We heard a rumor that some of you need to read a fiction and a non-fiction book for your middle school reading this summer. So, naturally I made a list. You can download the pdf here (Middle School non-fiction .pdf), or it is listed below:
Notable Non-Fiction for Middle Schoolers
Ain’t Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson: A historian tries to separate the man from the myth as he goes through hundreds of variants of the song “John Henry,” researches post-Civil War railway construction projects, and visits possible sites for the legendary contest between a man and a steam drill.
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy: Drawing on firsthand accounts, medical and non-medical, this book re-creates the fear and panic of the deadly cholera outbreak in the city of Philadelphia and the social conditions that caused the disease to spread.
Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti: Through the voices of the Irish people, the book tells the story of the devastating potato famine that would leave one million dead and would cause two million to emigrate to America.
Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year by Esme Raji Codell: A funny, hip diary filled with one-liners and unadorned thoughts that speak volumes about the raw, emotional life of a first-year teacher in an inner-city school.
Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston: A memoir from a Japanese American that vividly describes life inside of American internment camps and the humiliations suffered by the detainees.
Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley: Bradley, the son of one of the six marines pictured in the famous Iwo Jima photograph, examines their experiences detailing the brutal battle on the island and the contrast between the sense of victory projected by the photograph and the event’s more ambiguous circumstances.
Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe: Presents a true account of the murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, in 1955. The case helped to spark the civil rights movement when the men acquitted of the crime bragged in a magazine interview to having done it, causing uproar from blacks and whites alike.
Knockout: a Photobiography of Boxer Joe Louis by George Sullivan: A biography in pictures of the African-American boxer Joe Louis and the adversity he faced in the 1920’s, when racism was still rampant in America.
The Lincolns: a Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary by Candace Fleming: Though Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s backgrounds differed considerably, both were intellectuals who shared interests in literature and politics, as well as a great love for each other.
The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine by Judith and Dennis Fradin: Born in a small town in rural Arkansas, Daisy Bates was a journalist and activist who became one of the foremost civil rights leaders in America. In 1957 she mentored the nine black students who were integrated into Central High School in Little Rock.
The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose: Tells the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker’s extinction in the United States, describing the encounters between this species and humans, and discussing what these encounters have taught us about preserving endangered creatures.
Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1915 by Deborah Hopkinson: Photographs and text document the experiences of five individuals who came to live in the Lower East Side of New York City as children or young adults from Belarus, Italy, Lithuania, and Romania at the turn of the century.
Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren: Simply told, this book tells the story of Holocaust survivor Jack Mandelbaum, who was separated from his family at age 12 and sent to the Blechhammer concentration camp. Documented by stirring photos from the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Voice that Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights by Russell Freedman: In the mid-1930’s, Marian Anderson was a famed vocalist who had been applauded by European royalty and welcomed at the White House. But, because of her race, she was denied the right to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. This is the story of her resulting involvement in the civil rights movement of the time.
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago: Santiago recalls her transition as an immigrant to the United States, discussing the language and cultural barriers that she and her family encountered in humorous and sometimes painful ways.
Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown in Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker: This book reports on the work of forensic scientists who are excavating grave sites in James Fort in Jamestown, Virginia, to understand the people who lived in the Chesapeake Bay area in the 1600s and 1700s.
