Multicultural reading list for 7th grade

Ms. Iverson's 7th grade Humanities students will be reading a book set in another culture. Below are a few particularly good titles to check out! We have most of them in our school library but you can find them all at KCLS. Parents, please note that some titles are are recommended for grades 7 and up and may contain mature content.

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (A powerful book based on the Seattle author’s actual experiences growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation.)


• Alabama Moon by Watt Key (Set in the deep South, this follows Moon, a boy raised by a survivalist, anti-government father who must cope with reform school following his father’s death.)


• Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez (A girl living under a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic confides her fears in her diary.)


• Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac (Follows the experiences of a Navajo recruit in the Pacific theater of World War II.)


• Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney (A refugee family from Sierra Leone is taken in by an American host family.)


• Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah (An Australian Muslim girl decides to wear the hijab full-time and her decision sends ripples through the lives of her family and friends.)


• Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan (Poverty and violence send a Mexican family fleeing to the United States in search of work.)


• A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer (A Shona girl in contemporary Mozambique flees to relatives in Zimbabwe to escape an arranged marriage.)


• Go and Come Back by Joan Abelove (Two American anthropologists enter a traditional village in the Amazonian jungle; told from the point of view of a teenaged girl from the tribe.)
  
• Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye (A Palestinian American girl moves to Jerusalem and befriends an Israeli boy.)


• Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff (LaVaughn, an inner city girl, tries to hold onto her own ambitions as she reaches out to help a formerly homeless single teen mother.)


• Maya Running by Anjali Banerjee (Maya's Indian heritage makes her stand out in rural Canada, but praying to Ganesh helps her find her path. The author will be visiting our school & meeting with Vista students in March 2010!)


• No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War by Anita Lobel (A moving Holocaust memoir based on the childhood experiences of a noted children’s author.)


• Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins (This story follows a 16-year-old girl living in Calcutta, rebelling against family rules and considering her own ambitions.)


• A Stone in My Hand by Cathryn Clinton (Told from the point of view of a Palestinian girl living in Gaza City in 1988.)


• Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata (Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Sumiko’s family must leave their farm in Southern California for a prison camp in the desert.)


• The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera (Contemporary story set among the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand.)