Middle School Book Group - 10 Great Book Selections
BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
by Kate DiCamillo
Newbery Award-Winning Author; Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.
BRONX MASQUERADE
by Nikki Grimes
Coretta Scott King Award 2003; While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.
BUD, NOT BUDDY
by Christopher Paul Curtis
Newbery Medal 2000; Coretta Scott King Award 2000; Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
THE FIRST PART LAST
by Angela Johnson
Coretta Scott King Award 2004; Printz Award 2004; A 16-year-old tells the story of how he became a single dad.
THE FRIENDSHIP
by Mildred Taylor
Newbery Medal & Coretta Scott King Award-Winning Author; Four children witness a confrontation between an elderly black man and a white storekeeper in rural Mississippi in the 1930s.
JUSTIN AND THE BEST BISCUITS IN THE WORLD
by Mildred Pitts Walter
Coretta Scott King Award 1987; Suffering in a family full of females, ten-year-old Justin feels that cleaning and keeping house are women's work until he spends time on his beloved grandfather's ranch.
MANIAC MAGEE
by Jerry Spinelli
Newbery Medal 1991; After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries.
MIRACLE'S BOYS
by Jacqueline Woodson
Coretta Scott King Award 2001; Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close relationship with his older brother Charlie changes after Charlie is released from a detention home and blames Lafayette for the death of their mother.
TONING THE SWEEP
by Angela Johnson
Coretta Scott King Award 1994; On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories about the past and her family history and comes to a better understanding of relatives both dead and living.
THE WHIPPING BOY
by Sid Fleischman
Newbery Medal 1987; A bratty prince and his whipping boy have many adventures when they inadvertently trade places after becoming involved with dangerous outlaws.
