This School Year's Best-Selling Books for Grades 6-8

Separated by continents and decades, the harrowing escape stories of Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud intertwine.

If he could, John Midas would eat nothing but chocolate all the time, and he'd never share it with anyone. Then one day, John finds a strange coin on the sidewalk and uses it to buy a box of chocolate at a mysterious new candy store.

Suddenly, everything John's lips touch turns to chocolate! Chocolate toothpaste and chocolate water fountains are great, but things get complicated when John can't play the trumpet or bob for apples. Worst of all, he forgets and kisses his mother!

Based on extensive research and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, When We Flew Away is an extraordinary and moving tour de force.

This winner of the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award features Stanley Yelnats, a kid who is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats.

Ever since the monster apocalypse hit town, average 13-year-old Jack Sullivan has been living in his tree house, which he's armed and enhanced with catapults and a moat, not to mention video games and an endless supply of Oreos and Mountain Dew scavenged from abandoned stores. But even in his fortified tree house, Jack alone is no match for the hordes of zombies and winged wretches and vine thingies, and especially not for the eerily intelligent monster known only as Blarg.

Born without arms, Aven unearths a mystery in a rundown theme park and discovers she has just what she needs.

New York Times bestselling author Margot Lee Shetterly's book is now available in a new edition perfect for young readers. This is the amazing true story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program.

Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract," which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg's father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?

This is the first installment of C.S. Lewis' renowned series, The Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, first published in 1950, has been enchanting the hearts and imaginations of millions for generations, with its story of four siblings who, with the help of a Lion named Aslan, must overcome their own failings to become heroes of a better world.

Fiesty and resilient Mia Tang works and lives at the motel with her parents, who secretly help immigrants, while she pursues her dream of being a writer. 

Brimming with humor, wonder, mystery, and a profound sense of hope, Big Tree is a trailblazing adventure, illustrated with nearly 300 pages of breathtaking pictures.

Feng-Li can't wait to discover America with her family! But after an action-packed vacation, her parents deliver shocking news: They are returning to Taiwan and leaving Feng-Li and her older siblings in California on their own.

Suddenly, the three kids must fend for themselves in a strange new world-and get along. Starting a new school, learning a new language, and trying to make new friends while managing a household is hard enough, but Bro and Sis's constant bickering makes everything worse. Thankfully, there are some hilarious moments to balance the stress and loneliness. But as tensions escalate-and all three kids get tangled in a web of bad choices-can Feng-Li keep her family together?

Deaf heroine, Mary Lambert, is our guide through a breathless, exquisitely plotted adventure, this time taking us from 19th century Martha"s Vineyard to Europe as Mary sets out to discover what her future holds. So when she receives an invitation to join a group of missionaries traveling abroad, she hastily accepts. She wants to meet deaf people who speak other sign languages and learn to converse with them. But will the missionaries" hidden intentions thwart her own?

Akim Aliu - also known as "Dreamer" - is a Ukrainian-Nigerian-Canadian professional hockey player whose career took him all around the world and who experienced systemic racism at every turn. Dreamer tells Akim's incredible story, from being the only Black child in his Ukrainian community, to his family struggling to make ends meet while living in Toronto, to confronting the racist violence he often experienced both on and off the ice. This is a gut-wrenching and riveting graphic novel memoir that reminds us to never stop dreaming, and is sure to inspire young readers everywhere.

The worlds of historical fiction and super hero comics collide in this original graphic novel destined to be a hit with fans of all ages.

In the companion novel to the beloved and award-winning Amina"s Voice, Amina once again uses her voice to bridge the places, people, and communities she loves-this time across continents.

Twelve-year-old Maia's parents say she's lucky she noticed something as early as she did. Lucky to have smelled the smoke, lucky to have pulled her sister, Amelia, out of their burning house. But is it really "lucky" when Amelia's stuck in the hospital, covered in burns? And is it "lucky" when Maia knows it was her candle, left unattended, that started the fire in the first place?

The Mendoza family is growing! After a rocky beginning getting to know each other while quarantining together in a pandemic, Raquel, Lucinda, and Juliette are finally getting along as stepsisters--and actually liking it! Now they get to make it official. Their parents are getting married... in Mexico! But, when they arrive they find bringing together the two families won't be as easy as they had hoped. 

Middle schoolers everywhere will sympathize with eighth grader Cory as he struggles to balance the expectations of his parents, school, dance crew, and friends in this fast-paced graphic novel.

In this true coming-of-age story, Rex has his sights set on surviving sixth grade, but now he's got to find a way to do it with glasses, no friends, and a family that just doesn't get it!

This is a moving and unputdownable story about learning to celebrate the things that make us different. 

The heartfelt story of a girl who refuses to let her brittle bone disease interfere with adventure.

