Grades 6-8
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
The story begins
with a lonely boy
named Bastian and
the strange book that
draws him into the
beautiful but doomed
world of Fantastica.
Only a human can
save this enchanted
place by giving its
ruler, the Childlike
Empress, a new name.
But the journey to her
tower leads through
lands of dragons,
giants, monsters,
and magic and once
Bastian begins his
quest, he may never return. As he is drawn deeper
into Fantastica, he must find the courage to face
unspeakable foes and the mysteries of his own heart.
Sounder by William H. Armstrong
During the difficult
years of the nineteenth
century South, an
African-American boy
and his poor family
rarely have enough
to eat. Each night,
the boy’s father takes
their dog, Sounder, out
to look for food and
the man grows more
desperate by the day.
When food suddenly
appears on the table
one morning, it seems
like a blessing. But the
sheriff and his deputies
are not far behind. The ever-loyal Sounder remains
determined to help the family he loves as hard times
bear down on them.
This classic novel shows the courage, love, and faith
that bind an African-American family together despite
the racism and inhumanity they face.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Few creatures of horror have seized readers’
imaginations and held them for so long as the
anguished monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The story of Victor Frankenstein’s terrible creation
and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of
readers and inspired countless writers of horror and
suspense. Considering the novel’s enduring success, it
is remarkable that it began merely as a whim of Lord
Byron’s.
“We will each write
a story,” Byron
announced to his
next-door neighbors,
Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin and her
lover Percy Bysshe
Shelley. The friends
were summering
on the shores of
Lake Geneva in
Switzerland in
1816, Shelley still
unknown as a poet
and Byron writing
the third canto of
Childe Harold. When
continued rains kept them confined indoors, all agreed
to Byron’s proposal.
The illustrious poets failed to complete their ghost
stories, but Mary Shelley rose supremely to the
challenge. With Frankenstein, she succeeded admirably
in the task she set for herself: to create a story that, in
her own words, “would speak to the mysterious fears
of our nature and awaken thrilling horror -- one to
make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the
blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”
A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith
In this best-selling
novel, Patrick Smith
tells the story of three
generations of the
MacIveys, a Florida
family who battle the
hardships of the frontier
to rise from a dirt-poor
Cracker life to the
wealth and standing
of real estate tycoons.
The story opens in 1858,
when Tobias MacIvey
arrives in the Florida
wilderness to start a
new life with his wife
and infant son, and ends two generations later in 1968
with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that the land has
been exploited far beyond human need. The sweeping
story that emerges is a rich, rugged Florida history
featuring a memorable cast of crusty, indomitable
Crackers battling wild animals, rustlers, Confederate
deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and
freezes to carve a kingdom out of the swamp. But
their most formidable adversary turns out to be greed,
including finally their own. Love and tenderness
are here too: the hopes and passions of each new
generation, friendships with the persecuted
blacks and Indians, and respect for the land
and its wildlife.
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