*MS Library - Core Libraries / Suggested Reading: Gr 7 Core Library

Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note.

In 1898 during the Boxer Rebellion a boy named Little Bao recruits an army of Boxers to rid China of foreign missionaries and soldiers who bully and rob Chinese peasants.

In 1898 during the Boxer Rebellion a girl named Vibiana who is unwanted and unwelcome turns to Christianity, but she finds herself torn between her nation and her Christian friends who are being murdered by bands of young men.

Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.

An 'After-the-Bomb' story told by teenage Danny, one of the survivors - one of the unlucky ones. Set in Shipley, an ordinary town in the north of England, this is a powerful portrayal of a world that has broken down. Danny not only has to cope in a world of lawlessness and gang warfare, but he has to protect and look after his little brother, Ben, and a girl called Kim. Is there any hope left for a new world?

Twelve-year-old genius and outsider Willow Chance must figure out how to connect with other people and find a surrogate family for herself after her parents are killed in a car accident.

Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.

In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

The memoir of a boy named Sungju who grew up in North Korea and, at the age of twelve, was forced to live on the streets and fend for himself after his parents disappeared. Finally, after years of being homeless and living with a gang, Sungju is reunited with his maternal grandparents and, eventually, his father.

Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.

After a traumatic accident removes his telekinetic ability, or psy, twelve-year-old Taemon is exiled to the "dud farm," where he is surprised to find kind, open people who enjoy using their hands but there are also mysteries at the colony and when Taemon unwittingly leaks one of the secrets he must find the courage to repair the damage, even if it means returning to the city from which he was banished.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

A battered child learns to embrace life when he is adopted by an old man in the English countryside during World War II.

Six kids with very different life experiences narrate Harbor Me, award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson's powerful and timely novel. Through Woodson's characters, young readers will identify with the importance of sharing our stories and helping one another through times of prejudice and fear.

In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patrón, the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen accidentally becomes a contender in the annual Hunger Games, a grave competition hosted by the Capitol where young boys and girls are pitted against one another in a televised fight to the death.

Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.

Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.

A coming-of-age story about a boy whose life revolves around hiding his obsessive compulsive disorder--until he gets a mysterious note that changes everything. Daniel is the back-up punter for the Erie Hills Elephants. Which really means he's the water boy. He spends football practice perfectly arranging water cups--and hoping no one notices. Actually, he spends most of his time hoping no one notices his strange habits--he calls them Zaps: avoiding writing the number four, for example, or flipping a light switch on and off dozens of times over. He hopes no one notices that he's crazy, especially his best friend Max, and Raya, the prettiest girl in school.

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller. In time for the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, master storyteller Alan Gratz (Refugee) delivers a pulse-pounding and unforgettable take on history and hope, revenge and fear -- and the stunning links between the past and present. September 11, 2001, New York City: Brandon is visiting his dad at work, on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. Out of nowhere, an airplane slams into the tower, creating a fiery nightmare of terror and confusion. And Brandon is in the middle of it all. Can he survive -- and escape? September 11, 2019, Afghanistan: Reshmina has grown up in the shadow of war, but she dreams of peace and progress. When a battle erupts in her village, Reshmina stumbles upon a wounded American soldier named Taz. Should she help Taz -- and put herself and her family in mortal danger? Two kids. One devastating day. Nothing will ever be the same.

Brilliant Egyptologist Dr. Julius Kane accidentally unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes the doctor to oblivion and forces his two children to embark on a dangerous journey, bringing them closer to the truth about their family and its links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed "bourgeois," and people of laughter.

Sixteen-year-old Leo Coughlin's life is increasingly stressful because his autistic older brother Caleb's behavior is becoming more bizarre and even violent, and their parents' marriage is falling apart--but Leo finds an escape in long distance running, and in two new friends: Curtis, himself a potential state champion who teaches him the strategy of running, and Mary, his would-be girlfriend.

In Coraline's family's new flat there's a locked door. On the other side is a brick wall--until Coraline unlocks the door . . . and finds a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only different. The food is better there. Books have pictures that writhe and crawl and shimmer. And there's another mother and father there who want Coraline to be their little girl. They want to change her and keep her with them. . . . Forever. Coraline is an extraordinary fairy tale/nightmare from the uniquely skewed imagination of #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman.

Shawn McDaniel's life is not what it may seem to anyone looking at him. He is glued to his wheelchair, unable to voluntarily move a muscle--he can't even move his eyes. For all Shawn's father knows, his son may be suffering. Shawn may want a release. And as long as he is unable to communicate his true feelings to his father, Shawn's life is in danger.

To the world, Shawn's senses seem dead. Within these pages, however, we meet a side of him that no one else has seen--a spirit that is rich beyond imagining, breathing life.

The autobiography of Michaela DePrince, who lived the first few years of her life in war-torn Sierra Leone until being adopted by an American family. Now seventeen, she is one of the premiere ballerinas in the United States.

A group of fourteen-year-old boys, who make a living picking garbage from the outskirts of a large city, finds something special and mysterious that brings terrifying consequences.

A powerful novel-in-verse about how one teen boy survives the March 2011 tsunami that devastates his coastal Japanese village.

Twelve-year-old Annabelle must learn to stand up for what's right in the face of a manipulative and violent new bully who targets people Annabelle cares about, including a homeless World War I veteran.

Based on the life of Jack Gruener, this book relates his story of survival from the Nazi occupation of Krakow, when he was eleven, through a succession of concentration camps, to the final liberation of Dachau.