What Are They Reading for Fun?
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compiled by Marlene Charnizon -- School Library Journal, 03/30/2010
Ragan O’Malley, Denise Rinaldo, Maria Falgoust, & Eva Zasloff, Saint Ann’s School, Brooklyn, NY:
At Saint Ann’s, a progressive independent school, Robert Muchamore’s “CHERUB” series (Hodder Children’s Books) remains incredibly popular with middle schoolers, especially boys who love anything spy-related. Does My Head Look Big in This? (Scholastic) by Randa Abdel-Fattah (Scholastic); Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt); anything by Joan Bauer; and all of Melissa Kantor’s books, the latest being The Breakup Bible (Hyperion, 2007), still fly off the shelves. Needless to say, there is always a waiting list for Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008) and Catching Fire(2009, both Scholastic). Our younger middle schoolers love Adam Rex’s sci-fi comedy The True Meaning of Smekday (Hyperion, 2007) and Pseudonymous Bosch’s mystery The Name of This Book Is Secret (Little, Brown, 2007) and its sequels. We also seem to be cultivating a crop of foodies. Kids line up to check out Karen Tack and Alan Richardson’s Hello, Cupcake (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) and Hey There, Cupcake by Clare Crespo (DK Melcher Media, 2004). For those curious about where our food comes from, the young readers’ edition of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Dial, 2009) is picking up speed, and Chew on This:Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food (Houghton Harcourt, 2006) by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson remains quite popular.
Kathleen Finn, St. Francis Xavier School, Winooski, VT:
Our small Catholic school is located in a former mill town adjacent to Burlington and draws students from a dozen area towns. Middle schoolers are enjoying a diverse array of titles. The top series mentioned by both girls and boys include, of course, Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” (Hyperion), Jordan Cray’s “Danger.com” (S & S), and James Patterson’s “Maximum Ride” (Little, Brown). Several other popular books are Carl Hiassen’s Scat (Knopf, 2009), Suzanne Collins’s Catching Fire (Scholastic, 2009), John Feinstein’s Change-Up: Mystery at the World Series (Knopf, 2009),and James Swanson’s Chasing Lincoln’s Killer (Scholastic, 2009), as well as titles by Gary Paulsen, Louis Sachar, Mike Lupica, Jerry Spinelli, and Jeanne DuPrau. Students throughout Vermont are reading from the 30 books nominated for the annual Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, and favorites include Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008), Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Found (S & S, 2008), M.F. Herlong’s The Great Wide Sea (Viking, 2008), Ridley Pearson’s Steel Trapp: The Challenge (Disney, 2008), Ingrid Law’s Savvy (Dial, 2008), Vivian Vande Velde’s Stolen (Marshall Cavendish, 2008), and Peter Abrahams’s Into the Dark (HarperCollins, 2009).
Cheri Dobbs, Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills, MI:
At our suburban independent school these days, entries into our top 10 popular titles are Alyson Noel’s “The Immortals” series (St. Martin’s) and Jordan Sonnenblick’s After Ever After (Scholastic, 2010). Sonnenblick was our visiting author last year, and the students still clamor for his books. This year’s visiting author was Gordon Korman, and Schooled (Hyperion, 2007), Son of the Mob (Hyperion, 2002), and Swindle (Scholastic, 2008) are overwhelmingly the students’ favorites. We recently put up a display of Percy Jackson read-alikes and included novels and mythology collections. The most popular are Geraldine McCaughrean’s Greek Myths (McElderry, 1993) and the “Graphic Myths and Legends” series (Graphic Universe). The Hunger Games (2008) and Catching Fire (2009) by Suzanne Collins (both Scholastic) are top circulators, as are “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and “The 39 Clues” series (both Scholastic). Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic, 2009) is popular with the girls who are moving on from Twilight.
