One of the best parts of teaching middle school language arts is helping your middle schoolers find books they love. I am lucky to work in a district that believes in student choice in reading and allows students to have ownership over the books they read in class. It’s one of my favorite parts about being a seventh grade ELA teacher, but it can also be one of the toughest.
My school curriculum includes the reading workshop model. For me, I teach a skill-based mini lessons two times a week and then the students apply the mini lesson to their own reading. While they read independently, I have one-on-one and small group conferencing with each of my students. At first, the idea of 30 students all reading different books at once overwhelmed me. However, the more I got used to it, the more I have grown to love it.
The reading workshop model not only requires mini lessons and conferencing, it requires teachers to make book recommendations to students. What I have found to be most successful is a ‘book talk.’ This is where you give a preview of the book and leave the kids with a cliff-hanger or questions to get them excited about reading. This not only keeps me reading young adult fiction as an adult, but it also provides me the opportunity to connect with my students through reading. However, things can get difficult when it comes to reluctant readers. Because of this, I have compiled five ‘must read’ YA books.
**Please keep in mind that my school requires parent permission to read young adult novels – if the parents are not comfortable with it, then the kids are not permitted to read YA.**
Top 5 Best Books for YA Readers
- The Compound by S.A. Bodeen
Eli and his family have been living in an underground compound for six years. After surviving a nuclear attack, Eli and his family are lucky to be alive and to be together. However, the resources that were once in abundance are now dwindling down and the family is left questioning what their next move will be. It’s not safe outside the compound, but their food source is becoming more and more limited. The more struggles arise, the more Eli wonders what really happened in the nuclear attack – is it more dangerous back in the real world, or in the compound he calls home?
- The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas
Five years ago, there used to be a cheerleading team in the quiet, safe town of Sunnybrook. Since then, five of the members died – two in a car accident, two from a break-in, and one from a suicide. The school removed the cheer team and hoped the town would be able to move past the deaths of the former students.
Monica, the sister of one of the cheerleaders, is now at the high school and wonders if she was told the truth. Five years have passed, but the more Monica dives back into the mysteries of the cheerleaders deaths, she starts to uncover horrible lies. She is determined to find answers, but is it safe?
- Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Will lives in a neighborhood that follows 3 rules. 1) no crying 2) no snitching and 3) always get revenge. Will thinks he knows who shot his brother. So he does what he has always been told to do – get revenge. He takes his brothers gun, puts it in his waistband, and gets in the elevator to go find the man who shot and killed his brother.
Living on the seventh floor has never felt so far from the ground. The elevator stops on every floor and each person that walks on has a special message for Will. Is it worth it to get revenge?
- Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt
Jack’s family has fostered kids before. He is used to having a foster brother or sister for a few weeks, but this time, it’s different. Jack’s family decides to foster Joseph, a kid who tried to kill his teacher a few weeks prior.
Jack learns that Joseph is not an ordinary eighth grader – he watches Joseph walk to school in the freezing cold and listens to his cries at night. He also learns that Joseph has a daughter and that he desperately wants to find her.
- We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
The Sinclair family is one of the elite – old money and a picture perfect family. Cady is lucky to be a Sinclair. She spends her summer vacations on their private island off the coast of New England with her cousins. Their life on the island is perfect and full of great memories. Only one night, tragedy strikes. Cady wakes up on the beach and knows that something terrible has happened – she just can’t remember what it is. She is determined to remember that awful night so long ago, but will she learn more than she wants to know as she uncovers the family’s dark secrets and lies?
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