Middle Grade Recommendations

Borough Press are running a book-a-day throughout June on Twitter. Today, the 14th June the topic is 'An old favourite'. So I have created a list of around 20 of my favourite middle grade books. Many of these I read when I was that age (9-12/13) and some are ones which I have recently read. Middle grade books are brilliant and they contain thousands upon thousands of stories which young children can explore.

An old favourite of mine and my mum's is Are You There God? It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume.

Middle Grade (author A-Z):

1. Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret-Judy Blume
2. The Childs Elephant-Rachel Campbell-Johnson
3. Cosmic-Frank Cotterell Boyce
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-Roald Dahl
5. House at Worlds End-Monica Dickens
6. A Greyhound of a Girl-Roddy Doyle
7. Kit Hunter Show Jumping in South America-Peter Grey
8. Marley: A Dog Like No Other-John Grogan
9. The Joshua Files: Invisible City-M.G.Harris
10. A Laura Marlin Mystery: Dead Man’s Cove-Lauren ST John
11. Moon bear-Gill Lewis
12. The Giver-Lois Lowry
13. A Sea of Stars-Kate Maryon
14. Running Wild-Michael Morpurgo
15. Born to Run-Michael Morpurgo
16. Shadow-Michael Morpurgo
17. War Horse-Michael Morpurgo
18. Half Brother-Kenneth Oppel
19. Wonder-R.J.Palacio
20. A Monster Calls-Patrick Ness
21. Pendragon Legacy: Sword of Light-Katherine Roberts
22. Rooftoppers-Katherine Rundell
23. A Series of Unfortunate Events (the whole series)-Lemony Snicket
24. Oksa Pollock: The Last Hope-Anne Plichota and Cendrine Wolf 

Books I Would Like To Do At GCSE English

When we do our GCSEs, it’s a huge step up from KS3. There is more pressure building on you and many of your lunchtimes are used to finish pieces of work.

So now we come to English! There are English language and English literature GCSEs and there may be others on different boards, though our school uses AQA for English. It’s all over the media at the moment about changing the 2015 GCSEs, especially in English. They may be deciding to change some of the books which are used on the new syllabus. So I had a nosy around the house and found some books I wouldn’t mind studding at GCSE. Most of which I haven’t read and obviously we wouldn’t read them all.

Luckily I won’t be included in the new syllabus (it’s a lot harder) as I’m starting mine next school year. However, I would really like them to change some of the books we read for the exams which we will be doing. Every year our school tends to do To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee or Lord of the Flies by William Golding so I’m hoping we might be able to do something else.

Here is my list of books I would like to study at GCSE:

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Pigeon English - Stephen Kelman

Maya Angelou - Maya Angelou

To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

The Giver - Louis Lowry (this one may be a bit too young or easy to read).