Science Fiction for Grades 6, 7 & 8

Armstrong, Jennifer. The Kindling
In 2007, a small band of children have joined together in a Florida town, trying to survive in a world where it seems that all the adults have been killed off by a catastrophic virus. Followed by: The Keepers of the Flame and The Kiln . 224p.

Bawden, Nina. Off the Road
In 2040, eleven-year-old Tom follows his grandfather through the Wall and into the forbidden Wild, where they seek to find his grandfather's boyhood home. 192p.

Bechard, Margaret. Star Hatchling
The female-dominated culture of a distant planet encounters human beings for the first time. 152p.

Bell, Hilari. Songs of Power
Someone is trying to sabotage the underwater habitat where Imina, the granddaughter of an Inuit shaman, lives after terrorists have infected the earth's food supply, and Imina must call on her still undeveloped magical skills to save the colony. 219p.

Blackwood, Gary L. The Dying Sun Set in the future during a new ice age, James and Robert leave the crime-ridden, warm South for a more primitive existence in the North as the two rejoin James' parents on their farm in Missouri and prepare for the approaching winter. 213p.

Butler, Susan. The Hermit Thrush Sings
After a natural disaster has all but destroyed the earth, the orphaned and "defective" Leora, while searching for her sister, defies the oppressive laws of the land and joins a band of rebels trying to overthrow the government. 282p.

Carman, Patrick. Atherton: The House of Power
Edgar, an eleven-year-old orphan, finds a book that reveals significant secrets about Atherton, the strictly divided world on which he lives, even as geological changes threaten to shift
the power structure that allows an elite few to live off the labor of others. 330p.

Chetwin, Grace. Out of the Dark World
When a boy whose mind is trapped inside a computer program begins appearing in her dreams, sixth grader Meg uses a hypnotic trance to summon the sorceress Morgan le Fay for aid in freeing him. 154p.

Ciencin, Scott. Dinoverse When thirteen-year-old Bertram and three friends find themselves living in dinosaur bodies sixty-seven million years ago, they discover new ways to think about their lives. 282p.

Christopher, John. When the Tripods Came
Fourteen-year-old Laurie and his family attempt to flee England when the Tripods descend from outer space and begin brainwashing everyone with their hypnotic Caps. 151p. ( Followed by The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire.)

Cowley, Joy. Starbright and the Dream Eater
As the powerful alien life force called the Dream Eater begins to spread destruction over the Earth, twelve-year-old Starbright discovers that she is the one destined to stop it. 199p.

Dexter, Catherine. Alien Game
As the students at her school become increasingly caught up in the annual game of Elimination, Zoe grows more and more convinced that the new girl in her eighth grade class is not what she seems. 204p.

Dickinson, Peter. Eva
After a terrible accident, a young girl wakes up to discover that she has been given the body of a chimpanzee. 219p.

Engdahl, Sylvia Louise. Enchantress from the Stars
Three civilizations from different planets in widely varying stages of development clash in what could be either a mutually disastrous or beneficial encounter. 288p.

Farmer, Nancy. The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm: A Novel
In 2194 in Zimbabwe, General Matsika's three children are kidnapped and put to work in a plastic mine while three mutant detectives use their special powers to search for them. 311p.

Fradin, Dennis B. How I Saved the World
After thirteen-year-old Shelley spots a UFO one summer night at a rundown resort in northern Michigan, he becomes involved in a desperate effort to stop an alien invasion. 160p.

Gaiman, Neil. Interworld
At nearly fifteen years of age, Joey Harker learns that he is a Walker, able to travel between dimensions, and soon joins a team of different versions of himself, each from another
dimension, to fight the evil forces striving to conquer all the worlds. 239p.

Gilden, Mel. Outer Space and All That Junk
A boy works for his uncle one summer only to discover him collecting junk in the belief he is helping aliens return to their home in outer space. 167p.

Gilden, Mel. The Pumpkins of Time
Fourteen-year-old Myron finds that he has become very interesting to a menacing alien from outer space. 209p.

Griffin, Peni R. Switching Well
Two twelve-year-old girls in San Antonio, Texas, Ada in 1891 and Amber in 1991, switch places through a magic well and try desperately to return to their own times. 218p.

Griffith, Hellen V. Journal of a Teenage Genius
In a series of journal entries, a young scientist describes his less-than-successful experiments and trips into the past using his neighbor's time machine. 121p.

Haddix, Margaret Petersen. Among the Hidden
In a future where the Population Police enforce the law limiting a family to only two children, Luke has lived all his twelve years in isolation and fear on his family's farm, until another "third" convinces him that the government is wrong. 153p.

Haddix, Margaret Petersen. Found
When thirteen-year-olds Jonah and Chip, who are both adopted, learn they were discovered on a plane that appeared out of nowhere, full of babies with no adults on board, they realize that they have uncovered a mystery involving time travel and two opposing forces, each trying to repair the fabric of time. 314p.

