A List of Reading Lists: Over 100 Summer Reading Ideas for Junior High Students
There are plenty of great websites and book lists where you’re sure to find a story your kids will enjoy diving into. Of course, we recommend parents review books before their children read them to know what ideas your kids may be presented with. When a child is reading a book with a serious topic, it could be helpful to have a parent or trusted adult to help make sense of something they may find confusing or morally conflicting. However, we don’t always have the time to read through everything our kids may want to read. Thankfully, there are websites like Common Sense Media which review books and other media, giving specifics as to any sensitive content the book may contain (however, it is a paid site, but does give a few free trials).
Because every family and every child is different, we can’t guarantee you’ll approve of everything on these lists, but hopefully you’ll be able to find something that is appropriate for your junior high students on these lists, which are ordered according to when the books were published.
FANTASY
1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll - 1865)
2. The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum - 1900)
3. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis - 1950)
4. Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien - 1954)
5. The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle - 1968)
6. A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin - 1968)
7. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brien - 1971)
8. The Princess Bride (William Goldman - 1973)
9. The Neverending Story (Michael Ende - 1979)
10. The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster - 1982)
11. Redwall (Brian Jacques - 1986)
12. Howl’s Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones - 1986)
13. Stardust (Neil Gaiman - 1999)
14. Inkheart (Cornelia Funke - 2003)
15. Binti (Nnedi Okorafor – 2015)
16. Beasts Made of Night (Tochi Onyebuchi - 2017)
17. The Girl who Drank the Moon (Kelly Barnhill -2016)
18. Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi - 2018)
19. Dragon Pearl (Yoon Ha Lee - 2019)
20. Amari and the Night Brothers (B. B. Alston - 2021)
SCIENCE FICTION / DYSTOPIAN:
1. The Time Machine (H. G. Wells - 1895)
2. War of the Worlds (H. G. Wells - 1898)
3. Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis - 1938)
4. A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle - 1962)
5. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card - 1985)
6. The Giver (Lois Lowry -1993)
7. Panda Ray (Michael Kandel - 1996)
8. House of the Scorpion (Nancy Farmer - 2002)
9. The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau - 2003)
10. Interworld (Neil Gaiman, Michael Reeves - 2007)
11. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins - 2008)
12. When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead - 2009)
13. Legend (Marie Lu - 2011)
14. Bloom (Kenneth Oppel - 2020)
ANIMALS:
1. Black Beauty (Anna Sewell - 1877)
2. Call of the Wild (Jack London - 1903)
3. White Fang (Jack London - 1906)
4. The Wind in the WIllows (Kenneth Grahame - 1908)
5. Where the Red Fern Grows (Wilson Rawls - 1961)
6. Animal Farm (George Orwell - 1945)
7. My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George - 1959)
8. Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O'Dell - 1960)
9. Julie of the Wolves (Jean Craighead George - 1972)
10. Watership Down (Richard Adams - 1972)
11. Shiloh (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - 1991)
12. Because of Winn Dixie (Kate DiCamillo - 2000)
13. Life of Pi (Yann Martel - 2001)
14. Hoot (Carl Hiaasen - 2002)
15. Pax (Sara Pennypacker - 2016)
SPORTS:
1. Chariots of Fire (William John Weatherby - 1982)
2. Tangerine (Edward Bloor - 1997)
3. Heat (Mike Lupica - 2007)
4. The Crossover (Kwame Alexander - 2014)
5. Ghost (Jason Reynolds - 2016)
6. The Distance to Home (Jenn Bishop - 2016)
7. Left Out (Tim Green - 2016)
8. Up for Air (Laurie Morrison - 2019)
DRAMA:
1. Finding Perfect (Elly Swartz - 2016)
2. The Ethan I was Before (Ali Standish - 2017)
3. The Someday Birds (Sally J. Pla - 2017)
4. The Science of Breakable Things (Tae Keller - 2018)
5. Genesis Begins Again (Alicia D. Williams - 2019)
6. The Sea in Winter (Christine Day - 2019)
7. 5 Things About Ava Andrews (Margaret Dilloway - 2020)
Graphic Novels:
1. Smile (Raina Telgemeier - 2010)
2. Rapunzel’s Revenge (Dean Hale, Shannon Hale - 2011)
3. El Deafo (Cece Bell - 2014)
4. Pashmina (Nidhi Chanani - 2017)
5. New Kid (Jerry Craft - 2019)
Historical Fiction:
1. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott - 1868)
2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith - 1943)
3. Cry, The Beloved Country (Alan Paton - 1948)
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez - 1967)
5. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Mildred D. Taylor - 1976)
6. The Midwife’s Apprentice (Karen Cushman - 1991)
7. Esperanza Rising (Pam Muñoz Ryan - 2000)
8. Fever 1793 (Laurie Halse Anderson - 2000)
9. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak - 2005)
10. All the Light we Cannot See (Anthony Doerr - 2014)
11. Wolf Hollow (Lauren Wolk - 2016)
12. Refugee (Alan Gratz - 2017)
13. The Night Diary (Veera Hiranandani - 2018)
14. The Weight of Our Sky (Hanna Alkaf - 2019)
15. We are Not Free (Traci Chee - 2020)
16. Angel of Greenwood (Randi Pink - 2021)
ADVENTURE / MYSTERY:
1. The House of Dies Drear (Virginia Hamilton - 1968)
2. The Westing Game (Ellen Raskin - 1978)
3. Zora & Me (T.R. Simon, Victoria Bond - 2010)
4. Vanished (Sheela Chari - 2011 )
5. Greenglass House (Kate Milford - 2014)
6. The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place (Julie Berry - 2014)
7. Skink - No Surrender (Carol Hiaasen - 2014)
8. The Great Greene Heist (Varian Johnson -2014)
9. Footer Davis is Probably Crazy (Susan Vaught - 2015)
10. Framed! (James Ponti - 2016)
11. OCDaniel (Wesley King - 2016)
12. The Emperor’s Riddle (Kat Zhang - 2017)
13. When You Look Like Us (Pamela N. Harris - 2021)
BIOGRAPHIES / AUTOBIOGRAPHIES1. I know why the caged bird sings (Maya Angelou - 1969)
2. Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board (Bethany Hamilton, Rick Bundschuh, Sheryl Berk - 2004)
3. March: Book One (John Lewis and Andrew Aydin - 2013)
4. A Long Way from Home (Saroo Brierley, Larry Buttrose - 2013)
5. Brown Girl Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson - 2014)
6. Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March (Lynda Blackmon Lowery - 2015)
7. The Plot to Kill Hitler: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero (Patricia McCormick - 2016)
8. Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Raymond Obstfeld -2017)
9. Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man (Tonya Bolden - 2018)
10. Child of the Dream (Memoir of 1963) (Sharon Robinson -2019)
MORE PLACES TO SEARCH FOR BOOKS
If you’re interested in looking for more books, there are a number of websites and blogs that will provide you with plenty of reading suggestions. Some sites allow you to search by book lists, which makes finding something your kids will like all the more easy. Here are some websites that either list books.
1. Good Reads
2. Book Riot
3. Common Sense Media ($3/month)
6. Time’s best lists (such as “The 100 Best YA Books of All Time”)
7. Book Awards (such as Newberry’s yearly Award)
