Grades 6 to 8 · Ages 11 to 14
Middle school reading list: books for grades 6, 7 and 8
Eight books per grade, from A Wrinkle in Time to The Outsiders, chosen with the Common Core grades 6–8 standards and text exemplars in mind. For every book: why it is there, its level, its length and, on Vread, questions to prove it was read.
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Books on this page already on Vread with their questions, as of October 10, 2026.
The list
The books, grade by grade
Books marked “Common Core exemplar” come from the standards’ Appendix B; the others are our choice. Links go to the book’s Vread page; books without a link are not in the app yet.
Grade 6 · ages 11–12
The first year of middle school: survival stories, fantasy and first historical fiction, at the lower end of the grades 6–8 complexity band.
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L’Engle · 1962 · Novel
On Vread · 6 checkpointsCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediate256 pages · about 4 hours 40 minutes
Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin travel through a “tesseract” to rescue Meg’s father from a planet ruled by darkness.
Why it’s on the list: One of the Common Core’s grades 6–8 story exemplars: science fiction with a stubborn, unsure heroine.
Hatchet
Gary Paulsen · 1987 · Novel
On Vread · 5 checkpointsLevel: accessible192 pages · about 3 hours 30 minutes
When the pilot of his small plane has a heart attack, Brian, thirteen, crash-lands in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a hatchet.
Why it’s on the list: Short chapters and a single character: an accessible survival story, including for reluctant readers.
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Scott O’Dell · 1960 · Novel
On Vread · 5 checkpointsLevel: accessible192 pages · about 3 hours 30 minutes
Karana lives alone for years on an island off the California coast after her people leave, building a shelter and taming a wild dog.
Why it’s on the list: Based on the true story of a woman left alone on an island; it pairs well with Hatchet to compare two survival stories.
The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster · 1961 · Novel
On Vread · 5 checkpointsLevel: intermediate256 pages · about 4 hours 40 minutes
Milo, bored with everything, drives a toy car through a mysterious tollbooth into a kingdom where words and numbers are at war.
Why it’s on the list: Puns and wordplay on every page, which makes it a good book for talking about figurative language.
Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt · 1975 · Novel
On Vread · 3 checkpointsLevel: intermediate140 pages · about 2 hours 30 minutes
Winnie Foster, ten, meets a family who drank from a spring in the woods and stopped growing older, and who beg her to keep their secret.
Why it’s on the list: Short, with a big question to discuss: would you want to live forever?
Number the Stars
Lois Lowry · 1989 · Novel
On Vread · 3 checkpointsLevel: accessible137 pages · about 2 hours 30 minutes
In Copenhagen in 1943, ten-year-old Annemarie helps hide her Jewish best friend, Ellen, as Danish families smuggle Jews across the sea to Sweden.
Why it’s on the list: Historical fiction that opens the history of the Second World War at a gentle level.
The Dark Is Rising
Susan Cooper · 1973 · Novel
Not on Vread yetCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediateNovel
On his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton learns that he is the last of the Old Ones, and must find six signs before the Dark rises over the twelve days of Christmas.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 story exemplar, rooted in English folklore and winter.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Mildred D. Taylor · 1976 · Novel
Not on Vread yetCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediateNovel
In 1930s Mississippi, Cassie Logan and her family fight to keep their land in the face of racism and violence.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 story exemplar and a Newbery Medal winner, about family, land and racism in the South.
Grade 7 · ages 12–13
Longer novels, 19th-century classics and a first dystopia: books that ask readers to compare a story with the history behind it.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain · 1876 · Novel
On Vread · 9 checkpointsCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediate250 pages · about 4 hours 30 minutes
In a town on the Mississippi, Tom tricks his friends into whitewashing a fence, runs away to play pirates, and sees a murder in the graveyard at midnight.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 story exemplar: an American classic with a funny, mischievous hero and dialogue in dialect.
