10 Books To Read Based On Your Middle School Favorites

Because not everything you were assigned to do a book report on sucked.

1. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White | Dirty Chick by Antonia Murphy

Via antoniamurphy.com pagesunbound.wordpress.com

Instead of a story about a pig and his barnyard friends, Antonia Murphy gives you a duck that “loves” chickens to death. Other hilarity ensues in her accounts of moving from San Francisco to start an artisan farm in rural New Zealand.

2. Holes by Louis Sachar | Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos

Via louissachar.com deanbakopoulos.com

Bakopoulos’s book follows Michael Smolij and other young men in his blue collar suburb of Detroit as they fill the void of their fathers. So maybe it’s not about digging literal holes, but there’s definitely a good amount of being stuck in one place and not being able to move on.

3. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine | Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Via en.wikipedia.org rarebookschool.org

Jane, like Ella, is raised by horrible people who practically disown her and send her off to boarding school. Fortunately, Jane doesn't have a "gift" of obedience and is able to take life into her own hands. She becomes a governess, reads, and is an overall bad ass.

4. The Giver by Lois Lowry | The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Via loislowry.com margaretatwood.ca

These are probably some of the best dystopian novels out there. Worlds resemble each other with the lack of free will and systematic appointed jobs: one the Keeper of Memories (THE GIVER) who has the power to retain every human emotion and experience his society members can't, and the other a Handmaid (THE HANDMAID'S TALE), or a woman with no reproductive rights who is chosen to birth the child of the Commander of Gilead, the militaristic society she lives in.

5. Monster by Walter Dean Myers | How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon

Via therumpus.net walterdeanmyers.net

Kiese Laymon’s essays are about fighting oppression, love, and taking a critical look on the state of this un-post-racial world we live in. They're the real-life compliment to the issues MONSTER protagonist Steve goes through during his trial.

6. Loser by Jerry Spinelli | Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Via jerryspinelli.com franciscostork.com

These books grow with you, starting from when you first picked up LOSER as a ten-year-old, to the cusp of adulthood with MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD. Marcelo is exposed to "real world" after graduating from a school for autism and beginning work at his father's law firm. Similar to Zinkoff's story in LOSER, Marcelo learns to differentiate what it means to be himself, and how to weed out the real losers of the world who take advantage of you for their own humor.

7. Eragon by Christopher Paolini | A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Via alagaesia.com georgerrmartin.com

So you miss spending a whole month reading an 900 page book full of dragons, mortals not believing in magic, and some seriously pent up war lords? Sure, you've seen every spoiler online for A GAME OF THRONES, but every page is worth it. And unlike Paolini's stock characters, the women in Marton's novels are multifaceted.

8. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen | Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Via northrop.mpls.k12.mn.us cherylstrayed.com

WILD is more about a woman on a quest to find herself after the death of her mother (and other personal crises) than an action-packed surviving-the-Canadian-wilderness-and-moose novel for middle schoolers. However, Strayed's memoir is full of raw emotion and suspense for your outdoorsy pleasure, and a different kind of instinct. Read it before you see it in theaters.

9. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros | The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

Via sandracisneros.com

With the same beauty and freshness of Cisneros's short novel-in-stories, Henriquez brings us a love story between a boy and a girl whose families have emigrated from Panama and Mexico to the US. This multiple point of view story provides an honest look on immigrant families today.

10. Reread Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Via bannedlibrary.com

Seriously, read it again and catch 70% of Anne Frank’s inspiring passages about growing up that you missed when you were fourteen.