Suggested Reading List: Grades 3-5: Home

The unexpected appearance of a dolphin in her backyard creek helps a sixth-grader with cystic fibrosis learn to write her own story - Book in Verse.

Best friends Isaac and Marco face various challenges in sixth grade, such as Isaac getting better grades, Marco winning a spot on the basketball team, and both seeing their efforts make a change in their respective family lives. They hope their friendship and support for one another will be enough to help them from falling short.

Nine-year-old Sparrow Robinson blames herself for her elderly neighbor's accident, so she promises to take care of Mrs. LaRose's seven cats, all while trying to adjust to a new school--but things become complicated when she has to find new homes for all of the cats plus some unexpected kittens.

Eleven-year-old Lou wishes she could turn back time to mend her friendship with Francie after a terrible fight, so when Lou befriends Cece she is eager to prove herself, but as she uncovers the truth about Cece's family, she grapples with what being a good friend means.

Told in alternating points of view, at Hurston Airport, four unlikely kids' lives are changed forever when their flight is grounded by weather following a Muslim convention.

Mean Girls meets Freaky Friday in this laugh-out-loud story about self-acceptance, learning who your friends are, and coming of age . . . as a cat.

Middle school is always hard, but when you're known as the Roadkill Kid, it's even harder. Jack's mom collects roadkill--it's her job. One day while helping his mom in the roadkill garden, Jack believes he spots a cougar in the wilderness beyond his backyard. A cougar in Tennessee? They're supposed to be extinct. So, when Jack has to choose an animal to research for his Earth Science class, he picks cougar. As pressure mounts on Jack to complete his project and to be Mom's business partner, the mystery of the cougar feels too big to solve.

When ten-year-old Lina Gao leaves China to live with her parents and sister, after five years apart, she must reckon with her hurt, anger, and curiosity and find a way to get her bearings in this new country--and the almost-new family that comes along with it.

To save their father's life, a brother and sister must journey across a land full of magical beings from Colombian folklore and find the most powerful and dangerous of them all--the Madremonte.

When ten-year-old Felix drops a penny in the wishing fountain at the center of town, he really doesn't expect his sixteen-year-old sister to suddenly like him again, or to offer to share a cinnamon bun or watch cartoons like they used to. She hasn't even remembered she was supposed to give him a ride home! But someone else is at the fountain too: a strange old man with a fishing pole who claims to be invisible. To Felix's amazement, he learns that the old man is a Wishkeeper, and he needs an apprentice!

When twins Willow and Jake are pulled into an alternate universe filled with characters from the Grimm fairy tales, they must battle the witch in the woods to save Hansel and Gretel and find a way home.

After twelve-year-old Lebanese-American Shad Hadid discovers he is an Alchemist, he receives an invitation to the Alexandria Academy where he discovers not everything is as it seems and shadowy figures are lurking around every corner.

Walt's magical ability to bring maps to life puts him, his twin sister Van, and new friend Dylan in danger when an enchanted heirloom strands them in the fantastical world of Djaruba and they discover a malevolent rival to the kingdom, a fellow mapmaker, has nefarious plans for Walt.

When ghoulish creatures kill twelve-year-old Asha's guardian, her dying words launch Asha on a quest to stop an ancient evil, and along the way, she uncovers shocking secrets about the family she never knew and begins to find her place in the world.

The witch Baba Yaga and a wolf switch bodies and form an unlikely alliance to save the forest from an evil tsar.

Eleven-year-old Ruby, a Black girl who loves studying insects, accidentally captures an alien bug, but when the creature escapes and starts wreaking havoc around the neighborhood, it is up to Ruby and her rag-tag group of friends to find this new invasive species before the feds do.

Welcome to the most spectacular theme park in the world. Everyone wants a ticket to Futureland, where you can literally live out your wildest dreams. Want to step inside your favorite video game? Go pro in a sports arena? Perform at a real live concert?Grab your ticket and come right in. Yet with all its attractions, Futureland has always just been home to Cam Walker, the son of the park's famous creators. And when the park arrives at its latest stop in Atlanta, Cam is thrilled for what promises to be Futureland's biggest opening ever. But things aren't quite right with the Atlanta opening. Park attractions are glitching. Kids start to go missing. And when his parents are blamed, Cam must find the missing kids and whoever's trying to take down his family before it's too late.

Built to explore Mars, Resilience begins to develop human-like feelings as he learns from the NASA scientists who assembled him, and as he blasts off and explores Mars, Resilience must overcome different obstacles as he explores the red planet.

To find his way back home to his family in Germany during WWII, Max Bretzfeld, with a kobold named Berg on one shoulder and a dybbuk named Stein on the other, sets out to do the impossible--become a British spy.

