8th grade lit

[Nam2001]

What are your recommendations for books to read in 8th grade? (Literature) Particularly for a girl. I would like a good portion of them to be good to read aloud together with her and discuss. 

Thanks! 

[Lori D.]

Some past threads with great ideas:
"Beginning classic books" (for 8th/9th grade girl)
"8th grade lit - NOT traditional classics" (for a girl)
"How much lit for a 7th grader" (strong reader / girl)
"What are your top titles for 7th/8th grade literature?"
"What happened to the thread on first classic books? Suggestions?" -- lots of links/ideas for moving into formal lit. study & classics

Three lit. programs that might be of interest:
Lightning Literature 8 -- 3 poetry units; 3 short stories; 6 novels (Treasure Island; A Day of Pleasure; The Hobbit; A Christmas Carol; My Family and Other Animals; To Kill a Mockingbird)
Where the Brook and River Meet -- year-long unit study based on Anne of Green Gable Books
Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings -- year-long study on Tolkien's trilogy

Discussion-able Young Adult works:
female protagonist
Tuck Everlasting (Babbit)
A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle)
The Little White Horse (Goudge)
The True Confession of Charlotte Doyle (Avi)
The Perilous Gard (Pope) 
Island of the Blue Dolphins (O'Dell)
Sing Down the Moon (O'Dell)
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (Taylor)
Warriors Don't Cry (Beals) -- memoir
True Grit (Portis)
The Hate U Give (Thomas)
Walk Two Moons (Creech)
Esperanza Rising (Ryan)
The Book Thief (Zusak)
mixed protagonists
A Long Walk to Water (Park)

Classics:
female protagonist
Little Women (Alcott)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
To Kill A Mockingbird (Lee)
The Hiding Place (ten Boom)
Christy (Marshall)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and/or Through the Looking Glass (Carroll)
Tombs of Atuan (Le Guin) -- stand-alone book #2 in the Earthsea trilogy; or, do the whole trilogy Wizard of Earthsea #1, Farthest Shore #3)
male protagonist
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
Tom Sawyer (Twain)
The Invisible Man (Wells)
something by Charles Dickens (Christmas Carol; Oliver Twist)
mixed protagonists
Friendly Persuasion (West)
The Outsiders (Hinton)

Edited October 2, 2018 by Lori D.

[Nam2001]

Thanks so much!

[alisoncooks]

My DD is in 7th grade. We use CLE but between units, I have her read/discuss novels. Here is the booklist I made for 7th-8th:

• Holes
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• The Cay
• Little Women
• The Secret Garden and/or A Little Princess
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
• Between Shades of Gray (Sepetys)
• A Night Divided (Nielson)
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
• The Giver
• The Hiding Place
• The Graveyard Book (Gaiman)
• The Hero & the Crown (McKinley)
• Tuck Everlasting
• Watership Down

It's kind of a mixed bag, lol. We're doing US History this year, so some of the novels (Blackbird Pond) branch from that. And some are just my faves from that age (Hero & the Crown). 

Edited October 2, 2018 by alisoncooks

[alisoncooks]

Oops, dp

Edited October 2, 2018 by alisoncooks

[rjand6more]

My grade 8 DD read The Outsiders.  She is not a lover of books.  She is a lover of THIS book! 

I love using these guides:

This one feels like just the right amount of work for grade 8:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/THE-OUTSIDERS-NOVEL-STUDY-LITERATURE-GUIDE-FLIP-BOOK-1367165

This is a little more like highschool work/processing:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Of-Mice-and-Men-Student-Workbooks-2549328

Our grade 8 reading list:

The Outsiders

Of Mice and Men

Romeo and Juliet

Tom Sawyer

The Great Gatsby

The Pearl

A variety of short stories and poems

[Farrar]

We did...

The Hate U Give
The Outsiders
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The Wednesday Wars
Animal Farm
Call of the Wild
Fahrenheit 451
March trilogy

Um... and something I'm forgetting. Plus short stories.

I think you just have to troll over lists and find what suits.

[ScoutTN]

My 8th grader has a full plate this year so we are going light on Lit, making it up as we go along. She wanted to read some more challenging works, so we are starting with these:

Little Women

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

 

She will read lots of books, fiction, non-fiction and biographies, for history. Late Modern. 

She will read some mythology, fairy tales, and four classic children's literature books (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Last Battle, The Wind in the Willows, and A Wrinkle in Time) with Angelina Stanford in an online class. This is a close reading type class; deep not broad.

 

[FairProspects]

My oldest is doing 8th grade this year, so I can share our list, but we obviously haven't completed it yet.

Short stories

The Hobbit

A Christmas Carol

A Day of Pleasure

Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl

Fahrenheit 451

To Kill a Mockingbird

Macbeth (planning to see a production, which is why this is included)

If we make it to post 2000 in history, we'll also do The Hate U Give or The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, but we may not make it there until 9th grade.

[Sneezyone]

DD is doing this for 8th:

The Boy on the Wooden Box (Leyson) Done
The Fault in Our Stars (Grace) Done
All American Boys (Reynolds and Kiely) Done
Ungifted (Korman) Done
Animal Farm (Orwell) Done
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) In Progress
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
The Story of My Life (Keller)
Short stories by Gogol, Twain, Wilde and more
Poems by Dunbar, Browning and more

Optional reads: The Hate U Give (Thomas) To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Han) In Progress

Edited October 4, 2018 by Sneezyone

[2_girls_mommy]

I used the blog, Classical House of Learning Literature for reading lists and some work ideas. We also read a few of the above titles throughout middle school added to the CHOLL lists which are mostly historical fictions or easier versions of high school lit readings.