Summer Reading List for Grades 3-5

As Mr. Bing’s new pet “doughnut dog,” Arnie couldn’t be happier.

When Mr. Bing joins a bowling league, Arnie gets to go along to practices and competitions. But then Mr. Bing starts rolling gutter balls. Someone or something is behind the madness.

Arnie, together with his team of goofball friends, must sort through the shenanigans and solve the mystery. Get ready for some sleuthing and even some magic.

Featuring layered, original artwork, this dynamic picture book celebrates kids as storytellers.

When Alex gets a silly, sappy picture book called Birthday Bunny, he picks up a pencil and turns it into something he’d like to read: Battle Bunny.

An adorable rabbit’s journey through the forest becomes a secret mission to unleash an evil plan — a plan that only Alex can stop.

In the first novel in theNew York Times bestselling series, Big Nate is in a class by himself! 

Nate knows he’s meant for big things. REALLY big things.

Things don’t always go your way just because you’re awesome.

Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847.

In the summer of 1908, in Muskegon, Michigan, a visiting troupe of vaudeville performers is about the most exciting thing since baseball.

They’re summering in nearby Bluffton, so Henry has a few months to ogle the elephant and the zebra, the tightrope walkers and — lo and behold — a slapstick actor his own age named Buster Keaton.

Clementine is having not so good of a week. On Monday she’s sent to the principal’s office for cutting off Margaret’s hair. Tuesday, Margaret’s mother is mad at her.

Wednesday, she’s sent to the principal again. Thursday, Margaret stops speaking to her. Friday starts with yucky eggs and gets worse. And by Saturday, even her mother is mad at her.

Okay, fine. Clementine is having a DISASTROUS week.

A discovery that made the world a brighter place! Joe and Bob Switzer were very different brothers. Bob was a studious planner who wanted to grow up to be a doctor.

Joe dreamed of making his fortune in show business and loved magic tricks and problem-solving. When an accident left Bob recovering in a darkened basement, the brothers began experimenting with ultraviolet light and fluorescent paints.

Together they invented a whole new kind of color, one that glows with an extra-special intensity — Day-Glo.

Newbery Honor winner * A Kirkus Reviews Best Book. A School Library Journal Best Book * A Booklist Editor’s Choice Books for Youth * A Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book

Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they’ve been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her.

A New York Times Bestseller! 

In this cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and A Night in the Museum.

Agatha Award winner Chris Grabenstein uses rib-tickling humor to create the perfect tale for his quirky characters.

Eleven-year old Dini loves movies — watching them, reading about them, trying to write her own — especially those oh-so-fabulous Bollywood movies where you don’t need to know the language to get what’s going on.

But when her mother reveals some big news, it does not at all jibe with the script Dini had in mind. Her family is moving to India.

And not even to Bombay, which is the “center of the filmi universe” (and home to Dini’s all-time most favorite star, Dolly Singh).

No, they’re moving to a teeny, tiny town that she can’t even find on a map: Swapnagiri.

It means Dream Mountain, a sleepy little place where nothing interesting can happen….

New York Times bestseller * Newbery Honor Book * National Book Award

Inspired by the author’s childhood experience of fleeing Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon and immigrating to Alabama, this coming-of-age debut novel told in verse has been celebrated for its touching child’s-eye view of family and immigration.

What’s brewing when two favorites — poetry and fairy tales — are turned (literally) on their heads?

It’s a revolutionary recipe: an infectious new genre of poetry and a lovably modern take on classic stories.

When this peculiar ad appears in the newspaper, dozens of children enroll to take a series of mysterious, mind-bending tests.

(And you, dear reader, can test your wits right alongside them.)

But in the end just four very special children will succeed.

Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and resourceful children could complete.

To accomplish it they will have to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.

Nathan Hale, the author’s historical namesake, was America’s first spy, a Revolutionary War hero who famously said “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country” before being hanged by the British.

In the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series, author Nathan Hale channels his namesake to present history’s roughest, toughest, and craziest stories in the graphic novel format.

