Oak Grove School-‐-‐Summer Reading List 2015 Going into 6th Grade How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous by Georgia Bragg This fascinating collection of remarkable deaths relays all the gory details of how 19 world figures
gave up the ghost, including King Tut, Julius Caesar, George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe, and
Henry VIII.
Lexile: 950
A Long Walk to Water: A Novel Based on a True Story by Park, Linda Sue When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated
from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia,
and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America
in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.
Lexile: 720, F& P W
Mockingbird : (Mok'ing-‐burd) by Kathryn Erskine In Caitlin's world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is
confusing. That's the stuff Caitlin's older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon's
dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with
Asperger's, she doesn't know how. When she reads the definition of closure, she realizes that is what
she needs. In her search for it, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white-the world is
full of colors-messy and beautiful.
Lexile: 630, F&P: W
Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool At the end of World War II, Jack Baker, a landlocked Kansas boy, is suddenly uprooted after his
mother's death and placed in a boy's boarding school in Maine. There, Jack encounters Early Auden,
the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as a story and collects clippings about the sightings of
a great black bear in the nearby mountains. Newcomer Jack feels lost yet can't help being drawn to
Early, who won't believe what everyone accepts to be the truth about the Great Appalachian Bear,
Timber Rattlesnakes, and the legendary school hero known as The Fish, who never returned from the
war. When the boys find themselves unexpectedly alone at school, they embark on a quest on the
Appalachian Trail in search of the great black bear. But what they are searching for is sometimes
different from what they find. They will meet truly strange characters, each of whom figures into the
pi story Early weaves as they travel, while discovering things they never realized about themselves
and others in their lives.
Lexile: 790
Oak Grove School-‐-‐Summer Reading List 2015 Going into 6th Grade (cont.) Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer Holm She's smart and tough and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood ending. After all,
it's 1935 and jobs and money and sometimes even dreams are scarce. So when Turtle's mama gets a
job housekeeping for a lady who doesn't like kids, Turtle says goodbye without a tear and heads off
to Key West, Florida to live with relatives she's never met. Florida's like nothing Turtle's ever seen
before though. It's hot and strange, full of rag tag boy cousins, family secrets, scams, and even buried
pirate treasure! Before she knows what's happened, Turtle finds herself coming out of the shell she's
spent her life building, and as she does, her world opens up in the most unexpected ways. Filled with
adventure, humor and heart, Turtle in Paradise is an instant classic both boys and girls with love.
Lexile: 610, F&P: V
Wonder by R. J. Palacio Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected
to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in
Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunts and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as
just another student.
Lexile: 790
Oak Grove School-‐-‐Summer Reading List 2015