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7th Grade Book Report List


Students are required four times a year to select a title from this list and prepare a book report summarizing plot, analyzing character and theme, and judging the overall quality by analyzing the quality of several major components of a book.

Choose a book which you have not previously read.

English 7

Click here to find the Book Report List in a printable format.

Books are arranged by alphabetical order according to author's last name.  Mouse over the book cover to see a brief summary. Click on the book to be taken to the library catalog entry.

A-C  | C-D  | D-H  | H-K  | K-O  | P-S  | S-V  | V-Z

 

Richard Adams. A group of rabbits seek a new home when their warren is destroyed.

Watership

Down

Isaac Asimov. A group of scientists board a submarine and are shrunk in order to enter a man's body and repair a clot.

Fantastic Voyage

Isaac Asimov. A mathematician predicts a coming dark age and so establishes Terminus, a Foundation which houses all of the knowledge of the Galactic Empire.

Foundation Trilogy (1 of 3)

James Baldwin. Fonny is falsely accused and sent to jail but his girlfriend Tish and lawyer try to find evidence to free him.

If Beale Street Could Talk

R.M. Ballantyne. Three boys are marooned on a coral island and must face down native raiding parties and smuggling pirates to survive.

The Coral Island

 

Edward L. Beach, Jr. Set in World War II, a US submarine commander seeks to sink the Japanese destroyer that sunk his last ship.

Run Silent,

Run Deep

Pierre Boulle. WWII Allied prisoners are forced to build the Burma Railway by the Japanese Army. Fictional account of a true event.

The Bridge Over

the River Kwai

Ray Bradbury. Short stories about summer in a small town in Illinois with Douglas Spaulding and his family.

Dandelion

Wine

Ray Bradbury. William and Jim, both 13, attend a strange carnival outside of town. After a nightmarish experience, the boys are hunted by Mr. Dark, the carnival master.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Paul Brickhill. Autobiographical account of the escape attempts of Allied prisoners from the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III.

The Great

Escape

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs. Adopted as an infant by a she-ape, Tarzan (John Clayton) is raised in ignorance of his human heritage.

Tarzan of the Apes

Truman Capote. An orphaned boy moves in with his two elderly aunts and they start living outside in a tree.

The Grass Harp

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. A retired country gentleman, Don Quixote, goes out as a knight in search of adventure. Obsessed with chivalry, Quixote appears insane to those he meets.

Don Quixote (abr. Starkie)

Raymond Chandler. Detective Philip Marlowe is asked to look into a blackmail scheme, but someone is murdering his prime suspects.

The Big Sleep

John Cheever. Two brothers grow up side by side in an eccentric family in Massachusetts.

The Wapshot Chronicle

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G.K. Chesterton. Gabriel Syme is recruited to a secret anti-anarchist taskforce at Scotland Yard and goes undercover.

The Man Who Was Thursday

Agatha Christie. Detective Hercule Poirot must solve a murder on board the Orient Express.

Murder on the Orient Express

Walter Van Tilberg Clark. Two drifters are recruited into a posse which tries to find the murderer of a local man.

The Ox-Bow Incident

James Clavell. An English captain, shipwrecked on the shores of feudal Japan, witnesses the rise to power of Toranaga from daimyo to shogun.

Shogun

Wilkie Collins. The legendary moonstone Indian diamond is stolen from a young Englishwoman by its legendary guardians.

The Moonstone

 

Pat Conroy. A teacher tries to help his students on a small South Carolina island. Fictionalized account of Pat Conroy's work as a teacher on Daufuskie Island.

The Water Is Wide

James Fenimore Cooper. When two daughters of a British commander are captured by the Huron tribe, the last of the Mohican tribe set out to rescue them.

The Last of the Mohicans

Robert Cormier. When Trinity school tries to raise money by selling chocolate, Jerry refuses to participate and gets singled out by the Vigils, a secret society that uses fear and intimidation to get what it wants.

The Chocolate War

Margaret Craven. According to legend, the owl calls out the names of those who will soon die. Mark Brian, a vicar sent to minister to a native village in British Columbia, hears the owl on the bank of the river.

I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Michael Crichton. A team of scientists battle an alien organism which fatally clots human blood, causing death within minutes of infection.

The Andromeda Strain

 

A.J. Cronin. Dr. Andrew Manson begins work on lung disease in a small Scottish mining town but is lured away by wealthier clients to London, where he is accused of malpractice.

