The Best Books for 7th Graders
As we make the journey through childhood, we continuously face new experiences that can be both rewarding and challenging in their own ways. Reading is one of the best ways to gain knowledge and explore the world around us in new, interesting, and creatively fulfilling ways.
As parents and educators, helping our children expand their literary-knowledge allows them to learn practical and emotional skills through enjoyable and enriching stories.
7th Grade Novel Studies
Total Language Plus provides parents with an effective curriculum to guide young students in their novel studies. With a collection of age-appropriate novels paired with comprehensive study guides designed to facilitate learning, we offer 8-10 weeks of educational materials that include writing assignments, creative projects, and worksheets correlated to each chapter.
Our goal is to help you enrich your child's literary education and help them connect their experiences to important biblical concepts. Here are a few of the best books for 7th graders.
The Hiding Place
The Hiding Place is a 1971 non-fiction personal account about the life of Corrie ten Boom’, written by John and Elizabeth Sherrill and ten Boom herself. The book follows Corrie’s life and the story of her family as they help persecuted Jews throughout the second world war.
The ten Booms are a faithfully moral and kindhearted Christian family who take on the duty of protecting and concealing Jewish families from the invading Nazi troops. Corrie recounts these difficult years, discussing her family’s dedication to the teachings of Christ and their moral responsibility to help those in need.
The story follows her as she sacrifices her comfort and safety, faces moral dilemmas to conceal and protect innocent lives, and survives in a concentration camp through the Glory of God.
The Hiding Place is a remarkable story of maintaining faith and goodness in the face of violence and hatred. Though Corrie faces struggles in her faith, Christ’s teachings and strength carry her through overwhelming hardship and loss.
The book is a must-read for 7th graders in their novel studies, as it offers practical learning opportunities in reading and writing while exploring this uniquely tragic point in history through the eyes of a courageous woman who faces cruelty and suffering with the strength of God.
A Wrinkle in Time
Written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and first published in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time is an award-winning young-adult fantasy novel that follows three children on a journey through space and time. It’s the first in a series of five novels written by L'Engle that follow the same characters, referred to as the Time Quintet.
After a strange encounter with a new neighbor, Meg Murry and her brother Charles, along with their friend Calvin O’Ceefe, embark on an incredible adventure.
Throughout the story, the three companions travel from galaxy to galaxy by way of a tesseract – a fifth-dimensional object that folds the fabric of space and time – in a quest to save the Murry children’s father and ultimately the universe. Along the way, they encounter strange new worlds and creatures and discover an ongoing battle between lightness and darkness.
A Wrinkle in Time is a fast-paced, enjoyable read for 7th grade boys and girls alike, which also has a lot of heart and important themes such as good vs. evil, spirituality, bravery, determination, and loyalty. TLP’s study guide offers an excellent opportunity for students to exercise the principles of critical thinking in their novel studies, and to take a scriptural approach to science-fiction topics while advancing in the areas of comprehension, grammar, and spelling.
The Twenty-One Balloons
The Twenty-One Balloons is an engaging fantasy novel by American writer and illustrator William Pène du Bois. Originally published in 1947, this Newbery-Medal winning story follows a retired schoolteacher – Professor William Waterman Sherman – who is rescued by a steamship in the North Atlantic after he’s found floating amidst the wreckage of twenty deflated balloons. The professor had left San Francisco three weeks prior, having planned to drift for a year alone on one giant gas balloon in search of peace and quiet.
He tells the story of his ordeal, during which he crash-landed on the volcanic island of Krakatoa in the Pacific Ocean. He discovered that the island was inhabited by twenty strange families who share an incredible fortune, whom he befriended before the volcanic island began to erupt, forcing Sherman and the families to escape on a large platform carried by twenty balloons.
The Twenty One Balloons is a refreshing departure from other young-adult fantasy novels that take a more serious tone. It’s light-hearted, exciting, and whimsical, giving young readers the opportunity to explore a fun mixture of science and fantasy that engages their critical thinking skills. The story and associated study guide challenge students in their novel studies with a more advanced vocabulary.