Middle School Literature

Eleven-year-old Anthoni Gillis is not the kind of kid who believes in fairies, unicorns, or even the word maybe. She's more of a comic-book girl. So when her mom brings her to Thunder Lake for a summer at the Showboat Resort, she doesn't believe the local rumors about the Boulay Mermaid. Anthoni has bigger fish to fry. She's always wanted a true-blue friend. But it's been hard to find one, since for the past five years she's been bouncing from town to town, helping her mother sell Beauty & the Bee cosmetic products to keep them both afloat. This summer will be different, though.

Rachel Brooks is excited for the new school year. She's finally earned a place as a forward on her soccer team. Her best friends make everything fun. And she really likes Tate, and she's pretty sure he likes her back. After one last appointment with her scoliosis doctor, this will be her best year yet. Then the doctor delivers some terrible news: The sideways curve in Rachel's spine has gotten worse, and she needs to wear a back brace 23 hours a day. The brace wraps her in hard plastic from shoulder blades to hips.

A stubborn young girl named Fiona stumbles upon an abandoned house full of stray cats, just as it is threatened by a demolition team, a leadership crisis, and two potentially malicious parakeets. Can Fiona save the house and all its inhabitants? A new middle-grade novel by critically acclaimed author Tanya Lloyd Kyi.

Seeds: Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead. Roots: Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer.

It is 2003 – ten years since Spud Milton’s class of 93 matriculated and the boys went their separate ways. Despite their seemingly unbreakable bond, the Crazy Eight have not kept in touch. Or at least, not as far as Spud knows. When he receives an invitation from the school to attend the...

Eric is the new kid in seventh grade. Griffin wants to be his friend. When you're new in town, it's hard to know who to hang out with - and who to avoid. Griffin seems cool, confident, and popular. But something isn't right about Griffin. He always seems to be in the middle of bad things. And if Griffin doesn't like you, you'd better watch your back. There might be a target on it. As Eric gets drawn deeper into Griffin's dark world, he begins to see the truth about Griffin: He's a liar, a bully, a thief.

Jed's not your typical middle school geek. He is, to use the politically correct term, cardiovascularly challenged. And while his parents have attempted to shield him from the implications of being different for as long as they could (Jed was eight and at a friend's sister's birthday party when he blew his lips off onto the cake in front of everyone, finally prompting the "big talk" from his parents and an emergency superglue repair by his dad), seventh grade at Pine Hollow Middle School as a target of Robbie the supreme school bully and his pack of moronic toadies is rapidly becoming unbearable.

The best part of Kat's day is getting to walk her neighbor's irresistible pug, Meatball. So when her parents insist she start an extracurricular this year, she makes her own, by turning her hobby into a business: a dog-walking business, that is. She and her best friends, Taz and Lucy - as well as the cute new boy, Declan - try to get Four Paws Dog Walking into shape. But wrangling puppies and pleasing customers turns out to be harder than they thought! Can Kat keep taking care of the dogs she loves without hurting her friendships?

After a tumultuous first semester in seventh grade, Jed Rivers returns triumphant - or so he thinks. After embracing his undeadness to put his archenemy Robbie in his place, the 13-year-old zombie thought he'd have a much easier time surviving the second semester relatively intact. That was before he came across the antizombie propaganda published by the mysterious NZN Network, a group trying to push Hollywood stereotypes as the truth.

Get ready to Laugh Out Loud (a lot!) with James Patterson's illustrated middle grade story of a twelve-year-old boy starting his own book company for kids. Jimmy loves reading so much that he's inspired to start a book company for kids -- run by kids. It's a big dream for a twelve-year-old boy...

Raam Patel is eager to prove himself ever since he didn't make the middle school's basketball team. So, when Hoop Con comes to town he is determined to be there and take his shot. His big moment proves to be unforgettable . . . but not in the way he'd hoped. Raam gets schooled by the camp's golden boy right in front of his NBA idol. To make matters even worse, this fail goes viral.

Strange things are happening at Lovecraft Middle School. Rats are leaping from lockers. Students are disappearing. The school library is a labyrinth of secret corridors. And the science teacher is acting very peculiar - in fact, he just might be a monster-in-disguise. Twelve-year-old Robert Arthur knew that seventh grade was going to be weird, but this is ridiculous! Professor Gargoyle (Volume I in the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series) is full of bizarre beasts, strange mysteries, and nonstop adventure.

Don't be fooled by his friendly smile, his perfect manners, or his shiny red apple. Student council president Howard Mergler is actually a sinister bug-monster in disguise - and he's summoning swarms of roaches, wasps, fleas, and head lice into the corridors of Lovecraft Middle School! Twelve-year-old Robert Arthur is the only student who can stop him - but he'll need help from his best friends: the school bully, the school ghost, and an extremely courageous two-headed rat.

All Margie Majors ever wanted was the mythical American dream she was taught to want: a hard-working husband, a house in a place that had neighborhood BBQs, a white picket fence, two kids, and a dog. Instead, she got “destiny.” Hers was to be a plus-sized, day-drinking, foul-mouthed, bisexual, retired vampire slayer with crushing debt and no idea what to do with the rest of her life.

Noah Parker, a good-hearted, fun, and likable kid, is both nervous and excited for his first day of middle school. As the school year begins, Noah and his friends experience the highs and lows and sometimes funny and awkward situations that are part of growing up.

Meet Phillip. His mom relocates him to a new school in the middle of the school year. Things do not go well. Phillip lands himself a trip to the dean of student's office when he tries to forge his mother's signature. Maybe if he spelled her name correctly it would have gone better. Phillip also finds himself having more and more anxiety. And the song some bullies are singing is certainly not helping: Phillip Willip, Puddin, and Pie. Got a bad grade and made him cry.

Here are 33 stories about bullies and the ups and downs of friendship for younger teens, including "True Friends and New Friends", "Mean Girls... and Boys", "Embarrassing Moments" and "Bully Payback".

As Violet Sidhu and her friends prepare to sell hats at the Halloway Hills Middle School Christmas fair, they discover their hats have gone missing! In book two of the Halloway Hills Middle School Mysteries, after a box of crocheted hats goes missing, Violet and her friends must come up with an alternative plan to raise money at the annual Christmas fair. When Violet discovers what’s happened to her hats, thanks to the new guy at school, getting them back turns out to be harder than she thought. Will Violet get her hats back in time for the school’s Christmas fair?

Every time violence erupts in the Middle East, Ida knows what's coming next. Some of her classmates treat her like it's all her fault—just for being Palestinian! In eighth grade, Ida is forced to move to a different school. But people still treat her like she'll never fit in. Ida wishes she could disappear. One day, dreading a final class project, Ida hunts for food. She discovers a jar of olives that came from a beloved aunt in her family's village near Jerusalem. Ida eats one and finds herself there—as if her parents had never left Palestine!

Jonathan Franzen arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. The Discomfort Zone is his intimate memoir of his development from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person", through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions.