gymnastics, but Mia has no such issues. She wants nothing to do with the sport anymore. She’s just happy she gets to be back with her Gram again and helping her with the business she runs. Mia’s mom though, wants Mia to be “involved” this summer and that means Mia can’t just park herself in front of the television and watch all the seasons of her favorite shows.
Leora and her mother have just had to say goodbye to her father and husband forever. He has just died. Now they both wait for the moment when they can bring him home, after the Weighing of the Souls ceremony. They won’t bury him, they will instead bring home his “skin book.” Everyone, after they die, has their skin removed and bound into a book. This book will then stay with the family forever. After all, everyone’s story is on their skin. For every important event in a person’s life, in Leora’s world, people get tattoos. Everyone’s story is there for everyone to read, on their skin.
when she was seven years old. When she was little, she was in an accident that caused her to lose her eye, and she was traumatized from that. Prior to the accident, she wasn’t afraid of anything and was a little daredevil with her father. But afterwards, she became afraid of everything.
hasn’t grown much at all over the summer, and he knows his friends Drew and Liam have. He will have a decision to make at the end of this year too, should he stay or go to the Art school of his dream?
The twentieth anniversary of the Twin Towers falling and the attack on the Pentagon and the flight that went down in Pennsylvania just happened. This book In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers by Don Brown is a graphic novel that takes the reader onto the front lines of the disaster as it was happening, moment by moment, and then also looks at the aftermath for many of the first responders.
called her Splash, after she canon-balled into their swimming pool. After that point, everyone seemed to be making fun of or disparaging her about her weight. She hadn’t thought anything of how she looked until that moment. But for every moment afterwards, it seems that is all she thinks about.
When the sharecroppers got together to discuss how to unionize, they knew they were doing something dangerous. After all, black people in the United States didn’t just decide they wanted to get a fair shake of things. After all, historically speaking, why would they think that was even possible? And in 1919, especially in the South, there was no way they were going to get fair prices for the cotton they had spent months growing and cultivating, unless they worked together. Even as they headed into the meeting at the church, they were nervous. Nervous enough to hire guards to be on the look out. But what happened was beyond their worst imaginings.
hide, or be concerned about. What they don’t know is that all of them are going to be faced with some horrible decisions that will change the rest of their lives, forever. That’s because, while they are all at the mall for different reasons that afternoon, it soon becomes apparent when gunmen open fire, no one will be safe.
Books in the Middle: Reading for Middle School 