Summer Reading Recommendations
Summer break is almost here! If you’re dreading the learning gap, then the best way to continue building one’s vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and context clues skills is through reading. With that in mind, here is a list of reading recommendations for the summer for grades 7-12. I’ve read each book on this list and taught many of them myself. That, or I have been the Oregon Battle of the Books coach while my team read some of these selections.
Seventh Grade:
The “Ghost” series by Jason Reynolds
“The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros
“Harbor Me” by Jacqueline Woodson
“Wonder” by RJ Palacio
“Eragon” by Christopher Paolini
“New Kid” by Jerry Craft
“Flying Lessons & Other Stories” by Kwame Alexander and others
“Eleven” by Tom Rogers
“Esperanza Rising” by Pam Munoz Ryan
“The Giver” by Lois Lowry
“Coraline” by Neil Gaiman
“Ban This Book” by Alan Gratz
Eight Grade
“Piecing Me Together” by Renee Watson
“Scythe” by Neal Shusterman
“The Last Cuentista” by Donna Barba Higuera
“Other Words for Home” by Jasmine Warga
“The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton
“Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen
“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
9th Grade
“The Fountains of Silence” by Rupta Sepetys
“The Final Six” by Alexandra Monir
“We Can Be Heroes” by Kyrie McCauley
“Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi
“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
10th Grade
“1984” by George Orwell
“A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe
“Night” by Elie Wiesel
“Animal Farm” by George Orwell
“The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston
“Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich
11th Grade
“The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
“A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway
“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey
12th Grade
“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
“We Were the Mulvaneys” by Joyce Carol Oates
“Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw
“Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift
“Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen
“Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf
“The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath