Yay! I finally have read some books that I can recommend to you for middle school/ junior high students.

No wonder this book is a Caldecott winner! Weaving three stories into one wonderful tale, Echo, written by Pam Munoz Ryan captures the reader’s attention from the start. It involves a magical harmonica and some amazing, self-sacrificing young people. It portrays different periods of time and the great injustice that was shown. But, it also has the theme of kindness and hope. Warning: your reader will not want to put this book down once they have begun. I have a confession to make; on many occasions I skip to the back of the book  because the middle of the story drags, but I wasn’t even tempted to do so with this story. 🙂

This book isn’t a Caldecott winner, but it should be! Grandpa’s Great Escape by David Walliams is a fabulous book that had me laughing throughout it. Grandpa was a WWII British Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfire pilot and is living in his glory days. No longer does he recognize his family, but rather thinks of them as members of the RAF.  Eventually, Grandpa is sent to Twilight Towers, a place for “unwanted old people”  and Grandpa and Jack his grandson, realize that he must escape from the ominous and creepy institution.Themes of compassion, kindness, and self-sacrifice are throughout the book. I also appreciated that at the end of the book there are short descriptions about WWII events that Grandpa talks about so that your reader will have context to the story if s/he so chooses to read about them.