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 1868 · Novel
On Vread · 19 checkpointsCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediate449 pages · about 8 hours 10 minutes
Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March grow up in Massachusetts while their father is away at the Civil War, with little money and very different ambitions.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 story exemplar, and a long novel that can last a whole semester.
The Call of the Wild
Jack London · 1903 · Novel
On Vread · 4 checkpointsLevel: intermediate128 pages · about 2 hours 20 minutes
Buck, a pet dog in California, is stolen and sold as a sled dog in the Yukon gold rush, where he slowly turns back towards the wild.
Why it’s on the list: Short and gripping, and told from a dog’s point of view, which opens a discussion about narrators.
The Giver
Lois Lowry · 1993 · Novel
On Vread · 5 checkpointsLevel: intermediate180 pages · about 3 hours 20 minutes
In a community without pain, colour or choice, Jonas, twelve, is chosen to receive the memories of the past, and begins to see what has been taken away.
Why it’s on the list: A first dystopia for middle school, and a Newbery Medal winner.
Esperanza Rising
Pam Muñoz Ryan · 2000 · Novel
On Vread · 5 checkpointsLevel: accessible262 pages · about 4 hours 50 minutes
After her father’s death, Esperanza leaves her family’s rich ranch in Mexico for a camp of farm workers in 1930s California.
Why it’s on the list: Historical fiction about the Great Depression and Mexican American history, from the point of view of a girl who loses everything.
Walk Two Moons
Sharon Creech · 1994 · Novel
On Vread · 6 checkpointsLevel: intermediate280 pages · about 5 hours
On a road trip from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents, Sal tells the story of her friend Phoebe, and slowly her own.
Why it’s on the list: Two stories told side by side, and a Newbery Medal winner: good for discussing structure.
Where the Red Fern Grows
Wilson Rawls · 1961 · Novel
On Vread · 8 checkpointsLevel: intermediate280 pages · about 5 hours
In the Ozark Mountains, Billy saves for two years to buy two coonhound pups, then trains them to become the best hunting dogs in the valley.
Why it’s on the list: A coming-of-age story about work, loyalty and loss; prepare sensitive readers for the ending.
Dragonwings
Laurence Yep · 1975 · Novel
Not on Vread yetCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediateNovel
In 1903, eight-year-old Moon Shadow leaves China to join his father in San Francisco, a kite maker who dreams of building a flying machine.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 story exemplar on Chinese American history, up to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Grade 8 · ages 13–14
The high end of the grades 6–8 band, before high school: memoir and history, dystopia, and modern books that draw on older stories.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass · 1845 · Autobiography
On Vread · 5 checkpointsCommon Core exemplarLevel: challenging120 pages · about 2 hours 10 minutes
Douglass describes his life enslaved in Maryland, how he taught himself to read in secret, and the fight that made him decide to be free.
Why it’s on the list: One of the Common Core’s grades 6–8 informational exemplars: an argument as much as a life story.
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank · 1947 · Diary (in translation)
On Vread · 10 checkpointsLevel: intermediate352 pages · about 6 hours 20 minutes
From 1942 to 1944, a Jewish teenager hiding with her family in a secret annex in Amsterdam writes about the people around her, her fears and her wish to become a writer.
Why it’s on the list: A first-hand account of the Holocaust. The Common Core exemplars include the stage adaptation by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which pairs well with the diary.
The Outsiders
S. E. Hinton · 1967 · Novel
On Vread · 6 checkpointsLevel: accessible192 pages · about 3 hours 30 minutes
Ponyboy, fourteen, runs with the Greasers, poor boys always at war with the rich Socs, until a fight in a park at night ends with a death.
Why it’s on the list: Written when its author was a teenager: short, fast, and about loyalty, class and violence.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · Novel
On Vread · 11 checkpointsLevel: challenging281 pages · about 5 hours 10 minutes
In 1930s Alabama, Scout Finch watches her father, the lawyer Atticus, defend a Black man falsely accused of rape.