The Citadel

Daniel Defoe. Crusoe, an English castaway, spends years on a remote island encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers.

Robinson Crusoe

Charles Dickens. Carton, a lawyer, and Darnay, a French aristocrat, attempt to survive the French Revolution.

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens. An orphaned boy, Oliver, runs away from the workhouse only to fall in with a gang of street thieves.

Oliver Twist

Arthur Conan Doyle. Final Sherlock Holmes novel in which a murdered man is mistakenly identified.

Valley of Fear

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Alexandre Dumas. D'Artagnan wishes to become a royal Musketeer but must earn his place in their elite ranks.

The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas. Edmond Dante is falsely charged with treason and sent to prison where he plots revenge on the men who sent him there.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Clyde Edgerton. Mattie, an older woman with grown children, begins a friendship with a boy serving time in the juvenile detention facility.

Walking Across Egypt

Walter D. Edmonds. Gilbert Martin and his new bride are pioneers in the Mohawk Valley and must survive in the midst of the American Revolution.

Drums Along the Mohawk

Ralph Ellison. The unnamed narrator is an African American man who feels invisible in American society.

Invisible Man

 

William Faulkner. Lucius and his friend Boon steal their grandfather's car to drive to Memphis, where they bet on racehorses and try to win the love of Miss Corrie.

The Reivers

William Faulkner. Bayard Sartoris helps his family to con the Union Army while his Confederate soldier father is away.

The Unvanquished

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Amory Blaine leaves the Midwest to attend Princeton and later must serve in the army during World War I.

This Side of Paradise

C.S. Forester.

Captain Horatio Hornblower

Graham Greene. Also titled 'A Gun for Sale.' Raven is a hired assassin who has been double crossed. He must track down the agent who double crossed him and elude the police.

This Gun For Hire

 

Graham Greene. Set during the blitz of London in WWII. Rowe discovers he is in possession of something the Germans want and are willing to kill to gain.

Ministry of Fear

Judith Guest. A year in the life of the Jarrett family as they struggle to cope with their older son's death and their younger son's attempted suicide.

Ordinary People

Arthur Hailey. In a fictional Chicago airport, one night of heavy storms challenges the General Manager; he struggles to keep the airport open.

Airport

Dashiell Hammett. Nick Charles and his wife Nora are private investigators who attempt to solve a murder.

The Thin Man

Joseph Heller. Yossarian is a bombardier during WWII but tries without success to be discharged.

Catch-22

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Ernest Hemingway. Robert Jordan, an American fighting in the Spanish Civil War, is assigned to blow up a bridge during the siege of Segovia.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

John Hersey. A stranger to Pequot attempts to a buy a boy named Barry as part of a project to engineer super-intelligence.

The Child Buyer

John Hersey. Originally a four chapter article, this book follows the lives of six individuals affected by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during WWII.

Hiroshima

Jack Higgins. Admiral Canaris, head of the German military intelligence, is tasked by Hitler to study the feasibility of capturing Winston Churchill.

The Eagle Has Landed

James Hilton. Arthur Chipping struggles to connect with his students and become an inspiring teacher at Brookfield.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

 

Homer. An epic poem describing the siege of Troy by the Greeks, focusing on the Greek warrior Achilles and his obsessive hatred of King Agamemnon.

The Iliad

Anthony Hope. When the king of Ruritania is abducted, an English gentleman who closely resembles him is asked to play the part in an attempt to save the country.

The Prisoner of Zenda

Richard Hughes. The Bas-Thornton children are taken captive by pirates and forced to live on their ship.

High Wind in Jamaica

Thomas Hughes. Tom Brown leaves his home to attend Rugby School, where he becomes the target of a bully named Flashman.

Tom Brown's Schooldays

Victor Hugo. Quasimodo, a hunchback raised in the Notre Dame Cathedral, falls in love with Esmerelda and determines to save her from hanging.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

 

Irene Hunt. Jethro Creighton's family is split when the Civil War begins and one of his brothers joins the Confederate Army.

Across Five

Aprils

Aldous Huxley. Bernard lives in the World State, a future society that has brainwashed its memebers into solidarity and conformity.

Brave New World

MacKinlay Kantor. The Confederate Prisoner of War Camp, Andersonville Prison, forms the basis for this novel with points of view from the commandant to Union prisoners.

