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.

Rio has been sent to live with a grandmother he barely knows in California, while his mum is in hospital back home. The only thing that makes him smile is joining his new friend Marina on her dad's whale watching trips. An incredible encounter with White Beak, a gentle giant of the sea changes everything for Rio, but then White Beak goes missing. Her fate feels somehow entwined with Mum's and Rio sets out on a desperate quest to find his whale and somehow save his mum.

After Zara's bike goes missing, her parents insist on her earning money to pay for it, so she and her friend Naomi turn their red wagon into The Treasure Wagon and try and sell some old knickknacks found in her family's basement.

When eleven-year-old foster kid Mo finds a handmade cookbook filled with someone else's family recipes, she collects the stories behind them and builds a website to share them, secretly hoping a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.

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.

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.

Travis Daventhorpe may be a genius, but he’s always struggled to make friends. After his attempt to befriend new kid Juniper Reyes results in an epic fail, Travis takes his sentient flying robot, Travbot, out for a ride. But when Travbot malfunctions, the two take a nosedive into the woods. There, they discover a legendary sword, a wizard from another dimension, and a mysterious prophecy: Travis Daventhorpe is destined to save the multiverse!

Syv is a snowcat and the youngest in a family of princes. When his father dies, Syv and his brothers are all in line for the throne. Eager to become kings themselves and wary of how well-liked Syv has become by the citizens, Syv's brothers send him on a dangerous quest to find the long-lost magical crown that once belonged to their royal ancestor, the Eldking.

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.

Marlene loves three things: books, Her cool Tía Ruby and hanging out with her best friend Camila. But according to her mother, Paola, the only thing she needs to focus on is school and "growing up." That means straightening her hair every weekend so she could have "presentable good hair." But Marlene hates being in the salon and doesn't understand why her curls are not considered pretty by those around her. With a few hiccups, a dash of embarrassment, and the much-needed help of Camila and Tía Ruby--she slowly starts a journey to learn to appreciate and proudly wear her curly hair.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Eleven-year-old Frank Fernandez and his family move to Spectacle Key, Florida, where he befriends a ghost who needs Frank's help breaking the curse plaguing the island

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.

Nine-year-old Tony loves ghosts and horror stories, but when he's left home alone one night, he gets quite the fright as Rudolph the little vampire flies in the window! After a rough start, Rudolph stops trying to bite Tony and the two become fast friends.

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.

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 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.

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.