In this breakthrough story — reminiscent of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — from multiple Coretta Scott King Award-winner Sharon Draper, readers will come to know a brilliant mind and a brave spirit who will change forever how they look at anyone with a disability.

In a magic kingdom where your name is your destiny, 12-year-old Rump is the butt of everyone’s joke.

But when he finds an old spinning wheel, his luck seems to change.

Rump discovers he has a gift for spinning straw into gold.

His best friend, Red Riding Hood, warns him that magic is dangerous, and she’s right.

With each thread he spins, he weaves himself deeper into a curse.

NAACP Image Award winner and ALA Notable, this luminous, celebrated novel in verse is now in paperback.

Serafina made a secret promise to go to school and learn to read so she can become a doctor with her best friend, Julie Marie. But following her dream isn’t easy-endless chores, little money and stomach-rumbling hunger all test her resolve.

When an earthquake hits and separates Serafina from friends and family, she encounters her biggest test of all. Serafina made a secret promise. Will she survive to keep it?

#1 New York Times bestseller Brandon Mull launches Scholastic’s wildly popular multiplatform phenomenon.

Four children separated by vast distances all undergo the same ritual, watched by cloaked strangers. Four flashes of light erupt, and from them emerge the unmistakable shapes of incredible beasts — a wolf, a leopard, a panda, a falcon.

Suddenly the paths of these children — and the world — have been changed forever.

Not so long ago, in a middle school not so far away, a sixth grader named Dwight folded an origami finger puppet of Yoda.

For class oddball Dwight, this wasn’t weird. It was typical Dwight behavior. But what is weird is that Origami Yoda is uncannily wise and prescient.

He can predict the date of a pop quiz, guess who stole the classroom Shakespeare bust, and save a classmate from popularity-crushing embarrassment with some well-timed advice.

Dwight’s classmate Tommy wonders how Yoda can be so smart when Dwight himself is so clueless.

Andy and Terry live in a treehouse. But it’s not just any old treehouse, it’s the most amazing treehouse in the world!

This treehouse has thirteen stories, a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a secret underground laboratory, and a marshmallow machine that follows you around and automatically shoots marshmallows into your mouth whenever you are hungry.

Life would be perfect for Andy and Terry if it wasn’t for the fact that they have to write their next book, which is almost impossible because there are just so many distractions, including thirteen flying cats, giant bananas, mermaids, a sea monsters pretending to be mermaids, enormous gorillas, and dangerous burp gas-bubblegum bubbles!

Take Timmy Failure — the clueless, comically self-confident CEO of the best detective agency in town, perhaps even the nation. Add his impressively lazy business partner, a very large polar bear named Total.

Throw in the Failuremobile — Timmy’s mom’s Segway — and what you have is Total Failure, Inc., a global enterprise destined to make Timmy so rich his mother won’t have to stress out about the bills anymore.

Of course, Timmy’s plan does not include the four-foot-tall female whose name shall not be uttered. And it doesn’t include Rollo Tookus, who is so obsessed with getting into “Stanfurd” that he can’t carry out a no-brainer spy mission.

Every Tuesday Castle Glower takes on a life of its own-magically inventing, moving, and even completely getting rid of some of its rooms.

Good thing Princess Celie takes the time to map out these never-ending changes.

Because when the castle is ambushed and Celie’s parents and oldest brother go missing, it’s up to Celie to protect their home and save their kingdom.

This Newbery Honor book features magic, adventure, friendship, and even a dragon who can’t fly! 

In the valley of Fruitless Mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life’s questions.

Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family’s fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer.

Clay and his friends have grown up under a mountain, secretly raised by the Talons of Peace to fulfill a mysterious prophecy.

The five young dragons are destined to end the war that’s been raging between the tribes of Pyrrhia — but how they’ll do this, none of them knows. But not every dragonet wants a destiny. When one of their own is threatened, Clay and his friends decide to escape.

Maybe they can break free and end the war at the same time — or maybe they’ll risk everything …