Haddix, Margaret P. Running Out of Time
When a diphtheria epidemic hits her 1840 village, thirteen-year-old Jessie discovers it is actually a 1995 tourist site under unseen observation by heartless scientists, and it's up to Jessie to escape the village and save the lives of the dying children. 184p.

Hoover, H. M. Away Is A Strange Place to Be
When she is kidnapped from the Earth in 2349 to serve as slave labor on an artificial world under construction, twelve-year-old Abby must cooperate with her fellow prisoner Bryan, a spoiled rich boy, in order to plan an escape. 167p.

Hoover, H. M. Orvis On an Earth that has become an inhospitable wilderness, Toby and her friend Thaddeus find themselves lost in "the empty" with Orvis, an obsolete robot who is their only hope of protection and escape. 186p.

Hoover, H. M. The Winds of Mars
When rebel forces strike against her father, the all-powerful president of Mars, teenage Annalyn finds her comfortable existence turned upside-down and her life threatened from unexpected sources. 181p.

Howarth, Lesley. Maphead
Twelve-year-old MapHead, a boy with strange powers from an alternative world, travels to England in search of his human mother. 153p.

Howarth, Lesley. Weather Eye
In England in 1999, thirteen-year-old Telly organizes her fellow climate observation club members to calm the planet's turbulent weather. 224p.

Hughes, Monica. The Dream Catcher
In a future world whose people are clustered in domed cities, fifteen-year-old Ruth, who possesses great extrasensory powers and who has received troubling messages in her dreams from another center of civilization, accompanies a group to search for the source of the messages. 171p.

Hughes, Monica. Invitation to the Game
Unemployed after high school in the highly robotic society of 2154, Lisse and seven friends resign themselves to a boring existence in their "Designated Area" until the government invites them to play The Game. 183p.

Jacobs, Paul Samuel. Born Into Light
When a number of "feral children" are found in a New England town during the Depression, only young Roger Westwood suspects they are not earthly creatures, though even he cannot guess their true nature or their mission on this planet. 149p.

Johnson, Annabel. The Danger Quotient
A super-genius in a small underground colony of survivors of nuclear war, eighteen-year-old Casey risks journeying back to the twentieth century to discover why the survivors are dying and how he can save them all. 216p.

Johnson, Annabel. Prisoner of Psi.
The mental link between a television psychic and his estranged son may be their only hope when desperate kidnappers strike. 149p.

Jones, Diana Wynne. Hexwood
Ann discovers that the wood near her village is under the control of a Bannus, a machine that manipulates reality, placed there many years ago by powerful extraterrestrial beings called Reigners. 295p.

Key, Alexander. The Forgotten Door
Jon finds himself on a strange planet called Earth, without his memory and in great danger. 140p.

Klause, Annette Curtis. Alien Secrets
On her journey to the distant planet where her parents are working, twelve-year-old Puck befriends a troubled alien and becomes involved in a dangerous mystery involving a precious artifact. 227p.

Lawrence, Louise. Dream-Weaver
Using her psychic talents, an apprentice dream-weaver learns that human colonists aboard a spaceship plan to settle on her peaceful planet. 231p.

Lawrence, Louise. The Patchwork People
In a dismal Wales of the future, with few jobs and fewer resources, a group of destitute, jobless young people becomes involved with a rich girl whose life is impoverished in spite of her material comforts. 230p.

L'Engle, Madeline. A Swiftly Tilting Planet
The youngest of the Murry children must travel through time and space in a battle against an evil dictator who would destroy the entire universe. 278p.

L'Engle, Madeline. A Wind in the Door
With Meg Murry's help, the dragons her six-year-old brother saw in the vegetable garden play an important part in his struggle between life and death. 211p.

L'Engle, Madeline. A Wrinkle in Time
Meg Murry and her friends become involved with unearthly strangers and a search for Meg's father, who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government. 211p.

Lowenstein, Sallie. Evan's Voice
In a plague decimated future world, Jake must take care of his plague-stricken brother Evan after their mother abandons them. A strange storyteller who comes on television and tells tales of amazing alien worlds is the only ray of hope in this bleak world. 186p.

Lowry, Lois. The Giver
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. 180p.

Lynch, Chris. Cyberia
In a future where electronic surveillance has taken the place of love, a veterinarian is putting computer chips in animals to control them, and those creatures choose young Zane, who
understands their speech, to release captives and bring them to a technology-free safety zone. 158p.

Macdonald, Caroline. The Lake at the End of the World
In 2025, in the wake of global environmental devastation, the members of one surviving family encounter a teenaged boy from a mysterious clandestine community. 202p.

Mackel, Kathy. Eggs in One Basket
With the help of two middle school classmates and a bear-like talking "dog" from the planet Sirius, seventh-grader Scott Schreiber discovers that he can be a hero in other ways than on the football field. 195p.

Matas, Carol. A Meeting of Minds
When Lenora and Coren find themselves trapped in a world created as part of the contest held in preparation for their marriage, they encounter the writers who are responsible for their existence. 199p.

