3rd – 5th Grade Summer Reading List

Winner of the Newbery Medal! 

In one day, four lives weave together in unexpected ways. Virgil Salinas is shy and kindhearted and feels out of place in his crazy-about-sports family. Valencia Somerset, who is deaf, is smart, brave, and secretly lonely, and she loves everything about nature.

Kaori Tanaka is a self-proclaimed psychic, whose little sister, Gen, is always following her around. And Chet Bullens wishes the weird kids would just stop being so different so he can concentrate on basketball.

They aren’t friends, at least not until Chet pulls a prank that traps Virgil and his pet guinea pig at the bottom of a well. This disaster leads Kaori, Gen, and Valencia on an epic quest to find missing Virgil.

Through luck, smarts, bravery, and a little help from the universe, a rescue is performed, a bully is put in his place, and friendship blooms.

Parents Magazine Best Graphic Novel of 2017. School Library Journal Best Book of 2017. Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2017. 2018 YALSA Great Graphic Novel.

Newbery Honor author Shannon Hale and New York Times bestselling illustrator LeUyen Pham join forces in this graphic memoir about how hard it is to find your real friends―and why it’s worth the journey. 

National Book Award Finalist. Kirkus Best Books of 2017. Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017. School Library Journal Best Books of 2017. NAACP Image Awards Nominee. Chicago Public Library Best Books. Boston Globe Best Books of 2017 and more!

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.

On the journey that takes him through the New York City subways and to Washington Square Park, Clayton learns some things that surprise him.

An Amazon Top 20 Children’s Books of 2017. 

Funny, deep, warm, and nuanced, this is Katherine Applegate at her very best — writing from the heart, and from a completely unexpected point of view.

Washington Post Best Book of the Year. A New York Public Library Best Book for Kids. A Texas Bluebonnet Master List selection.

Obe Devlin has problems. Then one day, he sees a creature that looks kind of like a large dog.

As he watches it, he realizes it eats plastic. Only plastic. Water bottles, shopping bags… No one has seen a creature like this before.

The animal -Marvin Gardens- becomes Obe’s best friend and biggest secret. But to keep him safe from the developers and Tommy and his friends, Obe must make a decision that might change everything.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. A School Library Journal Best Picture Book of the Year. A 2018 Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book. A Junior Library Guild selection.

In this fascinating and fun take on nonfiction, Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris investigate a seemingly small trait of America’s most emblematic statue.

What they find is about more than history, more than art.

What they find in the Statue of Liberty’s right foot is the powerful message of acceptance that is essential of an entire country’s creation.

Lemonade Liberty Witt’s mama always told her: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But Lem can’t possibly make lemonade out of her new life in Willow Creek, California — the Bigfoot Capital of the World — where she’s forced to live with a grandfather she’s never met after her mother passes away.

Then she meets eleven-year-old Tobin Sky, the CEO of Bigfoot Detectives Inc., who is the sole Bigfoot investigator for their small town.

After he invites Lem to be his assistant for the summer, they set out on an epic adventure to capture a shot of the elusive beast on film.

But along the way, Lem and Tobin end up discovering more than they ever could have imagined. And Lem realizes that maybe she can make lemonade out of her new life after all.

Corinne La Mer claims she isn’t afraid of anything. Not even jumbies – tricksters made up by parents to frighten their children.

Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest, and shining yellow eyes follow her to the edge of the trees. They couldn’t belong to a jumbie. Or could they?

When Corinne spots a beautiful stranger at the market the very next day, she knows something extraordinary is about to happen. When this same beauty, called Severine, turns up at Corinne’s house, danger is in the air.

Severine plans to claim the entire island for the jumbies. Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn’t know she possessed to stop Severine and to save her island home.

In this one-of-a-kind, wild, but true history of Earth, the Sibert Honor medalist Don Brown takes on big concepts with humor and ease.

Almost 14.5 billion years ago, it all started with a BIG BANG and what began as a cloud of gas, dust, and rock eventually took shape and bloomed into a molten sphere.

Battered by asteroid collisions, ice ages, and shifting tectonic plates, our fledgling planet finally pushed forth continents.

But if you think the earth has calmed down since then—think again! Geological activity continues to sculpt the earth’s landscape, sometimes with terrible consequences for its inhabitants: earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.

Readers will delight in star cartoonist James Sturm’s tender and just depiction of a friendship in peril.

Armadillo is trying to come up with a plan for global domination… but with every new idea, being a bad guy seems a little less fun — especially if ruling the world means losing your best friend. 

Caldecott Honor Book. The Robert F. Sibert Honor Book. 

Rivers wind through earth, cutting down and eroding the soil for millions of years, creating a cavity in the ground 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and more than a mile deep known as the Grand Canyon.

Home to an astonishing variety of plants and animals that have lived and evolved within its walls for millennia, the Grand Canyon is much more than just a hole in the ground.

Follow a father and daughter as they make their way through the cavernous wonder, discovering life both present and past.

Weave in and out of time as perfectly placed die cuts show you that a fossil today was a creature much long ago, perhaps in a completely different environment.

Lola Levine likes writing in her diario, sipping her mom’s cafe con leche, eating her dad’s matzo ball soup, and playing soccer with her team, the Orange Smoothies. So what if she doesn’t always fit in? 

Lola is fierce on the field, but when a soccer game during recess gets too competitive, she accidentally hurts her classmate Juan Gomez. Now everyone is calling her Mean Lola Levine!

Lola feels terrible, but with the help of her family, her super best friend, Josh Blot, and a little “pencil power,” she just might be able to turn it all around.

Perfect for fans of Babymouse and Chris Colfer’s Land of Stories, this laugh-out-loud new comic hybrid series will turn everything you thought you knew about princesses on its head.

