Middle School

Alone

Megan E. Freeman
2021
ISBN: 9781534467569

Perfect for fans of Hatchet and the I Survived series, this harrowing middle grade debut novel-in-verse from a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet tells the story of a young girl who wakes up one day to find herself utterly alone in her small Colorado town. When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She's alone--left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten. As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. But Maddie's most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. Can Maddie's stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life?

The disappearing spoon : and other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements

Sam Kean
2010
ISBN: 9780316051644

The periodic table of the elements is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, obsession, and betrayal. These tales follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold, and all the elements in the table as they play out their parts in human history. The usual suspects are here, like Marie Curie (and her radioactive journey to the discovery of polonium and radium) and William Shockley (who is credited, not exactly justly, with the discovery of the silicon transistor)--but the more obscure characters provide some of the best stories, like Paul Emile François Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose discovery of gallium, a metal with a low melting point, gives this book its title: a spoon made of gallium will melt in a cup of tea.--From publisher description.

Holes

Louis Sachar
2000
ISBN: 9780440414803

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.

I am the walrus

Neal Shusterman & Eric Elfman
2023
ISBN: 9780759555242

"Noah Prime discovers he can exhibit the traits and access the abilities of animals and must use them to fight back against those who are hunting him"-- Provided by publisher.

The last mapmaker

Christina Soontornvat
2022
ISBN: 9781536204957

A high-seas adventure set in a Thai-inspired fantasy world. This is the story of a young woman's struggle to unburden herself of the past and chart her own destiny in a world of secrets. As assistant to Mangkon's most celebrated mapmaker, twelve-year-old Sai plays the part of a well-bred young lady with a glittering future. In reality, her father is a conman - and in a kingdom where the status of one's ancestors dictates their social position, the truth could ruin her. Sai seizes the chance to join an expedition to chart the southern seas, but she isn't the only one aboard with secrets. When Sai learns that the ship might be heading for the fabled Sunderlands - a land of dragons, dangers, and riches beyond imagining - she must weigh the cost of her dreams. Vivid, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this tale of identity and integrity is as intricate as the maps of old.

Northwind

Gary Paulsen
2022
ISBN: 9780374314200

When sickness decimates his fishing camp, an orphan named Leif flees north in a cedar canoe, journeying along a brutal but beautiful coastline.

The storm runner

J.C. Cervantes
2018
ISBN: 9781368016346

To prevent the Mayan gods from battling each other and destroying the world, thirteen-year-old Zane must unravel an ancient prophecy, stop an evil god, and discover how the physical disability that makes him reliant on a cane also connects him to his father and his ancestry.

Ungifted

Gordon Korman
2012
ISBN: 9780061742668

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.

The Wednesday wars

by Gary D. Schmidt
2007
ISBN: 9780618724833

During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

When you reach me

Rebecca Stead
2010
ISBN: 9780385737425

Miranda's world is turning upside down. Her best friend Sal shuts her out of his life when he's punched by a new kid for no apparent reason. Her mom is about to be a contestant on a TV game show. A key goes missing, then a pair of shoes. And Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny piece of paper: I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own. I ask two favours. First, you must write a letter. Then she finds other notes left in strange places and she realises that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that haven't even happened yet ...