Summer Reading 2021: Middle School

Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she'll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note.

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Every time she lands in a new school, Ally is able to hide her inability to read by creating clever yet disruptive distractions. She is afraid to ask for help; after all, how can you cure dumb? However, her newest teacher Mr. Daniels sees the bright, creative kid underneath the trouble maker.

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What happens when your BFF becomes your EFF . . . EX-Friend-Forever? When seventh-grader Mango Delight Fuller accidentally breaks her BFF Brooklyn’s new cell phone, her life falls apart.

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Willa likes certain things to be certain ways. Her socks have to be soft . . . and definitely can't have irritating tags on the inside. Willa can manage suchthings -- but there are some things she can't deal with, like her father's big news. . . that he's been dating the mom of Willa's best friend Ruby.

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Raymie Clarke has come to realize that everything, absolutely everything, depends on her. And she has a plan. If Raymie can win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father, who left town two days ago with a dental hygienist, will see Raymie's picture in the paper and (maybe) come home.

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Delsie observes that a friend has outgrown her. As she and a new friend traipse around Cape Cod on their adventures, they both learn what it means to be angry versus sad, broken versus whole, and abandoned versus loved.

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From Chapin's own Communication Team comes this much-loved novel by Alida Clemans!

Meet Lizzy Zander...
As she tries to settle into New York City, where her mother has gotten a new job, Lizzy copes with feelings of fear, anger, and loneliness.
Why couldn't she stay in New Jersey with her best friends Hannah and Amy?​
Why does her dad have to have multiple sclerosis? It's not fair!
At swim class, Lizzy meets Cassandra, a confident girl with amazing style and a big personality. Could she help Lizzy figure out how to make it through this crazy summer?
✸ Purchase this book through Amazon

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Aven Green loves to tell people that she lost her arms in an alligator wrestling match, or a wildfire in Tanzania, but the truth is she was born without them. And when her parents take a job running Stagecoach Pass, a rundown western theme park in Arizona, Aven moves with them across the country knowing that she’ll have to answer the question over and over again.

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When eleven-year-old Thyme Owens’ little brother, Val, is accepted into a new cancer drug trial, it’s just the second chance that he needs. But it also means the Owens family has to move to New York, thousands of miles away from Thyme’s best friend and everything she knows and loves.

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Ware can't wait to spend summer "off in his own world"--dreaming of knights in the Middle Ages and generally being left alone. But then his parents sign him up for dreaded Rec camp, where he must endure Meaningful Social Interaction and whatever activities so-called "normal" kids do. On his first day Ware meets Jolene, a tough, secretive girl planting a garden in the rubble of an abandoned church next to the camp. Soon he starts skipping Rec, creating a castle-like space of his own in the church lot. Jolene scoffs, calling him a dreamer--he doesn't live in the "real world" like she does. As different as Ware and Jolene are, though, they have one thing in common: for them, the lot is a refuge. But when their sanctuary is threatened, Ware looks to the knights' Code of Chivalry: Thou shalt do battle against unfairness wherever faced with it. But what can two misfit kids do?

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Despite her parents' divorce, her father's coming out as gay, and his plans to marry his boyfriend, ten-year-old Bea is reassured by her parents' unconditional love, excited about getting a stepsister, and haunted by something she did last summer at her father's lake house.

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Clea knows she needs to focus . . . but how can she do that when the people around her are always chewing gum loudly or making other annoying noises?When Clea fails one too many tests, her parents take her to be tested, and she finds out that she has ADHD, which means her attention is all over the place instead of where it needs to be.

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The first contemporary novel about a disease that bends the lives of ten percent of all teenagers: scoliosis.Rachel Brooks is excited for the new school year. She's finally earned a place as a forward on her soccer team. Her best friends make everything fun. And she really likes Tate, and she's pretty sure he likes her back. After one last appointment with her scoliosis doctor, this will be her best year yet.Then the doctor delivers some terrible news...
Check out this eAudiobook through HVLA
Check out this eAudiobook through the Queens Public Library
Check out this eAudiobook through the Brooklyn Public Library

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Just when she's finally beginning to gain confidence in her mastery of English and enjoying her reign as her neighborhood's hopscotch queen, a horrific car accident leaves Ruthie in a body cast and confined her to her bed for a long recovery.

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Celi Rivera's life swirls with questions. About her changing body. Her first attraction to a boy. And her best friend's exploration of what it means to be genderfluid. But most of all, her mother's insistence she have a moon ceremony when her first period arrives. It's an ancestral Mexican ritual that Mima and her community have reclaimed, but Celi promises she will NOT be participating. Can she find the power within herself to take a stand for who she wants to be?
✸ Check out this eBook at the Chapin Library
✸ Check out this eBook through the NYPL

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To twelve-year-old Molly Nathans, perfect is:

―The number four
―The tip of a newly sharpened No. 2 pencil
―A crisp white pad of paper
―Her neatly aligned glass animal figurines

What’s not perfect is Molly’s mother leaving the family to take a faraway job with the promise to return in one year. Molly knows that promises are sometimes broken, so she hatches a plan to bring her mother home...

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