Middle School Project Lit Titles

All twelve-year-old Shayla wants to do is follow the rules, but when she starts seventh grade, the rules have changed. Her two best friends seem to be going their own ways and some people at school are saying that she's not black enough. After a ruling in a controversial court case involving the shooting of a black man by a white police officer, Shayla decides to join the Black Lives Matter movement and begins passing out black armbands at school....

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.

"A Pakistani-American Muslim girl struggles to stay true to her family's vibrant culture while simultaneously blending in at school after tragedy strikes her community"--

Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police.

"Trevor Noah, the [host of] The Daily Show, shares his ... story of growing up in South Africa, with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child like him to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government"--Publisher marketing.

It is the summer of 1863, and as the Civil War rages between dinosaur-mounted armies down south, and a tense New York City seems on the brink of exploding into riots, Magdalys Roca and the other children at the Colored Orphan Asylum are trying to survive; but when she receives a letter telling her that her brother Montez was wounded, Magdalys knows that somehow she must reach him--and just possibly her ability to communicate telepathically with dinosaurs...

While his father works two jobs, seventh-grader Efrén Nava must take care of his twin siblings, kindergartners Max and Mia, after their mother is deported to Mexico. Includes glossary of Spanish words.

Eleven-year-old Makeda dreams of meeting her African American mother, while coping with serious problems in her white adopted family, a cross-country move, and being homeschooled.

On her birthday, twelve-year-old aspiring baker Zoe Washington receives a letter from her biological father, who is in prison for murder, telling her he is actually innocent. Determined to discover the truth, Zoe tries to investigate herself, perform well in her baking internship, and achieve her dream of auditioning for the Food Network's Kids Bake Challenge.

In 1969 twelve-year-old Mimi and her family move to an all-white town in Vermont, where Mimi's mixed-race background and interest in "boyish" topics like astronomy make her feel like an outsider.