Gates Middle School Summer Reading
Get your summer reading books at Buttonwood Books and Toys! Gates Middle School students are required to read one book of their choice. You can find more specific instructions here. Buttonwood recommendations as well as titles required by other schools are below. Feel free to come in for a personalized recommendation from our staff!
For entering 6th graders, you can use this list of recommendations, but feel free to read something that is not on the list.
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
A rollicking adventure about laser tag and fierce sibling rivalries, this is the first book in a commercial middle grade fantasy series by Julie C. Dao, perfect for fans of Tristan Strong and Nevermoor.
Sadie and Clip Chu love laser tag. When a new arena opens in their town with state-of-the-art courses and virtual reality headsets, they couldn’t be more excited—or more competitive. But when a mysterious boy who claims to be part of the game tricks Clip into getting trapped with him, Sadie and the rest of their friends must find a way to save Clip and fight their way out. As they team up to beat the obstacles in store, the Chu siblings learn that they're far better off working with instead of against each other.
An action-packed fantasy adventure set in an imaginative virtual fantasy world, this lighthearted middle grade romp is a joyful celebration of the fierceness of sibling rivalry and supportive friendships.
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
In a fantasy adventure every bit as compelling and confident in its world building as her Newbery Honor Book A Wish in the Dark, Christina Soontornvat explores a young woman’s struggle to unburden herself of the past and chart her own destiny in a world of secrets. As assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker, twelve-year-old Sai plays the part of a well-bred young lady with a glittering future. In reality, her father is a conman—and in a kingdom where the status of one’s ancestors dictates their social position, the truth could ruin her. Sai seizes the chance to join an expedition to chart the southern seas, but she isn’t the only one aboard with secrets. When Sai learns that the ship might be heading for the fabled Sunderlands—a land of dragons, dangers, and riches beyond imagining—she must weigh the cost of her dreams. Vivid, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this tale of identity and integrity is as beautiful and intricate as the maps of old.
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
Award-winning author Amy Sarig King takes on censorship and intolerance in a novel she was born to write. When Mac first opens his classroom copy of Jane Yolen's The Devil’s Arithmetic and finds some words blacked out, he thinks it must be a mistake. But then when he and his friends discover what the missing words are, he's outraged. Someone in his school is trying to prevent kids from reading the full story. But who? Even though his unreliable dad tells him to not get so emotional about a book (or anything else), Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong. He and his friends head to the principal's office to protest the censorship... but her response doesn't take them seriously. So many adults want Mac to keep his words to himself. Mac's about to see the power of letting them out. In Attack of the Black Rectangles, acclaimed author Amy Sarig King shows all the ways truth can be hard... but still worth fighting for.
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
A tour de force from acclaimed author Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087), this timely -- and timeless -- novel tells the powerful story of three different children seeking refuge.
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
A graphic novel told through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy living in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. This fictional story portrays real historical events and includes extensive background information on internment camps.
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
There lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children – among them Petra and her family – have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet – and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard – or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?
A possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
A funny, feminist, and queer contemporary middle grade debut that follows twelve-year-old loner Hazel Hill, who, after one of her classmates is harassed online, devises a plan to catch the school’s golden boy in the act.
This a possible titles for 6th - 8th grade.
Sara Martinez is a hacker. She recently broke into the New York City foster care system to expose her foster parents as cheats and lawbreakers. However, instead of being hailed as a hero, Sara finds herself facing years in a juvenile detention facility and banned from using computers for the same stretch of time. Enter Mother, a British spy who not only gets Sara released from jail but also offers her a chance to make a home for herself within a secret MI6 agency. Operating out of a base in Scotland, the City Spies are five kids from various parts of the world. When they’re not attending the local boarding school, they’re honing their unique skills, such as sleight of hand, breaking and entering, observation, and explosives. All of these allow them to go places in the world of espionage where adults can’t. Before she knows what she’s doing, Sara is heading to Paris for an international youth summit, hacking into a rival school’s computer to prevent them from winning a million euros, dangling thirty feet off the side of a building, and trying to stop a villain…all while navigating the complex dynamics of her new team. No one said saving the world was easy…
This a possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
Winner of the Newbery Medal! Acclaimed author Erin Entrada Kelly’s award-winning and bestselling novel for middle grade readers is a funny and poignant neighborhood story about unexpected friendships. Told from four intertwining points of view—two boys and two girls—the novel celebrates bravery, being different, and finding your inner bayani (hero). The Washington Post called it, “A charming, intriguingly plotted novel.” A New York Times bestseller!
This is a possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
From the author of Nowhere Boy - called “a resistance novel for our times” by The New York Times - comes a brilliant middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.
This is a possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
Award-winning, bestselling author Sara Pennypacker is back with a hilarious absurdist tale about a precocious girl who transforms her community in surprising ways.
This is a possible title for 6th - 8th grade.
Newbery Medal-winning middle grade novel in verse about twelve-year-old twins and basketball stars Josh and Jordan Bell who must learn to deal with problems on and off the court as they navigate homework, first crushes, family and, of course, basketball.