Andersonville

Stephen King. The Torrance family moves into The Overlook Hotel as winter caretakers, but the hotel is alive with evil and is manipulating the family to its own end.

The Shining

Rudyard Kipling. Fifteen year old Harvey Cheyne is washed overboard and rescued by fishermen who spend months at sea.

Captains Courageous

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Joseph Krumgold. Twelve year old Andry Rusch becomes friends with an eccentric hermit who lives on the outskirts of his town.

Onion John

Doris Lessing. Ben is Harriet and David's fifth child and something isn't quite right with him.

The Fifth Child

C.S. Lewis. Ransom is abducted by an evil professor and travels through space to Malacandra, where he is to be given as a sacrifice to the sorns.

Out of the Silent Planet

Jack London. Ven Weydon's ship capsizes and he is picked up by a seal-hunting schooner ruled by Wolf Larsen, a cruel and brutal captain.

Sea Wolf

Jack London. Buck is a domesticated and spoiled pet who finds himself enslaved as a sled dog in the deadly Yukon.

The Call of the Wild

 

Walter Lord. True account of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912, with interviews from over 60 survivors and other resources.

A Night to Remember

Carson McCullers. John Singer is a deaf man who moves in with the Kelley family whose house has become a meeting place for the town's drunks, freaks, and outcasts.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers. Twelve year old girl, Frankie Addams, plans to run away with her brother and his new bride to the Alaskan wilderness.

A Member of the Wedding

Herman Melville. Billy Budd has been conscripted to service on the HMS Bellipotent, but he antagonizes the Master-at-Arms and is accused of mutiny.

Billy Budd

Robert Montgomery Bird and Curtis Dahl. The Forrester cousins roam the Kentucky wilds and face an Indian uprising and a haunted woods.

Nick of the Woods

 

James Michener. An epic story of the original Hawaiians who emigrated from Bora Bora, the American missionaries and merchants, and the Chinese and Japanese immigrants.

Hawaii

Margaret Mitchell. Scarlett O'Hara is a Southern belle living on her Georgia plantation when the Civil War destroys everything.

Gone With the Wind

Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Based on a true account of mutiny against the commanding officer William Bligh, this novel is told from the perspective of fictional Roger Byam.

Mutiny on the Bounty

Mary O'Hara. Ten year old Ken McLaughlin has returned from boarding school to his family's horse ranch; he is allowed to pick out a young horse to tame.

My Friend Flicka

Baroness Emmuska Orczy. A secret society of 19 English aristocrats has devoted its cause to saving their French counterparts from the guillotine during the French Revolution.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

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Charles Portis. Forteen year old Mattie Ross undertakes a quest for vengeance against the murderer of her father.

True Grit

Chaim Potok. Two New York Jewish boys befriend each other despite their different worldviews.

The Chosen

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Jody Baxter adopts a young fawn whose mother has been shot by Jody's father.

The Yearling

Erich Maria Remarque. Nineteen year old Paul Baumer enlists in the German Army in World War I and narrates the horrors of the western front.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Mary Renault. This novel traces the early life and adventures of Theseus, hero of Greek mythology.

The King Must Die

 

Conrad Richter. John Butler has lived among the Lenni Lenape Indians since he was four but now, at fifteen, a peace treaty requires that he return to his white parents.

The Light in the Forest

Edmond Rostand. As a cadet in the French Army, de Bergerac is gifted and strong willed but possessed of extreme self-doubt. A play in verse.

Cyrano de Bergerac

J.K. Rowling. In this fourth book, Harry unwittingly enters the Triwizard Tournament even though he's not old enough.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Robert Ruark. Fictional account of Bob Ruark who grows up fishing and hunting with the wisdom of his grandfather, the Old Man.

The Old Man and the Boy

Rafael Sabatini. Retired sea-farer Oliver Tressilian is betrayed by his jealous half-brother.

The Seahawk

  

Jack Schaefer. Shane is a former gunslinger attempting to put his past behind him when two town enemies determine to fight him over a friend's farm.

Shane

Sir Walter Scott. Wilfred of Ivanhoe accompanies King Richard I through adventures, including meeting up with Robin Hood and his merry men.

Ivanhoe

Samuel Shellabarger. Spanish nobleman Pedro de Vargas joins Cortes in his attempt to conquer Mexico.

