I received a sample for this review/feature. Opinions expressed are my own.
It can be a daunting task coming up with new titles for kids to read over the summer. I think it is the perfect time of the year to find a new author or genre you might not have ever tried before because you have time to dedicate to actually getting into the story. If it doesn’t work out there are plenty of other titles to choose from. Here are 12 Summer Reads For Middle Grade Readers from HarperCollin’s Children’s Books.
In The Summer of Bad Ideas this funny 12? year-old Edie and her impossibly cool cousin, Rae, set out to complete a mysterious list of ?Good Ideas for Summertime? that their eccentric late grandmother wrote back when she was their age. But good ideas? Most of them seem like bad ideas. Reckless. Foolish. Ridiculous. Still, by accomplishing everything on the list, rule-abiding Edie feels certain that she can become the effortlessly brave adventurer she dreams of being, just like her daring cousin and bold grandmother. For this one summer at least, bad ideas are the best shot she has at becoming who she wants to be.
In York: The Shadow Cipher Volume Number 1 it was 1798 when the Morningstarr twins arrived in New York with a vision for a magnificent city: towering skyscrapers, dazzling machines, and winding train lines, all running on technology no one had ever seen before. Fifty-seven years later, the enigmatic architects disappeared, leaving behind for the people of New York the Old York Cipher?a puzzle laid into the shining city they constructed, at the end of which was promised a treasure beyond all imagining. By the present day, however, the puzzle has never been solved, and the greatest mystery of the modern world is little more than a tourist attraction.
Heroes and Villains, the seventh volume in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading, is chock-full of adventure featuring an array of characters?with and without capes. Featuring ten all-new, original stories that run the gamut from fantasy to comics to contemporary adventure to nonfiction, and featuring eleven of the most acclaimed, exciting writers for kids working today, this collection is the perfect book for you, whether you use your powers for good?or evil.
In Apartment 1986 Callie never meant to let it go this far. Sure, she may have accidentally-on-purpose skipped a day at her fancy New York City prep school, but she never thought she?d skip the day after that! And the one after that . . . and . . . uh . . . the one after that. And when Callie runs into Cassius, a mysterious and prickly unschooled kid doing research at museums all across the city, it seems only natural for her to join him. Because museums are educational, which means they?re as good as going to class. Right? Besides, school can wait. What can?t wait is the mystery of why her grandmother seems to wish she could travel back in time to 1986, or what she wants so much to relive there.
In One Hundred Spaghetti Strings you follow Steffy with her older sister, Nina, who have lived with beloved Auntie Gina since they were little. But when Steffy and Nina’s dad comes home to live with them, everything changes. So Steffy does what she does best: She cooks her way through the hardest year of her life. But sometimes her life feels like a kitchen-sink meal?too many ingredients that don’t quite work. All Steffy wants is for her family to be whole again. Can her recipes help bring them back together?
The action-packed follow-up to Hero, comes Hero: Hurricane Rescue. When a dangerous hurricane strikes town and Jack and his puppy, Scout, go missing, retired search-and-rescue dog Hero is the only one who can track them down. Hero and his human, Ben, set off into the woods, but when the storm surges out of control, the group is suddenly trapped with no way out. Now it’s up to Hero to get everyone home safe and sound. Together, Hero and Ben fight for their lives?but can Hero battle his way past alligators, mudslides, and raging floods?
Max meets A Dog Called Homeless in A Dog Like Daisy told from the humorous, thoughtful perspective of a rescued pit bull as she trains to be a service dog for an injured veteran and his family. Daisy has only ten weeks to prove her usefulness or else be sent back to the pound. Yet if she goes back, who will protect Colonel Victor from his PTSD attacks? Or save the littler human, Micah, from those infernal ear muzzles he calls earphones? What if no one ever adopts her again? Determined to become the elite protector the colonel needs, Daisy vows to ace the service dog test. She?ll accept the ridiculous leash and learn to sit, heel, shake, even do your business, Daisy when told to.
Here comes the imaginative, the inquisitive, the unstoppable Marty Pants! Meet Marty in the side-splitting first book of a new series written by Mark Parisi, the award-winning cartoonist of the Off the Mark comic. Marty Pants is different from your typical middle schooler. He has the soul of an artist, and as an artist, he notices things?the kinds of things other kids don?t seem to see.
So when Marty discovers that an alien is lurking around his town, watching him, Marty knows this is a danger he can?t just ignore. But no one, not his best friends Parker and Roongrat or his mother, father, sister, arch-enemy, Simon, or Chief of Police Pickels, believes him. So, it’s up to Marty to save the world?his way.
If life were a baseball game, all-star pitcher Gabby Garcia would be having her Best. Season. EVER! Until she’s suddenly sent to another school and her winning streak is about to disappear?both on and off the field. But Gabby never gives up! She has a PLAN to keep her champion status intact, and every step of is written out?PLAY by PLAY. How could it not work? Gabby Garcia’s Ultimate Playbook is part of a new series written by Iva-Marie Palmer and is filled with illustrations, sports facts, and blooper-reel moments.
From beloved Newbery Honor winner and three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner Rita Williams-Garcia comes a powerful and heartfelt novel about loss, family, and love in Clayton Byrd Goes Underground. Clayton feels most alive when he’s with his grandfather, Cool Papa Byrd, and the band of Bluesmen?he can?t wait to join them, just as soon as he has a blues song of his own. But then the unthinkable happens. Cool Papa Byrd dies, and Clayton’s mother forbids Clayton from playing the blues. And Clayton knows that’s no way to live. Armed with his grandfather’s brown porkpie hat and his harmonica, he runs away from home in search of the Bluesmen, hoping he can join them on the road.
Here comes Laugh Out Loud: Road Trip Jokes For Kids in a brand-new collection filled with hundreds of jokes and riddles perfect for trains, planes, and automobiles?and featuring, for the first time ever, games and puzzles to keepthewhole family?busy for hours!
In Laugh Out Loud: Ultimate Jokes for Kids comes a 2-in-1 collectible hardcover bind-up of?Laugh-Out-Loud?Awesome Jokes for KidsandLaugh-Out-Loud?Road Trip?Jokes for Kids! In hardcover for the first time, Rob Elliot brings together two timeless joke books full?of hilarious hits that will never go out of’style.?Packed full of side-splitters, tongue-twisters, knee-slappers, and even games and puzzles,youll want to keep this on hand for the whole family, the whole year round!
There are several different types of books on this list to choose from. There are joke books, mysteries, dramas and some that involve dogs. Reading over the summer should be fun and not a chore so let kids choose ones that interest them. Happy reading!
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