7th Grade Book List

So I met my CT the other day. She gave me a tour of the school and introduced me to some of the staff. Everyone seems really nice and the school is great! I love the room I'm going to be teaching in. My CT is very modern with her teaching ideas and has a teaching style that really suits me! She let me look at the 4 units we will be teaching this year. Each unit will have students reading a book as a class. These books will include Stargirl by Jerri Spinelli, The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis, and a book that I choose to teach at the end of the year. My CT said that it could be any book I wanted, but that she would like to be able to fit it into a culture unit about beliefs, values, rituals, heroes, etc. I have not read a lot of YA books that have these themes, so I started looking up different books on Amazon.com. I found another book by Jerry Spinelli called Maniac Magee that might work. I'm reading it right now to see if I like it. The book is written like a folk story about the legend of a boy named Jeffery Magee. Jeffery runs away from his aunt and uncle who he lives with after his parents die. He ends up having many different adventures in two nearby cities called East Mill and West Mill and ends up getting the nickname, Maniac Magee. The people in these cities are very segregated by race and do not mix very often. However, when Maniac shows up in both cities he confronts the racism by socializing with everyone, all while trying to find a place to call home.

So far it's a really great book, and I think I could teach about tolerance, homelessness, and how legends and folktales are often used to pass on the values and morals of a culture. Maniac is certainly a hero in the story and becomes a legend to the characters in both East Mill and West Mill.