Summer Reading Grade 7
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Summer Reading Program Grade 7
Theme: Challenges

Reading Motivation Committee Summer Reading Program Mission Statement
Westfield’s Reading Motivation Committee’s purpose is to promote reading enjoyment. Reading allows students (and adults) to experience different worlds and learn life lessons. Readers extend their background knowledge and vocabulary. Summer is an important time to keep kids reading. Studies have shown that many students lose ground in the summer months. In fact, there is a direct correlation between volume of reading at any time and reading progress. A famous study of fifth graders (Anderson, Wilson, Fielding, 1998) found the following:

A study by the National Endowment for the Arts (2007) found similar results for twelfth graders.

Westfield supports the creation of community of readers, made up of both adults and children. Help us create life-long readers. Be an active participant in our summer reading program.

Book Choices

1. Downsiders by Shusterman, Neal
   Meticulous 14-year-old Lindsay isn't exactly thrilled about moving to the chaos that she believes is New York City. Her flighty "career college student" mom, now divorced, has dumped her on her city engineer dad, "a man who lived his life twenty minutes behind schedule and in a perpetual state of apology." Lindsay is certain that nothing better awaits her than prep school boredom and constant battles with her evil stepbrother Todd. But she is wrong. Quite by accident, Lindsay discovers an unusual boy named Talon who resides in a secret city beneath New York--a kind of underground Oz called the Downside. Talon and Lindsey are fascinated by the differences in their dual worlds and soon grow equally fascinated with each other. But when Lindsay's dad's construction project hits a snag that reveals the Downside, it is not only the blooming relationship that hangs in the balance, but the entire future of the Downside as well.

2. Beanball by Fehler, Gene
   Gr 5–9— A high school athlete is seriously injured by a wild pitch, and he, his family and friends, teachers, coaches, and eyewitnesses share their reactions and feelings about the incident in free-verse monologues. Luke "Wizard" Wallace is a determined, talented player, and a leader on the field and off. Then, in a game versus their archrivals, he leans into a fastball thrown by Kyle Dawkins and is hit by a pitch that leaves him blind in one eye. This plot-driven, brief novel is a page-turner, though its protagonist and supporting characters are one-dimensional. Most are defined chiefly by their relation to Luke: the sympathetic coach; the "win at all costs" coach; his loyal friends and family. Fehler's straightforward story may appeal to die-hard sports fans, but Scott Johnson's Safe at Second (Philomel, 1999) and Carl Deuker's High Heat (Houghton, 2003), two novels that also deal with sports accidents and their aftermath, offer both compelling story lines and memorable characters.

3. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 By Jim Murphy
   Grade 6-10-If surviving the first 20 years of a new nationhood weren't challenge enough, the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, centering in Philadelphia, was a crisis of monumental proportions. Murphy chronicles this frightening time with solid research and a flair for weaving facts into fascinating stories, beginning with the fever's emergence on August 3, when a young French sailor died in Richard Denny's boardinghouse on North Water Street. As church bells rang more and more often, it became horrifyingly clear that the de facto capital was being ravaged by an unknown killer. Largely unsung heroes emerged, most notably the Free African Society, whose members were mistakenly assumed to be immune and volunteered en masse to perform nursing and custodial care for the dying. Black-and-white reproductions of period art, coupled with chapter headings that face full-page copies of newspaper articles of the time, help bring this dreadful episode to life. An afterword explains the yellow fever phenomenon, its causes, and contemporary outbreaks, and source notes are extensive and interesting. Pair this work with Laurie Halse Anderson's wonderful novel Fever 1793 (S & S, 2000) and you'll have students hooked on history.

4. Tangerine by Bloor, Edward
   Grade 6-8. Paul starts seventh grade after moving from Houston to a ritzy new development in Tangerine County, FL. Legally blind following some repressed childhood incident, he nonetheless sees familial, environmental, and social anomalies of the local landscape with greater acuity than the adults around him. His intense mother quickly assumes a leadership role in the Homeowner's Association. His civil engineer father is obsessed with his older brother Erik's football career. Lurking beneath their suburban veneer are real dangers that deepen the disquieting atmosphere: smoke from an unquenchable muck fire casts a pall over the area; lightning kills a football player during practice; a sinkhole swallows the school's portable classrooms; and Paul's conflicts with Erik, a truly nasty, probably psychotic kid. Paul is determined to do whatever it takes to make it on the soccer field, in the classroom, and with his peers. The difference between local people with knowledge of the land and ignorant newcomers who are perplexed by it is powerfully portrayed. Equally clear is that class consciousness and racism have built fences through which Paul chooses to blast holes. Mix a sensitive male protagonist reminiscent of Asa in Bruce Brooks's What Hearts (HarperCollins, 1992), ratchet the soccer scenes from Joseph Cottonwood's The Adventures of Boone Barnaby (Scholastic, 1990) up several degrees of intensity, and enjoy this satisfying family/healing, coming-of-age struggle in which everyone takes some licks, but Paul keeps on kicking.