from
Catawba County Schools Recommended Reading Selections
Grade Six Recommended Reading List
In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.
· Lexile Level: 670
· Genre: Historical Fiction
· AR Level: 4.5
Having no one to help her with her problems, a widowed mouse visits the rats whose former imprisonment in a laboratory made them wise and long lived.
· Lexile Level: 790
· Genre: Fantasy
· AR Level: 5.1
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given to him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parent’s divorce.
· Lexile Level: 1020
· Genre: Adventure
· AR Level: 5.7
A young girl is obliged by encroaching Nazi regime to live in enforced seclusion with family and friends.
· Lexile Level: 1080
· AR Level: 6.5
The life of a ten-year boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who subsequently meets an untimely death trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm.
· Lexile Level: 810
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 4.6
After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee’s life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries.
· Lexile Level: 820
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 4.7
Two suburban children run away from their Connecticut home and go to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where their ingenuity enables them to live in luxury.
· Lexile Level: 700
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 4.7
An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.
· Lexile Level: 800
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 4.6
Ten-year-old Mary comes to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors and discovers an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden.
· Lexile Level: 970
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 6.3
A journey through a land where Milo learns the importance of words, and numbers provide a cure for his boredom.
· Lexile Level: 1000
· Genre: Fantasy
· AR Level: 6.7
A young African-American girl struggles to fulfill her papa’s dream of a better future for their family in the southwestern town where, in 1910, they are the only African-Americans.
· Lexile Level: 750
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 4.6
Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
· Lexile Level: 760
· Genre: Science Fiction
· AR Level: 5.7
A collection of classic legends of the Greek Gods
· Lexile Level: 840
· Genre: Mythology
· AR Level: No AR test
This story is about the adventures of an eleven-year-old boy in 13th century England as he searches for his father and his dog.
· Lexile Level: 1030
· Genre: Historical Fiction
· AR Level: 6.5
After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her Uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living.
· Lexile Level: 980
· Genre: Realistic Fiction
· AR Level: 5.3
As further evidence of his family’s bad fortune, which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanly Yelnats is sent to a correctional camp in the Texas desert where he find his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
· Lexile Level: 660
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 4.6
The Tuck family is confronted with an agonizing situation when they discover that a ten-year-old girl and a malicious stranger now share their secret about a spring whose water prevents one from ever growing any older.
· Lexile Level: 770
· Genre: Fantasy
· AR Level: 5.0
A thirteen-year-old boy must come to terms with the approaching death of his beloved grandfather, with whom he shared a very special relationship.
· Lexile Level: 1010
· Genre:
· AR Level: 5.3
A teen-age girl gains new insight into herself and her family when her mentally retarded brother gets lost.
· Lexile Level: 830
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 4.9
Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches.
· Lexile Level: 880
· Genre: Fantasy
· AR Level: 5.5
A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.
· Lexile Level: 1080
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 6.7
Chronicles nine years in the lives of two South African youths-one black, one white-as their friendship ends in a violent confrontation between student and soldier.
· Lexile Level: 790
· Genre: Fiction (contemporary life and problems)
· AR Level: 5.8
Mary and Peter are stranded in the wilderness of the Australian outback. They meet an Aboriginal youth on a walking journey and he helps them to undergo a journey of their own in order to survive.
· Lexile Level: 800
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 5.9
To a thirteen-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a living, maturity comes early as he learns “doing what’s got to be done,” especially regarding his pet pig that cannot produce a litter.
· Lexile Level: 690
· Genre: Fiction (contemporary life and problems)
· AR Level: 4.4
An unusual seagull becomes an outcast from the flock because of his search for a higher purpose in life and his quest for more freedom.
· Lexile Level:
· Genre:
· AR Level: 5.6
Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parent’s death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves “outsiders”.
· Lexile Level: 750
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 4.7
In the Great Smoky Mountain region, a fourteen-year-old girl struggles to keep her family together after their father dies.
· Lexile Level: 920
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 5.2
The adventures of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, in a land inhabited by dwarfs, elves, goblins, dragons, and humans. He sets off to recover a stolen treasure from a dragon hidden in the Lonely Mountain.
· Lexile Level: 1000
· Genre: Fantasy
· AR Level: 6.6
The adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, which is forcibly taken to the Klondike goldfields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack.
· Lexile Level: 1170
· Genre: Fiction
· AR Level: 8.0
During Civil War, nine-year-old Jethro must run the family farm in southern Illinois almost alone.
· Lexile Level: 1100
· Genre: Historical fiction
· AR Level: 6.6
Follows a family’s two hundred year history, from the capture of an African boy in the 1750s through the lives of his descendants, as their dreams and circumstances lead them away from and back to the small plot of land in South Carolina that they call the Glory Field.
· Lexile Level: 800
· Genre: Historical fiction
· AR Level: 5.0