Recommended Reading: Middle School Reading Suggestions

Based on a Polynesian legend, this is the story of a youth who overcomes his fear of the sea and proves his courage to himself and his tribe.

Thirteen-year-old Karma lives with her family at their raptor conservation center in Montana. When she has to take her beloved bird, Stark, the gyrfalcon she rescued, back to its owner, she's sorely disappointed. But things get worse when a car accident leaves her father and brother trapped. It's up to Karma--and a runaway boy named Cooper who ends up by her side--to survive the wilderness and find a way to rescue them.

Thirteen-year-old Nikki Demere is an orphan and a kleptomaniac, making her the perfect girl to portray the Trevors' daughter in witness protection, but she soon learns that the biggest threat to her new family's security comes from her own past.

After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.

In this survival story set in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Vicky and her dog sled team find an injured sledder in the wilderness.

Twelve-year-old Mia is on a five-day tour of North Korea with her older brother, Simon, and their father, Mark, an food aide worker, but she is scared because her father keeps sneaking off at night, and terrified that her brother's sullen, rebellious behavior (which has absolutely nothing to do with the Koreans) is going to get them in trouble--and things get much worse when she is pulled into a deadly political game that seeks to expose North Korean atrocities, and her father is arrested.

A young Native American girl learns the art of survival when she is stranded on an isolated Pacific island.

In 1940, a group of British children, their escorts, and some sailors struggle to survive in a lifeboat when the ship taking them to safety in Canada is torpedoed.

A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.

After her parents are arrested by Chinese soldiers because of their religious beliefs, twelve-year-old Tash and her best friend Sam travel from their home in Tibet across the Himalayas to India in order to seek the help of the Dalai Lama.

Chris and Frank's sailing vessel sinks and they are stranded alone in the wilds of Alaska. They don't like each other at all, but to survive they must build a relationship.

Toby and his friend Lucas made a list of things to do the summer before they entered middle school, but now Lucas is gone, and Toby sets out to fulfill the promise he made to his friend, to finish the list by hiking the Appalachian Trail from Velvet Rocks to Mt. Katahdin, an undertaking that he is poorly prepared for--and which will become not only a struggle for survival, but a rescue mission for the starving and abused dog who he finds along the way.

"At the beginning of World War II, Karolina's spirit magically travels from the war-torn Land of the Dolls to the Krakow, Poland, shop of the Dollmaker, Cyryl, and together they take great risks to save their Jewish friends"--OCLC.

Looks at seven Jewish children who escaped the Nazis on a rescue operation called the Kindertransport.

A graphic novel account of a young Jewish girl's struggle to find peace in wartime Britain after she escapes from Nazi Germany, based on the author's own childhood experiences.

Gustave and his family, who are Jewish, are forced to flee to the countryside when the Germans occupy France, but to reach Free France which would enable them to escape to America, Gustave must undertake a risky venture into the occupied zone.

Thirteen-year-old Halina Rudowski narrowly escapes the Polish ghetto and flees to the forest, where she is taken in by an encampment of Jews trying to survive World War II.

After Nazi soldiers commandeer their orphanage in Poland, young Felix escapes with his friend Zelda, but the safe places the pair finds to hide quickly turn dangerous, and the orphans must remain on the run to avoid capture and death in a concentration camp.

Two years after being airlifted out of Vietnam in 1975, Matt Pin is haunted by the terrible secret he left behind and, now, in a loving adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events forces him to confront his past.

In a remote area of Alaska, twelve-year-old Willow helps her father with their sled dogs when she is not at school, wishing she were more popular, all the while unaware that the animals surrounding her carry the spirits of dead ancestors and friends who care for her.

Twelve-year-old Annie ponders the many rhythms of life the year that her mother becomes pregnant, her grandfather begins faltering, and her best friend (and running partner) becomes distant.

"A story told in verse from multiple perspectives of the graduating fifth grade class of Emerson Elementary. The kids join together to try to save their school from being torn down to make way for a supermarket"--Provided by publisher.

In 1936 Baltimore, an eleven-year-old Jewish girl, one of twelve siblings, tries to find her place in her overcrowded family.

When a failed wheat crop nearly bankrupts the Betterly family, Pa pulls twelve-year-old May from school and hires her out to a couple new to the Kansas frontier.

When his mother is sent to jail in Los Angeles, eleven-year-old Tony goes to live with his forest ranger great-uncle in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where Tony experiences unconditional love for the first time through his friendship with a rescue dog.

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.

Josie, who lives with her mother and grandmother and has cerebral palsy, befriends a boy who moves into one of the rich houses behind her old farmhouse.

In a poor village outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Serafina works hard to help her family, but dreams of going to school and becoming a doctor--then the earthquake hits and Serafina must summon all her courage to find her father and still get medicine for her sick baby brother as she promised.

Fourteen-year-old Kevin Boland, poet and first baseman, is torn between his cute girlfriend Mira and Amy, who is funny, plays Chopin on the piano, and is also a poet.

Twelve-year-old Kasienka and her mother have immigrated to Coventry, England from Poland, searching for Kasienka's father, but everyone is unfriendly except for an African neighbor and a boy Kasienka meets at the swimming pool, which is her only refuge from an alien society.

Crow has lived her entire life on a tiny piece of the starkly beautiful Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts. Her only companions are Osh, the man who rescued her from a tiny skiff as an infant and raised her, and Miss Maggie, their neighbor across the sandbar. But it isn't until the night when a mysterious fire appears across the water that an unspoken question of her own history forms in her heart and an unstoppable chain of events is triggered. Using her bravery and perseverance, Crow must follow clues that not only lead to a personal treasure, but to uncovering her lost identity and, ultimately, understanding what it means to be a family.

Eighth-grader Raine, a new girl at Yielding Middle Schooi, uses her supernatural ability to see other people's memories to solve the disappearance of a teenage girl.

Lost in the Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and finds himself entwined in a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica--and decades later three children, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California find themselves caught up in the same thread of destiny in the darkest days of the twentieth century, struggling to keep their families intact, and tied together by the music of the same harmonica.

"Six young magicians and illusionists team up to save their small town from a crooked carnival owner and his goons"--Provided by publisher.

Edward Tulane, a cold-hearted and proud toy rabbit, loves only himself until he is separated from the little girl who adores him and travels across the country, acquiring new owners and listening to their hopes, dreams, and histories.

A group of orphans wait each year for a boat to arrive on the island, replacing the eldest with the youngest, never to be seen again, as each remaining child child learns what it means to say goodbye to childhood forever.

"Unsure of how to get her family's attention, Charlie comes across the surprise of her life one day while ice-fishing...in the form of a floppy, scaly fish offering to grant her a wish in exchange for its freedom"--Provided by publisher.