For the middle school level, students will read from the Tome Society “It List” for middle school students. While students may read all books listed, students are not required to read every single book on the list. 

The 2023-2024 list includes the following books:

*Publisher descriptions and reading ages excerpted from Amazon.com

· Santiago’s Road Home by Alexandra Diaz: The bed creaks under Santiago’s shivering body. They say a person’s life flashes by before dying. But it’s not his whole life. Just the events that led to this. The important ones, and the ones Santiago would rather forget. The coins in Santiago’s hand are meant for the bus fare back to his abusive abuela’s house. Except he refuses to return; he won’t be missed. His future is uncertain until he meets the kind, maternal María Dolores and her young daughter, Alegría, who help Santiago decide what comes next: He will accompany them to el otro lado, the United States of America. They embark with little, just backpacks with water and a bit of food. To travel together will require trust from all parties, and Santiago is used to going it alone. None of the three travelers realizes that the journey through Mexico to the border is just the beginning of their story. (Age 8-12)

· Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman: Skandar Smith has always yearned to leave the Mainland and escape to the secretive Island, where wild unicorns roam free. He’s spent years studying for his Hatchery exam, the annual test that selects a handful of Mainlander thirteen-year-olds to train to become unicorn riders. But on the day of Skandar’s exam, things go horribly wrong, and his hopes are shattered…until a mysterious figure knocks on his door at midnight, bearing a message: the Island is in peril and Skandar must answer its call.Skandar is thrust into a world of epic sky battles, dangerous clashes with wild unicorns, and rumors of a shadowy villain amassing a unicorn army. And the closer Skandar grows to his newfound friends and community of riders, the harder it becomes to keep his secrets—especially when he discovers their lives may all be in graver danger than he ever imagined. (Age 9-12)

· Yonder by Ali Standish: Danny Timmons has looked up to Jack Bailey ever since the older boy saved two small children from drowning during the Great Flood of 1940. Now with his father away fighting in World War II and his mother about to have a new baby, Danny relies on Jack’s friendship and guidance more than ever. So when Jack goes missing from their small Appalachian town, Danny is determined to find him. He wonders if Jack’s abusive father could be behind his disappearance or if it has anything to do with Yonder—a hidden magical town Jack once spoke of where flocks of rainbow birds fly through the sky and they’ve never heard of war. As answers elude him, Danny begins to fear that he didn’t know Jack as well as he thought. Eventually, Danny’s investigation forces him to reckon with even larger questions: What is America fighting for in this war? What role do each of us play in stopping injustices, big and small? And is there such thing as a true hero? (Age 8-12)

· Nura and the Immortal Palace by M.T. Khan: Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many things—to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it’s not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says there’s buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family’s life forever. Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales. Yet they aren’t nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where she’s given everything she could ever imagine and more. But there’s a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owner’s son and is banished to

the working quarters, she realizes she isn’t the only human who’s ended up in the hotel’s clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there, too, and if Nura can’t find a way to help them all escape, they’ll be bound to work for the hotel forever. Set in a rural industrial town in Pakistan and full of hope, heart, and humor, Nura and the Immortal Palace is inspired by M.T. Khan’s own Pakistani Muslim heritage. (Age 8-12)

· Lines of Courage by Jennifer Nielson: World War I stretches its cruel fingers across Europe, where five young people, each from different backgrounds and nations, face the terror of battle, the deprivations of hunger, and all the awful challenges of war. Felix, from Austria-Hungary, longs for the bravery to resist Jewish deportations before his own family can be taken. Kara, from Britain, dreams of someday earning her Red Cross pin and working as a nurse -- or even a doctor. Juliette, of France, hopes her family can remain knitted together, despite her father's imprisonment, as the war's longest battle stretches on and on. Elsa, from Germany, hopes her homing pigeon might one day bring her a friend from out of the chaos. And Dimitri, of Russia, wants only to survive the front, where he's been sent with no weapon. None of them will find exactly what they want. But the winds of fate may cross their paths to give each of them just what they need. And in this remarkable exploration of World War I by critically acclaimed author Jennifer A. Nielsen, they will discover that friendship and courage can light the way through the most frightening of nights. (Age 8-12)

· Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun by Tola Okogwu: Onyeka has a lot of hair—the kind that makes strangers stop in the street and her peers whisper behind her back. At least she has Cheyenne, her best friend, who couldn’t care less what other people think. Still, Onyeka has always felt insecure about her vibrant curls…until the day Cheyenne almost drowns and Onyeka’s hair takes on a life of its own, inexplicably pulling Cheyenne from the water. At home, Onyeka’s mother tells her the shocking truth: Onyeka’s psychokinetic powers make her a Solari, one of a secret group of people with superpowers unique to Nigeria. Her mother quickly whisks her off to the Academy of the Sun, a school in Nigeria where Solari are trained. But Onyeka and her new friends at the academy soon have to put their powers to the test as they find themselves embroiled in a momentous battle between truth and lies… (Age 8-12)

· The Fort by Gordon Korman: The morning after Hurricane Leo rips through the town of Canaan, residents awaken to widespread destruction -- power outages, downed branches, uprooted trees, broken windows and damaged roofs. Four eighth-grade friends -- Evan, Jason, Mitchell, and CJ -- meet to explore the devastation. The tight-knit group is dismayed to find that Evan has brought along a stray -- Ricky, who is new to their town and school, and doesn’t have any friends yet. Ricky is the one to find the strange trap door that’s appeared in the middle of the woods -- the door to an old bomb shelter, unearthed by the hurricane. Inside, the boys find a completely intact underground lair, complete with electricity, food, and entertainment (in the form of videocassettes). The boys vow to keep the place’s existence to themselves. Things soon get tense. Some bad locals keep snooping around. And what started out as a fun place to escape soon becomes a serious refuge for one of the kids who is trying to avoid an abusive home situation. In order to save the shelter, the friends must keep its secret... and in order to save themselves, they’re going to have to share their individual secrets, and build the safest place they can. (Age 8-12)

· The Worlds We Leave Behind by A.F. Harrold: Hex doesn't know why he does the things he does-why he sometimes stands up in class to look out the window or ask an unrelated question or do a little dance. He also doesn't know why he threw the rock that day in the woods. He didn't mean for the girl to fall and break her arm. But he's blamed anyway. Enraged at how unfair life is, Hex runs into the woods and finds himself in a strange clearing-a clearing that can't possibly exist-where a strange old woman offers him a deal: she'll rid the world of those who wronged him. All he has to do is accept and they'll be forgotten, forever. But what Hex doesn't know is that someone else has been offered the same deal. When Hex's best friend Tommo wakes up the next day, something feels wrong. Half-whispered memories tug at his brain, making him think that something-or

someone-is missing from his life. Can Tommo put the world back the way it was? Or can he find a way to make a new world that could be better for them all? This unforgettable story, complete with lush black-and-white illustrations throughout, explores how we can find the strength to face down monsters: in the darkness, in our friends, and in our selves. (Age 8-12)

· Dinged by Tommy Greenwald: Caleb Springer is the up-and-coming star freshman quarterback on the high school football, which isn’t a surprise considering his dad, Sammy Springer, was an NFL superstar and is now the town celebrity. College scouts are already snooping around Caleb, and his future seems set. But just as Caleb’s glory days begin, his dad starts to change. He’s forgetting things and getting angry at random times. Caleb is soon forced to confront a bleak possibility: The sport that gives him so much status and self-worth might be the cause of his dad’s strange behavior. Will Caleb keep playing the sport of his dreams, even if he knows how dangerous it can be? (Age 10-14)

· The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh: Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation. But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades. (Age 10 and up)