6th, 7th and 8th Grade Reading List
The sixth, seventh and eighth grade majors will be reading and discussing a wide variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry by many of the listed authors, most of whom write specifically for that age group. Please note, the student may very well come into contact with these authors and books in other classes during their SCAPA career. Not to worry. Any writer will tell you that it never hurts to read a book more than once.
Aesop: “The Fox and the Crow”
Maya Angelou: “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me”
from
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Natalie Babbitt: from The Search for Delicious
Ray Bradbury: from “Uncle Einar”
The Martian Chronicles
“Fever Dream”
“All Summer in a Day”
S Is for Space
Livia
Britton-Johnson: from I Have
Lived a Thousand Years
Gwendolyn
Brooks: from Blacks
“Pete at the Zoo”
“Cynthia
in the Snow”
Alice
Calaprice: from An Owl in the
House
Richard
Carlson: from Don’t Sweat the
Small Stuff
Diana Chang: “Saying Yes”
Anton Chekhov: “The Inspector-General”
Spencer
Christian: from Can It Really
Rain Frogs
Lucille Clifton: “let there be new flowering”
“Jackie Robinson”
Judith Ortiz Cofer: from “The Story of My Body”
E. E. Cummings: “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May”
“l(a”
Roald
Dahl: from Danny the Champion of
the World
Christopher de Vinck: “Pwer of the Powerless: A Brother’s Lesson”
Emiy Dickinson: “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”
“I’m Nobody”
Rita Dove: “Grape Sherbet”
Roger Ebert: “Titanic”
Margery
Facklam: from And Then There Was
One
Paul Fleischman: from Seedfolks
“Chrysalis Diary”
Steve
Forbes: A Uniformly Good Idea
Paula
Fox: from One-Eyed Cat
Robert Frost: “Fire and Ice”
“A Time to Talk”
Robert
Fulghum: from All I Really Need
to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Mona Gardner: “The Dinner Party”
Robert
Gardner: from Experimenting with
Inventions
Nikki Giovanni: “knoxville, tennessee”
Judith Gorog: “Those Three Wishes”
Robert
R. Halpern: from Green Planet
Rescue
Kendall Hamilton (and Patricia King): “Playgrounds of the Future”
Joyce
Hansen: from I
Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly
Semus Heaney: “Scaffolding”
Ernest Hemingway: “A Day’s Wait”
John
Hersey: from Hiroshima
Felice Holman: “Holiday Dinner”
Phillip
Hoose: from It’s Our World
Too!
Langston Hughes: “Alabama Earth”
“Theme for English B”
“Aunt Sue’s Stories”
“The Weary Blues”
“The Return of Simple”
“I Wonder As I Wander”
Latoya
Hunter: from The Diary of Latoya
Hunter
Shirley Jackson: “Charles”
Robert F. Kennedy: “On the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.”
X. J. Kennedy: “Telephone Talk”
John Kieran: “There’s This That I Like About Hockey, My Lad”
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream”
Maxine Hong Kingston: from “A Sea Worry”
Charles
Kuralt: from On the Road With
Charles Kuralt
Louis L’Amour: from “The Eternal Frontier”
Patricia Lauber: from “Volcano”
Madeleine
L’Engle: from A Wrinkle In
Time
Steven Levy: “The Myth of the Computer”
Alonzo Lopez: “Direction”
Abraham Lincoln: “Gettysburg Address”
Jack
London: from The Call of the
Wild
Lois Lowry: from A Summer to Die
Autumn Street
Number
of the Stars
Wing Tek Lum: “Chinese Hot Pot”
Elsa
Marston: from The Ancient
Egyptians
Edgar Lee Masters: “Hannah Armstrong”
Eve Merriam: “Like Bookends”
“Simile: Willow and Ginko”
Edna St. Vincent Millay: “The Courage That My Mother Had”
Pat Mora: “Graduation Morning”
Marc H. Morial: “Our Juvenile Curfew is Working”
Walter
Dean Myers: from Now Is Your
Time!
Ogden Nash: “Adventures of Isabel”
Barbara
Nichol: from Beethoven Lives Upstairs
Scott
O’Dell: from Island of the Blue Dolphins
Gordon Parks: “The Funeral”
Gary Paulsen: from The River
Dancing Girl
Dogsong
Woodsong
Robert Peterson: “Hero on the Ball Field”
Kim-Hue
Phan: from A Personal Narrative
Cabell
Phillips: from The 1940’s: Decade of Triumph and Trouble
Edgar Allan Poe: “Annabel Lee”
Anna Quindlen: “Homeless”
Dan Rather: “Silencing the Sound of Music”
Mickey Roberts: “It’s All in How You Say It”
Jackie Robinson: from I Never Had It Made
Sharon
Robinson: From Stealing Home
Andy Rooney: “America the Not-so-Beautiful”
Elenor
Roosevelt: from The
Autobiography of Elenor Roosevelt
Cynthia Rylant: from Missing May
“Sandy Jane Meador”
But I’ll Be Back Again
“Shells”
Shel Silverstein: “Almost Perfect”
Isaac Bashevis Singer: “Utzel and His Daughter Pverty”
William Saroyan: “Gaston”
William Sleator: “The Elevator”
Gary Soto: “Finding a Lucky Number”
From A
Summer Life
“Seventh Grade”
“Oranges”
from Living
Up the Street
Elizabeth
George Speare: from The Witch of
Blackbird Pond
Jerry
Spinelli: from Maniac Magee
Anne
Steele: from Egyptian Pyramids
John
Steinbeck: from The Pearl
May Swenson: “Waking From a Nap on the Beach”
Mary TallMountain: “There Is No Word”
Mildred D. Taylor: from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
The Gold Cadillac
The Friendship
James Thurber: “The Princess and the Tin Box”
Leo Tolstoy: “The King and the Shirt”
Nicolette Tousant: “Hearing the Sweetest Songs”
Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a Woman”
Mark Twain: from: “My First Venture”
Life on the Mississippi
A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur’s Court
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Letters
The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Yoshiko
Uchida: from Journey to Topaz
“The Princess of Light”
The Invisible Thread
Journey
Home
Desert
Exile
Rosa
Velasquez: from Robots Will
Never Replace Humans
Margaret Walker: “Lineage”
Yoko
Kawashima Watkins: from So Far from the Bamboo Grove
Edith Wharton: “Appointment in Baghdad”
Bailey White: “Turkeys”
Mary Whitebird: from “Ta-Na-E-Ka”
Walt Whitman: “O Captain! My Captain!”
Richard Wilbur: “A Game of Catch”
Richard Wright: “Four Haiku”
Richard
Wormser: from The Titanic
Lawrence
Yep: from Dragonwings
Jane Yolen: “Birthday Box”