With Linked, Gordon Korman, the author of the acclaimed novel Restart, poses a mystery for all readers where the who did it? isn't nearly as important as the why?

First-generation Filipino siblings JJ and Althea struggle to belong at school. JJ wants to fit in with the crowd, while Althea wants to be accepted as she is. But that hope seems like a long shot, for both of them. To make matters worse, they have to help their parents run the family food truck by dressing up as a dancing pig and passing out samples. Ugh! And their mom is always pointing out lessons from Filipino folklore -- annoying tales they've heard again and again. But when witches, ogres, and other creatures from those same stories threaten their family, JJ and Althea realize that the folklore may be more real that they'd suspected. Can they embrace who they really are and save their family?

Sue just wants to spend the summer reading and making comics at sleepaway camp with her friends, but instead she gets stuck going to Honduras to visit relatives with her parents and two sisters. They live way out in the country, which means no texting, no cable, and no Internet! The trip takes a turn for the worse when Sue's mother announces that they'll be having a surprise quinceañera for Sue, which is the last thing she wants. She can't imagine wearing a big, floofy, colorful dress! What is Sue going to do? And how will she survive all this "quality" time with her rambunctious family?

What happens when memories get crossed? One boy finds freedom from abuse in the phenomenon, and another feels his deceased mom slowly slipping away. 

From rising star Shakirah Bourne, author of Josephine Against the Sea, comes a mysterious adventure that explores one of the most chilling tales in Caribbean mythology: the faceless douen children.

Rick's never questioned much. He's gone along with his best friend Jeff even when Jeff's acted like a bully and a jerk. He's let his father joke with him about which hot girls he might want to date even though that kind of talk always makes him uncomfortable. And he hasn't given his own identity much thought, because everyone else around him seemed to have figured it out.

But now Rick's gotten to middle school, and new doors are opening. One of them leads to the school's Rainbow Spectrum club, where kids of many genders and identities congregate, including Melissa, the girl who sits in front of Rick in class and seems to have her life together. Rick wants his own life to be that . . . understood. Even if it means breaking some old friendships and making some new ones.

Wendy Wan-Long Shang, the critically acclaimed author of Asian/Pacific American Library Association Award for Children's Literature winner The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, weaves a timely and deeply moving portrait of all the secret battles Evan Pao must fight as he struggles to figure out how he fits into this country's past, as well as his own family's...and where that leaves him in the present.

Ziggy has ANXIETY. Partly this is because of the way his mind works, and how overwhelmed he can get when other people (especially his classmate Alice) are in the room. And partly it's because his mother disappeared when he was very young, making her one of many Native women who've gone mysteriously missing. Ziggy and his sister, Moon, want answers, but nobody around can give them.

Once Ziggy gets it in his head that clues to his mother's disappearance may be found in a nearby cave, there's no stopping him from going there. Along with Moon, Alice, and his best friend, Corso, he sets out on a mind-bending adventure where he'll discover his story is tied to all the stories of the Cherokees that have come before him.

Ziggy might not have any control over the past -- but if he learns the lessons of the storytellers, he might be able to better shape his future and find the friends he needs.

For as long as she can remember, Mai has spent every summer in Mystic, Connecticut visiting family friends. And hanging out with her best-friend-since-birth, Zach Koyama, was always the best part.

Then two summers ago everything changed. Zach humiliated Mai, proving he wasn't a friend at all. So when Zach's family moved to Japan, Mai felt relieved. No more summers together. No more heartache.

But this year, the Koyamas have returned and the family vacation is back on. And if Mai has to spend the summer around Zach, the least she can do is wipe away the memory of his betrayal...by coming up with the perfect plan for revenge!

Only Zach isn't the boy he used to be, and Mai's memories of their last fateful summer aren't the whole truth of what happened between them. Now she'll have to decide if she can forgive Zach, even if she can never forget.

Taking Up Space promises to be a realistic and compelling story about struggling with body image and learning that true self-esteem comes from within.

Sophie Dailey is NOT looking forward to starting middle school. For one thing, she doesn't look like other kids. Instead of trendy tank tops, she wears high tech shirts that block UV rays. (Sun protection is serious business!) And she definitely doesn't sound like other kids either. (She can't say "holla" or "hot take" without making a weird face.) Needless to say, this is probably why her best friend, Ella, ditched her for Queen Bee Morgan.

Trey's grown up around his father's schemes while living on the run. But when Trey starts making friends at school, he doesn't want to leave again. How can he tell his father he's done running?

Boundless is a story that will move anyone who's ever had a big dream, ever dared to hope for a better future, and ever believed that nothing was impossible. In her own words, Chaunte presents her remarkable and inspiring story of loss and survival, perseverance and hope.