The Captain from Castile

Mary Shelley. Scientist Victor Frankenstein has discovered a way to create a man from scavenged body parts.

Frankenstein

Nevil Shute. After a nuclear world war, the lone survivors wait for the fatal cloud to reach them, making plans for a life that will never be realized.

On the Beach

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Upton Sinclair. A fictional account of real-life working conditions in the meatpacking industry of the early 1900s, depicting the gruesome details of workers falling into grinders, which helped to establish the FDA.

The Jungle

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

John Steinbeck. Two migrant workers, George and Lennie, dream of one day owning their own land, but Lennie's obsession may ruin their lives.

Of Mice and Men

Robert Louis Stevenson. David Balfour is conscripted as a sailor by his treacherous uncle and must fight to get back his rightful inheritance.

Kidnapped

Robert Louis Stevenson. Jim Hawkins discovers a pirates' treasure map and learns the story of buried treasure.

Treasure Island

  

Mary Stewart. Book one of the Arthurian saga, this novel follows Myrddin Emyrs, also known as Merlin, from the time he is six years old until a young man just developing his magical gifts.

The Crystal Cave

Bram Stoker. English lawyer Jonathan Harker becomes imprisoned in a crumbling castle where he learns the horror of his jailor, Count Dracula.

Dracula

Mildred D. Taylor. The Logan family must face down death after a car trip to Memphis in the 1940s.

The Road to Memphis

Mildred D. Taylor. First in the series about the Logan family. Cassie Logan confronts brutal racist attacks, poverty, and injustice with the help of her loving and supportive family.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Theodore Taylor. After he is shipwrecked, Phillip lands on a deserted island with a black man named Timothy who helps the boy to survive.

The Cay

 

 

J.R.R. Tolkien. Follow Bilbo Baggins as he tries to outwit the dragon, Smaug, for his own share of treasure with the help of a magic ring.

The Hobbit

Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer is a mischievious orphan taken in by his Aunt Polly; his adventures with his friends Huck and Joe as he tries to win his sweetheart, Becky, form the basis of this novel.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain. Tom is the son of beggars while Edward is the son of King Henry; they look so much alike that they switch places.

The Prince and the Pauper

Mark Twain. Thomas thinks he is heir to a great fortune due to his parentage, but the lawyer Wilson reveals to him that he is actually a slave.

Pudd'nhead Wilson

Jules Verne. Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus begin an expedition to track down a sea monster that has been destroying ships.

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

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Jules Verne. During the Civil War, a group of Union prisoners of war hijack a balloon and crashland on an island with strange, helpful powers.

Mysterious Island

Virgil. An epic poem about Aeneas, a Trojan who travels to Italy to become the ancestor of the Romans.

The Aeneid

Evelyn Waugh. After Dennis Barlow's Los Angeles uncle commits suicide, he must arrange for the man's funeral at Whispering Glades, while competing for the love of one of the funeral home's employees.

The Loved One

H.G. Wells. The scientist Griffin discovers a way to make himself invisible but can't change himself back.

The Invisible Man

David Westheimer. Captain Ryan rules the Italian POW camp with an iron fist, but when the Germans invade, he must create daring escape plan to save the British and American soldiers under him.

Von Ryan's Express

 

Edith Wharton. In a wintry New England town, Ethan Frome is saddled with a complaining and difficult wife, but dreams of a better life cause him to turn to a beautiful cousin for comfort.

Ethan Frome

T.H. White. Read only Parts 1 and 2. Arthur is raised by his foster father but comes to power as King of England, rules the land, and is betrayed by both his best knight and his queen.

The Once and Future King (parts 1 and 2)

Owen Wister. The first real cowboy novel to be published, this story chronicles the lynchings of small farmers by cattle ranchers.

The Virginian

P.G. Wodehouse. Also called 'Joy in the Morning.' Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves, must outwit a houseful of people: Bertie's former fiancee, her new suitor, and Aunt Agatha.

Jeeves in the Morning

Richard Wright. Bigger Thomas is an African-American in Chicago living in utter poverty when he accidentally kills a white woman, runs from the police, then kills his girlfriend, is caught, and finally tried.

Native Son

 

Paul Zindel. John and Lorraine swear an oath to tell the truth about their experiences with Angelo Pignati, a man they befriended after prank calling him.

The Pigman

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