December 6, 1941: Best friends Frank and Stanley have it good. Their dads are Navy pilots stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the boys get a front-row view of the huge battleships and the sparkling water. Yes, World War II is raging in Europe and in Asia, but the US isn't involved in the war, and the boys are free to dream about becoming comic book creators. They've even invented a superhero of their own, in the style of Batman, Superman, Captain America, and other stars of the Golden Age of Comics. Maybe they'll even get their comic published someday. December 7th, 1941: Everything explodes. That morning, Frank and Stanley are aboard the battleship the USS Utah when Japanese planes zoom overhead and begin dropping bombs on the ships below. Chaos ensues as everyone scrambles to dive for safety. Frank and Stanley realize what's happening: Japan is attacking America! The war has come to them.

Lucy, a spirited French-Ojibwe orphan, is sent to the stormy waters of Lake Superior to live with a mysterious family of lighthouse-keepers-and, she hopes, to find the legendary necklace her father spent his life seeking.

Twelve-year-old Hazel Rothbury stows away aboard the Titanic and, with the help of a porter named Charlie and a first-class passenger named Sylvia, she sets out to explore the great ship, uncovering a haunting mystery--until the ship hits an iceberg and she must fight to save herself and her friends.

In 1899, a twelve-year-old rat catcher on North Carolina's Biltmore estate teams up with the estate owner's young nephew to battle a great evil and, in the process, unlocks the puzzle of her past.

What happens when the world's biggest cat video star gets accused of a crime she didn't commit? She becomes a cat on the run, that's what. But how do you avoid capture and prove your innocence when you are the most famous feline on the planet? Well, it ain't easy. Follow Princess Beautiful--for that is her name--as she goes from meme megastar #1 to public enemy #1 and cheer her on as she fights to clear her name. Is she a super villain? An internet-famous buffoon? Or a butt-kicking gal who's just been seriously underestimated? YOU be the judge...

Can five overlooked kids make one big difference? There's George: the brain Sara: the loner Dayara: the tough kid Nico: the rich kid And Miguel: the athlete And they're stuck together when they're forced to complete their school's community service hours. Although they're sure they have nothing in common with one another, some people see them as all the same...just five Spanish-speaking kids. Then they meet someone who truly needs their help, and they must decide whether they are each willing to expose their own secrets to help...or if remaining invisible is the only way to survive middle school

Pedro Martin is grown up in the U.S. hearing stories about his legendary abuelito, but during a family road trip to Mexico, he connects with his grandfather and learns more about his own Mexican identity in this moving and hilarious graphic memoir

Julia goes on a self-discovery-filled road trip with her UFO-obsessed father to chase a meteor shower

Kit's excited to prove her worth as a Moth-Keeper, a protector of the lunar moths that allow the Night-Lily flower to bloom once a year, but she quickly finds that life as a Moth-Keeper isn't what she imagined it would be.

This nonfiction graphic novel from the Science Comics series offers a crash course in Amphibians!

After their two-week family tour of Los Angeles, ten-year-old Feng Li Lin and her older brother and sister learn they will remain in California while their parents return to Taiwan, forcing them to navigate a new school, a new language, bullies, racism, and the pressures of running a household.

n the day they are born, every Swift child is brought before the sacred Family Dictionary. They are given a name, and a definition. A definition it is assumed they will grow up to match. Meet Shenanigan Swift: Little sister. Risk-taker. Mischief-maker. Shenanigan is getting ready for the big Swift Family Reunion and plotting her next great scheme: hunting for Grand-Uncle Vile's long-lost treasure. She's excited to finally meet her arriving relatives--until one of them gives Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude a deadly shove down the stairs. So what if everyone thinks she'll never be more than a troublemaker, just because of her name? Shenanigan knows she can become whatever she wants, even a detective. And she's determined to follow the twisty clues and catch the killer.

Eleven-year-old Chester and his classmate Skye, tasked with a complex puzzle-solving mission, discover the key to their spy assignment is to stop a heist, but cracking the code could mean finding out things are not always what they seem.

Twelve-year-old Minerva Keen forms a detective club to uncover who is poisoning residents of her storied Chicago apartment building, knowing that any one of her neighbors could be the poisoner--or the next victim.

When a mysterious Little Free Library guarded by a large orange cat appears overnight, eleven-year-old Evan plucks two weathered books from its shelves, never suspecting that his life is about to change.

Twelve-year-old Sarah Greene wants nothing more from her seventh-grade year than to beat the hardest escape room left in her town with her best friends, West, and Hannah. But when a foreclosure notice shows up on Sarah's front door, everything changes. Since her father became ill two years ago, things have been bad, but not lose your house bad . . . until now. Sarah feels helpless until the day Hannah mentions a treasure rumored to be hidden in the walls of an abandoned funhouse. According to legend, Hans, Stefan, and Karl Stein were orphaned at eight years old and lived with different families until they were able to reunite as adults. Their dream was to build the most epic funhouse in existence. They wanted their experience to be more than mirror mazes and optical illusions, so they not only created elaborate riddles and secret passages, but they also claimed to have hidden a treasure inside the funhouse. Once in, Sarah, West, and Hannah realize the house is unlike any escape room they've attempted.

