My thanks to all who helped start this book list. A special thanks to my wife, Mrs. Julie Lacey (8th grade language arts teacher at Newton Middle School), for recommending so many of these books.
And Then Their Were None- Christie
Bud, Not Buddy- Curtis
The Storyteller's Daughter- Dokey
House of the Scorpion- Farmer
The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm- Farmer
The Thief Lord- Funke
The Outsiders- Hinton
Tex- Hinton
That Was Then, This Is Now- Hinton
Rumble Fish- Hinton
Big Mouth and Ugly Girl- Oates
Stargirl- Spinelli
Wringer- Spinelli
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy- Tolkein
Into Thin Air- Krakaure
Into the Wild- Krakaure
The Glory Field- Myers
Hoops- Myers
The Harry Potter series- Rowling
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Conan Doyle
Adventure of Tom Sawyer- Twain
The Chronicles of Narnia- C. S. Lewis
Most anything by Gary Paulson
Anything in Anne McCaffrey's Dragon series
Eragon- Paolini
Eldest- Paolini
Holes- Sachar
Night- Weissel
Nothing but the Truth- Avi
The Redwall series- Jacques
Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry- Taylor
Stories of the North- London
Up a Road Slowly- Hunt
Across Five Aprils- Hunt
With Every Drop of Blood- Collier
Where the Red Fern Grows- Rawls
His Dark Materials triliogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)- Pullman