7th Grade Summer Reading

(These titles are suggestions; there are many other choices available)

European Exploration, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Reconstruction,

and the Industrial Revolution

Blood on the River : James Town 1607 by Carbone - Traveling to the New World in 1606 as the page
to Captain John Smith, twelve-year-old orphan Samuel Collier settles in the new colony of James
Town, where he must quickly learn to distinguish between friend and foe.

Carry on, Mr. Bowditch by Latham - A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer
who realized his childhood desire to become a ship's captain during the Revolutionary War and
authored "The American Practical Navigator."

Dragon's Gate by Yep - When he accidentally kills a Manchu, a fifteen-year-old Chinese boy is sent to
America to join his father, an uncle, and other Chinese working to build a tunnel for the
transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1867.

Fair Weather by Richard Peck - In 1893, thirteen-year-old Rosie and members of her family travel
from their Illinois farm to Chicago to visit Aunt Euterpe and attend the World’s Columbian
Exposition which, along with an encounter with Buffalo Bill and Lillian Russell, turns out to be a life-
changing experience for everyone.

Fever, 1793 by Anderson - Sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns
about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of the yellow fever
epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793.

Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Robinet (1865-1877) A 12-year-old orphaned slave leaves South
Carolina in search of a Freedmen's Bureau during Reconstruction to claim the "40 acres and a mule"
promised by General Sherman.

Glory Field by Myers - Follows a family's two-hundred year history, from the capture of an African
boy in the 1750s through the lives of his descendants, as their dreams and circumstances lead them
away from and back to the small plot of land in South Carolina that they call the Glory Field.

Lyddie by Katherine Patterson - Impoverished Vermont farm girl Lyddie Worthen is determined to
gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s.

My Brother Sam is Dead by Collier - Recounts the tragedy that strikes the Meeker family during the
Revolution when one son joins the rebel forces while the rest of the family tries to stay neutral.

Sign of the Beaver by Speare - Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century
Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.

Sing down the moon by O'Dell - A young Navajo girl recounts the events of 1864 when her tribe was
forced to march to Fort Sumner as prisoners of the white soldiers.