Four Book Recomendations for Reading Month

I have a passion for books, especially books for kids.  It's probably because I harbor a lifelong dream of writing them, or maybe because my wife Jen (follow her on the other half of this blog btw...) is an elementary reading interventionist.  Either way, for this post I'd like to share four book recommendations for middle schoolers who are constantly saying, "I don't like to read" that I've read recently.

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson is about a young girl who has to move with her mom away from the big city to a much more rural southern town.  Once there, she befriends a neighbor who is facing his own challenges for being a little different.  As their friendship grows, they come upon a decades old mystery that exposes a a great injustice from the town's racist past and prejudiced present.
If your students (or kids) love a good mystery and inclusive stories of friendship and acceptance, they'll love this book as much as I did. 

Grenade and Refugee by Alan Gratz are incredible historical fiction books - one about an Okinawan boy and young GI at the end of WWII, and the other about four different groups of refugees - that do an incredible job of bringing the reader into events and minds of the past in a way that makes you feel the emotions of the characters in an amazing way.

Gratz does a great job weaving together different storylines into a single narrative showing similarities between seemingly unlike people and time periods in a way that literally took my breath away.  In fact, there's a page-long passage in the middle of Grenade that made me have to literally put down the book and take a breath not just because of what had happened, but because of how it was written!

The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle - I saved my most recent favorite for last!  This book about inclusivity, friendship and prejudice left me at times angry, sad, happy and with a lump in my throat.

It is the story of Mason Buttle, a very sweaty, very deliberate thinking dyslexic middle schooler who everyone thinks murdered his best friend.  Fortunately for Mason, he found another friend in an undersized boy who moved in down the street.  They are brought together by a common foe - bullies next door whose favorite sport is hurling apples at them with their lacrosse sticks.

Mason and his friend find shelter from their tormentors and a place for their friendship to grow inside an old root cellar.  Eventually, Mason's names is cleared and his tormentors get their just desserts.

What makes this book truly amazing is they way it's told from Mason's point of view in Mason's voice.  You turn the last page feeling like you are saying goodbye to an old friend.  This may be my favorite book of all time!

​So, I wish you and your students a very Happy Reading Month (why aren't there Happy Reading Month cards btw...), and hope you check out or pass on some of these recommendations to your students or teacher friends.  Also, make sure to checkout my TpT store for great Social Studies resources, and follow this blog for great teaching tips, tricks and ideas.