Morrison, Dorothy Nafus. Vanishing Act
While researching tricks for the magic act she is planning for her junior high school talent show, Jo finds a strange device that can make objects vanish, but she does not realize how dangerous it can be until she accidentally turns herself invisible. 202p.

Oppel, Kenneth. Dead Water Zone
Muscular sixteen-year-old Paul tries to find his genetically stunted younger brother Sam in the polluted ruins of Watertown, where Sam is trying to cure himself with toxic "dead water" that alters the metabolism of those who drink it. 152p.

Patterson, James. The Angel Experiment
After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "birdkids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose. 422p.

Paulsen, Gary. The Transall Saga
While backpacking in the desert, thirteen-year-old Mark falls into a tube of blue light and is transported into a more primitive world, where he must use his knowledge and skills to survive. 248p.

Peck, Richard. The Great Interactive Dream Machine
Josh Lewis is unwillingly drawn into the computer experiments of Aaron, his friend and fellow classmate at an exclusive New York private school, and the two find themselves uncontrollably transported through space and time. 148p.

Pinkwater, Daniel. Borgel
Melvin recounts his extraordinary adventures in time and space with his 111-year-old sort of great-Uncle Borgel. 170p.

Pratchett, Terry. Wings
Masklin, one of a race of beings four inches high who live secretly among humans, tries to use the portable computer known as Thing to summon back the spaceship in which his ancestors came to Earth. 200p.

Reeve, Philip. Mortal Engines
In the distant future, when cities move about and consume smaller towns, a fifteen-year-old apprentice is pushed out of London by the man he most admires and must seek answers in the perilous Out-Country, aided by one girl and the memory of another. 310p.

Reiss, Kathryn. Pale Phoenix
When her parents take in a strange orphan girl with a mysterious past, fifteen-year-old Miranda decides to find out why she seems to have come from nowhere and how she seems to be able to disappear at will. 326p.

Riding, Julia. Space Traders Unlimited
Eking out a desperate existence as a renegade with the other Portkids who hide in the old tunnels under a spaceport on Mars, the teenager known as Streak stumbles on clues to the sabotage plaguing the entire solar system. 157p.

Rubinstein, Gillian. Space Demons
Twelve-year-old Andrew, bored with life, becomes obsessed with a mysterious new computer game, which has the power to zap him and his friends into a dangerous world of menacing space warriors. 213p.

Silverberg, Robert. Project Pendulum
Twins become involved in an experiment in time travel. 200p.

Sleator, William. The Boy Who Reversed Himself When Laura discovers that the unpopular boy living next door to her has the ability to go into the fourth dimension, she makes the dangerous decision to accompany him on his journeys there. 167p.

Sleator, William. House of Stairs
Five fifteen-year-old orphans of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in a house of endless stairs as subjects for a psychological experiment on conditioned human response. 166p.

Sleator, William. Interstellar Pig
Barney's boring seaside vacation suddenly becomes more interesting when the cottage next door is occupied by three exotic neighbors who are addicted to a game they call "Interstellar Pig." 197p.

Sleator, William. Others See Us
When an accidental dunking in toxic waste gives sixteen-year-old Jared the ability to read minds, he discovers horrifying secrets about family members at the summer reunion. 163p.

Sleator, William. Singularity
Sixteen-year-old twins Harry and Barry stumble across a gateway to another universe, where a distortion in time and space causes a dramatic change in their competitive relationship. 170p.

Sleator, William. Strange Attractors
Max finds himself in possession of a time travel device, which is eagerly sought by two desperate men, the scientist who invented it and the scientist's alter ego from a different timeline. 169p.

Waugh, Sylvia. Earthborn
Upon suddenly learning that her parents are researchers from another planet and they must leave in seven days or risk discovery, twelve-year-old Nesta decides to stay in their York, England, home, whether or not her parents go. 273p.

Wells, H. G. The Time Machine
A time traveler who voyages into the future finds the world divided into two races. 126p.

Westall, Robert. Yaxley's Cat
After Yaxley disappears, the inhabitants of an English village fear that his ugly old cat will uncover the truth about the secret they are hiding. 147p.

Westerfield, Scott. The Secret Hour
Upon moving to Bixby, Oklahoma, fifteen-year-old Jessica Day learns that she is one of a group of people who have special abilities that help them fight ancient creatures living in an hour hidden at midnight; creatures that seem determined to destroy Jess. 297p.

Woolverton, Linda. Star Wind
Camden returns from a month at camp to find her best friend and other classmates frighteningly changed and devoted to a mysterious young man named WT-3. 181p.

Zahn, Timothy. Dragon and Thief: A Dragonback Adventure
Fourteen-year old orphan Jack Morgan is hiding out in a spaceship. Falsely accused of a crime, he escapes to a remote and uninhabited planet -- uninhabited, until a another spaceship crashes there, and Jack meets its only survivor, a dragon soldier. 248p.

Zelazny, Roger. A Dark Traveling
When a scientist learns that aliens in a parallel world are waging a secret war against the Earth, he disappears into that world and his children set out to find him. 143p.

updated SK October 2008