7th Grade Reading List
Frozen Summer
Mary Jane Auch
In 1816, twelve-year-old Mem's new home in the wilderness of western New York is disrupted
when the birth of another baby sends her mother into spells that disconnect her from reality.
Journey to Nowhere
Mary Jane Auch
In 1815, while traveling by covered wagon to settle in the wilderness of western New York,
eleven-year-old Mem experiences a flood and separation from her family.
Rules of the Road
Joan Bauer
Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful
shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire,
and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to
face her alcoholic father.
Life in the Fat Lane
Cherie Bennett
Sixteen-year-old Lara, winner of beauty pageants and Homecoming Queen, is distressed
and bewildered when she starts gaining weight and becomes a fat girl.
The Skeleton Man
Joseph Bruchac
When his Uncle Ed commits suicide, after giving him $30,000 for his eighteenth birthday,
Ray receives mysterious death threats and becomes involved in a dangerous sequence of events.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Alden Carter
Although neither fifteen-year-old Mark Severson nor his diabetic cousin
Randy are looking forward to the canoe trip that is a family rite of passage,
they begin to enjoy themselves as they make their way through Minnesota's lake country,
until the trip becomes a fight for survival.
Tamarack Tree
Patricia Clapp
Community reaction toward a local school for black girls in 1833 makes a
fourteen-year-old white orphan re-examine her feelings toward higher education,
abolition, blacks, and the meaning of womanhood.
Face on the Milk Carton
Caroline Cooney
A photograph of a missing girl on a milk carton leads
Janie on a search for her real identity.
The Chocolate War
Robert Cormier
A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the
school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.
Walk Two Moons
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.
Weasel
Cynthia DeFelice
Alone in the frontier wilderness in the winter of 1839 while his father is
recovering from an injury, eleven-year-old Nathan runs afoul of the
renegade killer known as Weasel and makes a surprising discovery about the
concept of revenge.
Eva
Peter Dickinson
After a terrible accident, a young girl wakes up to discover t
hat she has been given the body of a chimpanzee.
Ear, the Eye, and the Arm
Nancy Farmer
In 2194 in Zimbabwe, General Matsika's three children are kidnapped
and put to work in a plastic mine while three mutant detectives use
their special powers to search for them.
A Girl Named Disaster
Nancy Farmer
While journeying to Zimbabwe, eleven-year-old Nhamo struggles to escape
drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous
world of the African spirits.
Tulip Touch
Ann Fine
Natalie, who lives in the large hotel managed by her father, has a dangerous
friendship with Tulip, the wildly uncontrollable girl on a neighboring farm.
Path of the Pale Horse
Paul Fleischman
Lep, an apprentice to a doctor, helps his master take care of yellow fever victims in
Philadelphia during the epidemic of 1793.
Saturnalia
Paul Fleischman
In 1681 in Boston, fourteen-year-old William, a Narraganset Indian captured in a raid
six years earlier, leads a productive and contented life as a printer's apprentice but is i
ncreasingly anxious to make some connection with his Indian past.
Whirligig
Paul Fleischman
While traveling to each corner of the country to build a whirligig in memory of the girl whose
death he causes, sixteen-year-old Brian finds forgiveness and atonement.
Slave Dancer
Paula Fox
Kidnapped by the crew of an Africa-bound ship, a thirteen-year-old boy discovers to his
horror that he is on a slaver and his job is to play music for the exercise periods of the human cargo.
The Other Shepards
Adele Griffin
Teenage Holland and her younger sister Geneva, having always lived under the shadow of siblings who
died before they were born, struggle to establish separate identities and escape from the
oppressive weight of their parents' continuing grief.
Leaving Fishers
Margaret Peterson Haddix
After joining her new friends in the religious group called Fishers of Men, Dorry finds herself
immersed in a cult from which she must struggle to extricate herself.
Out of the Dust
Karen Hesse
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her
family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
Music of Dolphins
Karen Hesse
After rescuing an adolescent girl from the sea, researchers learn she has been raised by
dolphins and attempt to rehabilitate her to the human world.
Far North
Will Hobbs
After the destruction of their floatplane, sixteen-year-old Gabe and his Dene friend,
Raymond, struggle to survive a winter in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories.
When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
Kimberly Willis Holt
During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal
meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.
Redwall Series
Brian Jacques
A series of fantasy books set in Redwall Abbey, a peaceful place founded by a
warrior mouse named Martin.
The Giver
Lois Lowry
Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the
receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the
terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
The Hero and Crown
Robin McKinley
Aerin, with the guidance of the wizard Luthe and the help of the blue sword, wins the
birthright due her as the daughter of the Damarian king and a
witchwoman of the mysterious, demon-haunted North.
A Single Shard
Linda Sue Park
Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village,
and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.
Brian's Winter
Gary Paulsen
Instead of being rescued from a plane crash, as in the author's book Hatchet,
this story portrays what would have happened to Brian had he been forced to survive a winter in the
wilderness with only his survival pack and hatchet.
The Transall Saga
Gary Paulsen
While backpacking in the desert, thirteen-year-old Mark falls into a tube of blue light and is
transported into a more primitive world, where he must use his knowledge and skills to survive.
Holes
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.
Road to Memphis
Mildred D. Taylor
Sadistically teased by two white boys in 1940's rural Mississippi, a black youth severely
injures one of the boys with a tire iron and enlists Cassie's help in trying to flee the state.
The Land
Mildred D. Taylor
After the Civil War Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two
worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.
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