A group of sixth graders participating in an annual Halloween tradition to pacify the ghost of Abigail Snook quickly realize that the Bellwoods contains an even bigger threat to their town.

A strange house appears on Jac's street on the five-year anniversary of her cancer diagnosis, and when she gets trapped inside she will have to confront horrors from her past to find a way out.

Three tweens with unique talents must team up to battle prehistoric zombifying monsters taking over a spooky mansion.

Twelve-year-old Calista Wynn will lose her ability to speak with the dead on her thirteenth birthday. And with only a few weeks left, children have started going missing. When Calista meets The Tall Lady--an angry spirit with a grudge against Calista, her family, and the entire town--she knows she's found the ghost responsible for the disappearances. It's up to Calista, the only one who can see The Tall Lady, to stop her. If she doesn't, Calista won't just lose her powers... she'll lose everyone she has left"

Eleven-year-old Virgil Pepper is returning to Little Lost Lake in Oregon with his older brother and sister to scatter their mother's ashes in the place she loved best, but when their van breaks down in the middle nowhere, it is up to Virgil, who shared his mother's love of science and the wild, to remember and use all the lessons she taught him to survive a forest fire started by a lightning strike.

In this reimagining of the classic novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Zane is itching for an adventure that will take him away from his family's boarding house in Rockaway, Queens. So when he is entrusted with a real treasure map, leading to a spot somewhere in Manhattan, Zane wastes no time in riding the ferry over to the city to start the search with his friends Kiko and Jack and his dog Hip-Hop. Through strange coincidence, they meet a man who is eager to help them find the treasure: John, a sailor who knows all about the buried history of Black New Yorkers of centuries past--and the gold that is hidden somewhere in those stories.

Forced to participate in an extra credit project in the middle of nowhere, classmates Baxter, Abigail, Turner and Emerson must survive the wilderness with only a survival handbook and each other after their instructor goes missing.

Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. She lives with her whole family in a wonderful house. There is always somebody to laugh or play with. She loves to splash in the sea with her cousins and have parties with her aunties. But more than anything else in the world, Anna Hibiscus would love to see snow.

Perodia is threatened by Thorn, a powerful vulture, who is using magic to spread a terrible darkness--but when a young owl named Tag, and his best friend, the squirrel Skyla, rescue a golden egg from Thorn's Tiger bats they may have found the key to Perodia's salvation: the last firehawk, guardian of the ember stone.

After being homeschooled her whole life, Heidi Heckelbeck enters a real school in second grade, where she encounters a mean girl named Melanie who makes her feel like an alien.

Having a Bloomtastic Festival at school to celebrate spring is a great idea--but Eva Wingdale, a young owl, discovers that it is also a lot of work, and there is nothing wrong with asking her friends for help.

When second-grader Eugene and his family move to a new neighborhood and he starts at a new school, he has a chance to bring out his superhero alter ego, Captain Awesome, to find the kidnapped class hamster.

Princess Serena, who wants to be a knight instead of a princess, must perform good deeds on a Quest of Kindness to prove to her father that she deserves to go to knight school.

Mindy Kim wants to fit in at her new school, but her favorite lunch leads to scorn, then a thriving business, and finally big trouble.

It's time for the alpaca costume contest, and Abigail "Abbi" Wallace is excited to see it at the Maine State Fair. But there's only one alpaca left--the rest are missing! What sent the alpacas packing? Abbi; her dog, Barkley; and her friends Lydia and Daniel are ready to sniff out this mystery!

A narrative nonfiction about how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world-and how the painting by Leonardo da Vinci should never have existed at all.

From planets and asteroids to black holes and galaxies, every page will captivate young readers. Engaging storybook-style descriptions of each object allow readers to delve into myths, legends, trivia, and key discoveries about the solar system and beyond. Wonder at the rocky rings around Saturn, discover the tale behind the constellation Centaurus, and gaze at the fountains gushing from Jupiter's moon Enceladus.

This book delves into several illnesses that have infected humans and affected civilizations. Each chapter explores the history of a specific disease, detailing the symptoms, cures, and medical breakthroughs that it spawned

Chloe Tyler explores the art styles of master artists from da Vinci to Basquiat in this tasty book for art lovers of all ages. Each pink frosted donut was created to show the techniques used by the artist and explore how artists have influenced each other over time. Every donut is paired with information about the artist, their art style, and what makes them unique.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean and discovered America. Right? Wrong! Columbus never actually set foot in what is now the United States. His voyages took him to islands in the Caribbean and along the coast of South America. The truth is, when Columbus first arrived, Indigenous peoples, including the Taino, had been living there for thousands of years, raising their families, running their societies, and trading with their neighbors. He didn't "discover" the lands at all! And his name? Not even really Christopher Columbus