Why it’s on the list: Often read in grade 8 or 9: a novel about racism and justice seen through a child’s eyes. It contains racist language best discussed in class or with an adult.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury · 1953 · Novel
On Vread · 5 checkpointsLevel: intermediate158 pages · about 2 hours 50 minutes
Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to burn books, until a young neighbour asks him whether he is happy.
Why it’s on the list: A dystopia about reading itself, short enough for a few weeks.
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945 · Fable
On Vread · 4 checkpointsLevel: intermediate112 pages · about 2 hours
The animals of Manor Farm drive out the farmer and run the farm themselves, until the pigs begin to rewrite the rules.
Why it’s on the list: A short fable to talk about power and propaganda, and how a story can stand for history.
Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad
Ann Petry · 1955 · Biography
Not on Vread yetCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediateBiography
The life of Harriet Tubman, from her childhood enslaved in Maryland to the escapes she led north on the Underground Railroad.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 informational exemplar, which pairs with Douglass’s Narrative.
Black Ships Before Troy
Rosemary Sutcliff · 1993 · Retelling of the Iliad
Not on Vread yetCommon Core exemplarLevel: intermediateShort book
The story of the Trojan War retold in prose for young readers, from the golden apple to the wooden horse.
Why it’s on the list: A Common Core grades 6–8 story exemplar. Grade 8 standards ask how modern fiction draws on myths: read it next to a modern novel that borrows from Greek myth.
Pages and reading times: the Vread catalog edition, checked on October 10, 2026; your edition may differ. Time estimated for an average reader.
How Vread helps
Read the whole book, one step at a time
Pick the book in the app and read your own copy, on paper or on a screen.
Every 30 to 40 pages, a checkpoint asks you a question about the section. A right answer validates it.
Your progress shows: validated sections, reading streaks, finished books.
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
What does Amy March spend all her money to replace with a larger bottle as a gift for her mother?
The answer is in the text: reply in the app.
Standards
What the standards ask middle schoolers to read
There is no national reading list in the US: states and districts choose. The Common Core State Standards, used in some form by many states, describe the level rather than the titles.
Stories, dramas and poems
By the end of each year, students read and understand literature of all three kinds at the level of the grades 6–8 band, with support at first and independently by the end of grade 8.
Comparing texts
From grade 6, students compare texts in different forms or genres; in grade 7, a fictional portrayal of a period with a historical account; in grade 8, how modern fiction draws on myths and traditional stories.
Exemplars, not a list
Appendix B gives sample texts to show the expected complexity, quality and range, and says they “expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list”.
Sources: Common Core State Standards: Reading Literature, grades 6 to 8; Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, Appendix B: text exemplars (grades 6–8 section).
Parents and teachers
Know whether the book was really read
A summary takes two minutes to find. What an adult cannot easily check is the reading itself.
For parents
Your child reads their own copy and, every 30 to 40 pages, answers a question about the section. You see what has been validated and what is left, without having to quiz them yourself.
Follow your children’s reading: the Family Plan (coming soon)
For teachers
For independent reading, you choose the book and see who has validated which sections, without marking thirty reading logs. Questions are about details of the text.
A right answer shows that a section was read, not that it was analysed: it complements the work done in class.
Middle school reading: frequently asked questions
Is there an official middle school reading list?
What are the Common Core text exemplars?
How are the books assigned to grades on this page?
How many books should a middle schooler read?
How can I tell whether my child has actually read the book?
Standards: Common Core State Standards: Reading Literature, grades 6 to 8. Exemplars: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, Appendix B: text exemplars (grades 6–8 section).
Vread catalog checked on October 10, 2026. Book descriptions written by Vread.
Vread is an independent app. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the authors of the Common Core State Standards (NGA Center and CCSSO) or any state or school district. The choice of books on this page is ours; titles marked as exemplars come from the published Appendix B list.
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