Incoming+8th+graders


 * [[image:http://smilenet.smmusd.org/images/School%20Logos/smmusd.gif width="169" height="82"]] || **Incoming Eighth Grade

Summer Reading 2008** || || Dear Parents and Students, Our school district has a required summer reading program. On the other side of this letter is a list of recommended books to read during the summer. Because students’ maturity and reading levels vary, we encourage parents to participate actively in selecting their children’s reading. Students are expected to read and respond to two books from the list for the grade they will be entering in the fall. Students are responsible for obtaining their own books; the public libraries, as well as local booksellers specializing in children’s and young adult literature, will have most of these titles available. Some schools will have book fairs this spring featuring these summer reading titles. This year the Santa Monica Public Library is focusing young adult summer activities around the topic of “**metamorphosis**.” It is recommended that students choose one of their summer reading books from the metamorphosis section of the list. In September, some schools may host events related to this topic and these books. All students must be prepared to share and evaluate the two books they read soon after school begins in September. = = We are very excited about this program and hope the books on this list will provide knowledge and pleasure for your child. We encourage you to read and/or discuss these books with your student. Sincerely,
 * TASK #1:** Be prepared to make a written recommendation to your teacher that a book you read be retained or deleted from next year’s list.
 * TASK #2:** Guidelines for the assignment for the second book you read will be given the first or second week of school. This assignment could be in-class writing, a book talk, or a special project.
 * Carol Hagen**, Librarian, John Adams Middle School
 * Meredith Lebo**, Librarian, Lincoln Middle School
 * Joe Di Mercurio**, Librarian, Malibu High School

**Realistic** **Science Fiction & Fantasy** **Metamorphosis**
 * Bauer, Joan - //Hope Was Here.//** When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.
 * Deuker, Carl - //Night Hoops.//** While trying to prove that he is good enough to be on his high school's varsity basketball team, Nick must also deal with his parents' divorce and the erractic behavior of a troubled classmate who lives across the street.
 * Hinton, S.E. - //That Was Then, This Is Now.//** Sixteen-year-old Mark and Bryon have been like brothers since childhood, but now, as their involvement with girls, gangs, and drugs increases, their relationship seems to gradually disintegrate.
 * Myers, Walter Dean - //Autobiography of My Dead Brother.//** After the death of a close friend, Jesse pours his heart and soul into his sketchbook to make sense of life in his troubled Harlem neighborhood.
 * Na, An - //A Step from Heaven.//** A young Korean girl and her family find it hard to adjust to life in America.
 * Philbrick, Rodman - //Freak the Mighty//****//.//** Max, a large eighth-grader with a learning disability, becomes friends with Freak, an intelligent boy who is physically impaired.
 * Humor & Poetry**
 * Bateman, Colin - //Running with the Reservoir Pups.//** Eddie gets mixed up with the Reservoir Pups, the scrappy gang of boys that rules the streets in his new town. Breaking into the hospital his mom works at for his initiation, Eddie stumbles upon some twisted baby-snatchers.
 * Hesse, Karen - //Out of the Dust//.** 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 Great Depression.
 * Sones, Sonya - //What My Mother Doesn’t Know//.** Through poetry, Sophie describes her relationships with a series of boys as she searches for Mr. Right.
 * Classic**
 * Austen, Jane - //Emma//**. Emma devotes her formidable energies to matchmaking between friends and acquaintances in the village of Highbury. The plot turns on a romance of which she is wholly unaware.
 * Smith, Betty - //A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.//** The tale of a little girl living in the slums of Brooklyn, who dreamily watches out her window as a tree struggles to reach the sky.
 * Historical**
 * Anderson, Laurie Halse //- Fever 1793.//** In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Mathilda Cook is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic.
 * Moses, Shelia - //The Legend of Buddy Bush.//** In 1947, twelve-year-old Pattie Mae is sustained by her dreams of escaping Rich Square, North Carolina, and moving to Harlem when her Uncle Buddy is under arrest for attempted rape of a white woman and her grandfather is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.
 * Otsuka, Julie - //When the Emperor Was Divine//****//.//**The five members of a Japanese American family present their unique perspectives on the experience of being forced into an internment camp during World War II.
 * Rinaldi, Ann - //The Girl in Blue//.** To escape an abusive father and an arranged marriage, fourteen-year-old Sarah, dressed as a boy, enlists in the Union Army and becomes a soldier as well as a Union spy.
 * Mystery & Adventure**
 * Du Maurier, Daphne - //Rebecca.//** For months after her death, the memory of Rebecca de Winter continues to dominate everyone at her former home, Manderley, a famous English country house.
 * Horowitz, Anthony - //Eagle Strike.//** Teenage spy Alex Rider investigates international pop star and philanthropist Damian Cray whose new video game venture hides sinister motives involving Air Force One, nuclear missiles, and the international drug trade.
 * Adams, Douglas - //The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.//** Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons, cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades-in-arms hurtle through space powered by pure improbability - and desperately in search of a place to eat.
 * Card, Orson Scott - //Ender's Game//** **//.//**In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers.
 * Crichton, Michael - //Sphere.//** A thousand feet below the South Pacific, a huge vessel rests - a spaceship apparently undamaged from its fall.
 * Farmer, Nancy - //The House of the Scorpion//****//.//** In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patron, the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.
 * Klause, Annette - //Silver Kiss//.** A mysterious teenage boy harboring a dark secret helps Zoe come to terms with her mother's terminal illness.
 * Patterson, James – //Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment.//** Max leads her feisty half-human, half-bird "family" on an action-packed journey from Death Valley, California, to the bowels of the New York City subway system to rescue their youngest sister Angel.
 * Pullman, Philip - //The Golden Compass//.** Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments.
 * Biography & Autobiography**
 * Müller****, Melissa - //Anne Frank: The Biography.//** Chronicles the life of Anne Frank and discusses her childhood, the time she spent hidden in the annex, who betrayed the people living in the annex, the experiences she and her family had in the concentration camps, and other related topics
 * Spiegelman, Art - //Maus I//.** A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.
 * Avi - //Crispin: the Cross of Lead.//** Historical Fiction. Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.


 * Castellucci, Cecil – //The Plain Janes.//** Graphic Novel/Realistic Fiction. After a September 11th-like attack on Metro City, Jane moves with her parents to suburbia where she rallies a group of misfits at her new school to join a secret club.
 * Riordan, Rick - //The Lightning Thief.//**Fantasy. Twelve-year-old Percy, son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea, goes to a camp for demigods where he and his friends set out on a quest to prevent a war between the gods.
 * Westerfield, Scott - //Uglies.//** Science Fiction. Growing up in a futuristic world, 15 year old Tally, a fun-loving trickster, attracts the attention of the secret police when she begins to question the society she lives in and breaks the rules.

April 08 (ml)