Harriet Hamsterbone is not your typical princess. One day, Harriet’s parents tell her of the curse that a rat placed on her at birth, dooming her to prick her finger on a hamster wheel when she’s twelve and fall into a deep sleep.

For Harriet, this is most wonderful news: It means she’s invincible until she’s twelve! After all, no good curse goes to waste.

And so begins a grand life of adventure with her trusty riding quail, Mumfrey…until her twelfth birthday arrives and the curse manifests in a most unexpected way.

Corabel Shofner’s Almost Paradise is a big-hearted middle grade novel about trust, belonging, and the struggles and joys of loving one another.

Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson’s life turns upside down the day her mother’s boyfriend holds up a convenience store, and her mother is wrongly jailed for assisting with the crime. 

Ruby believes that she’s the only one who can find a way to help heal her loved ones, save her mother, and bring her family back together.

Being in a family means that everyone has to work together to support each other, and being home doesn’t always mean going back to where you came from. 

The 2018 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Winner. A Newbery Medalist.

Out of gratitude for the poet’s art form, Newbery Award–winning author and poet Kwame Alexander, along with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, present original poems that pay homage to twenty famed poets who have made the authors’ hearts sing and their minds wonder.

Stunning mixed-media images by Ekua Holmes, winner of a Caldecott Honor and a John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award, complete the celebration and invite the reader to listen, wonder, and perhaps even pick up a pen.

With imagination and humor, Laurel Snyder and Emily Hughes paint a lively picture of brotherhood that children will relish in a format perfect for children not quite ready for chapter books.

Four hilarious stories, two inventive brothers, one irresistible book!

Join Charlie and Mouse as they talk to lumps, take the neighborhood to a party, sell some rocks, and invent the bedtime banana. 

Named for the Ojibwe word for little bear, Makoons and his twin, Chickadee, have traveled with their family to the Great Plains of Dakota Territory.

There they must learn to become buffalo hunters and once again help their people make a home in a new land.

But Makoons has had a vision that foretells great challenges — challenges that his family may not be able to overcome.

What happens when an evil queen gets her hands on an ancient force of destruction? World domination, obviously.

The seven kingdoms of Dreamside need a legendary hero. Instead, they’ll have to settle for Cucumber, a nerdy magician who just wants to go to school.

As destiny would have it, he and his way more heroic sister, Almond, must now seek the Dream Sword, the only weapon powerful enough to defeat Queen Cordelia’s Nightmare Knight. Can these bunny siblings really save the world in its darkest hour?

Like a bolt from the blue, Jack’s little sister Maddy is gone―carried into another realm by an ogre.

When Jack and Lilly follow Maddy’s captor through the portal, they are ready for anything . . . except what they find waiting for them in the floating crossroads between worlds.

Even the power of their magic plants may not be enough to get them back to earth alive. Alone and injured, Jack and Lilly must each face their own monsters ― as well as giants who grind the bones of human children to feed their “beast” and a fearsome goblin king in the sewers down below.

But when Jack finds himself in a tough spot, help comes from the most unlikely person: the goblin king!

From graphic novel superstar (and high school computer programming teacher) Gene Luen Yang comes a wildly entertaining new series that combines logic puzzles and basic programming instruction with a page-turning mystery plot!

Welcome to Stately Academy, a school which is just crawling with mysteries to be solved!

The founder of the school left many clues and puzzles to challenge his enterprising students.

Using their wits and their growing prowess with coding, Hopper and her friend Eni are going to solve the mystery of Stately Academy no matter what it takes!

In a partnership with We Need Diverse Books, industry giants participate in a story collection that is as humorous as it is heartfelt.

This impressive group of authors has earned among them every major award in children’s publishing and popularity as New York Times bestsellers. 

Whether it’s basketball dreams, family fiascos, first crushes, or new neighborhoods, this bold anthology — written by the best children’s authors including Kwame Alexander, Soman Chainani, Jacqueline Woodson, and many more — celebrates the uniqueness and universality in all of us.

For Babymouse, middle school is like a monster movie. You can never be sure who’s a friend and who’s an enemy, and the halls are filled with mean-girl zombies.

Instead of brains, the zombies hunger for stuff — the perfect wedge sandals or the right shade of sparkly lip gloss — and they expect everyone to be just like them.

Babymouse doesn’t want to fit in — she wants to stand out! So she joins the film club to write and direct a sweeping cinematic epic.

Will making the film of her dreams turn into a nightmare?

Sylvie Bloom wants to find something new and exciting this summer. Luckily, Sylvie’s teacher has the perfect idea — take over her a column in the newspaper for the summer, reporting on events in their small Wyoming town.

Sylvie is thrilled to have a new challenge, but she’s not sure she’ll actually see anything amazing. At least nothing like the things her mother saw when she traveled the world as a famous opera singer.

Sylvie can’t figure out why her mother would give up singing in front of thousands of people. Have she and her brother Nate been holding her mother back?

When her mother’s old duet partner James Grayson writes that he’s coming to perform nearby, will she be tempted to return to the stage, without them?

Winner of the 2017 Pura Belpré Author Award. 

Hilarious, energetic, and utterly relatable, Juana will win over the hearts of readers everywhere in her first adventure, presented by namesake Juana Medina.

Juana loves many things but she does not love wearing her itchy school uniform, solving math problems or going to dance class. And she especially does not love learning the English. Why is it so important to learn a language that makes so little sense?

But when Juana’s abuelos tell her about a special trip they are planning — one that Juana will need to speak English to go on — Juana begins to wonder whether learning the English might be a good use of her time after all.