Summer Reading: Book Recommendations From Our Team
Whether by the lake, the pool, or snuggled up on the couch, participants of our recent Mizzou Academy book chat agree that summer is for reading. As a school community, we are passionate about the power of story to educate and bring people together. Each quarter we invite our faculty and staff to gather with coffees, teas, and their recent book recommendations.
This July, eight members of our team pulled books off their nightstands and out of their pool bags to spend an hour or so talking about books. We shared books across many genres and cultures. We shared middle grade books we couldn’t wait to teach and biographies we couldn’t wait to share. One book reminded us of another and then another. We talked about being happily lost in the stacks in the library and sometimes discovering our next great read was already right in front of us.
As Dr. Sherry Denney shared, “We learned about so many amazing reads. We are a passionate group to begin with but we know this list will inspire you. There is something here for everyone!” Wishing you and yours a great summer of reading!
What’s Ms. Johnson reading this summer?
Diane Johnson serves as an instructional specialist in our global language arts program. She also serves as a media specialist in the Kansas City Metro area. This summer she is reading lots of young adult fiction and has a full book stack of biographies and mysteries.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller |
A dedicated teacher takes readers inside her sixth grade classroom to reveal the secrets of her powerful but unusual instructional approach. |
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The In-Between by Katie Van Heinrich |
This middle grade memoir in verse chronicles a young girl and her family who must start over after losing their home. |
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Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann |
A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history. This takes place in the 1920s among the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. |
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Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria by Muhammad Najem |
A teenage boy risks his life to tell the truth in this gripping graphic memoir by a youth activist and a CNN producer. |
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Refugee by Alan Gratz |
Three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. They are separated by continents and decades but shocking connections will tie their stories together in the end. |
What’s Ms. DeCastro reading this summer?
Lisa DeCastro serves as our elementary coordinator. She has a strong background in early elementary education and supporting multilingual learners. This summer she’s enjoying both fiction and nonfiction and noticing that her book stack is taking her deep inside the possibilities of stories and libraries.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray |
The Personal Librarian tells of the lifework of Belle da Costa Greene, the personal librarian to J. P. Morgan, as well as the first director of the Morgan Library & Museum. |
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Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng |
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner receives a mysterious letter and is pulled into a quest to find his mother which takes him back to the many folktales she told him, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City. |
What’s Ms. Boyer reading this summer?
Lisa Boyer is an instructional specialist in our social studies and Spanish courses. Her background is in school counseling and teaching. It’s an exciting summer for reading as she is enjoying a little bit of everything from fiction to mystery to biography to thriller.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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Passionate Minds: Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaires, and the Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment by David Bodanis |
In 1733, the poet and philosopher Voltaire met Emilie du Chatelet, a beguiling and married aristocrat who would one day popularize Newton’s arcane ideas and pave the way for Einstein’s theories. It is an unforgettable love story and a vivid rendering of the birth of modern ideas. |
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The Sentence by Louis Erdich |
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted for one year by the store’s most annoying customer. This novel is a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors. |
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City of Lies by Victoria Thompson |
Book 1 of a series featuring woman-on-the-run Elizabeth Miles. Elizabeth must draw on her wits and every last ounce of courage to keep her new life from being cut short by a vicious shadow from her past. |
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The Old Woman with a Knife by Gu Byeong-mo |
The kinetic story of a sixty-five-year-old female assassin who faces an unexpected threat in the twilight of her career. |
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Half Life: A Novel by Jillian Cantor |
The author reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice. |
What’s Ms. Sprouse reading this summer?
Nina Sprouse serves our social studies chair. Ms. Sprouse’s background is in social studies, business education, and technology. This summer she is taking a deep dive into the surprising life of Lady Caroline Lamb.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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Lady Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit by Antonia Fraser |
The vivid and dramatic life of Lady Caroline Lamb, whose scandalous love affair with Lord Byron overshadowed her own creativity and desire to break free from society’s constraints. |
What’s Dr. Denney reading this summer?
Dr. Sherry Denney serves as a lead teacher in our health, P.E. and fitness, and fine arts courses. Her background is in counseling and French education. This summer her reading choices include philosophy and inclusion.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius |
A story of a boy who has a mysterious illness that causes him to become a paraplegic and is "trapped" in his body but cognitively is present. It takes 9 years for someone to figure it out and help him. |
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My Petition for More Space by John Hershey |
A futuristic story of a group of people waiting in line to "petition" for more space in an overcrowded world. The story only takes place in the line, and is about the relationships of the people that are standing so closely beside one another...hoping for a better life. |
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The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande |
A true story of a young girl who is a "Dreamer" who is left behind in Mexico with her siblings when her parents move to the United States without them. She triumphs over tragedy but not without tremendous loss and sacrifice. |
What’s Ms. Thornhill reading this summer?
Ericca Thornhill serves as our division chair for science. She is passionate about giving students opportunities to foster curiosity, scientific exploration, and a love of the environment. This summer, in her words she is reading books that make her go wow!
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown |
In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging. |
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Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer |
The beloved Hugo Award-nominated novel about the conflict between science and religion… As Tom faces his own mortality, will his life-long atheism be shaken by these revelations? From this provocative launch point, Sawyer tells a fast-paced, morally and intellectually challenging story that just grows larger and larger in scope. |
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Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy |
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, Profiles in Courage—now reissued, featuring a new introduction by Caroline Kennedy as well as Robert Kennedy's foreword written for the memorial edition of the volume in 1964—resounds with timeless lessons on the most cherished of virtues and is a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit. |
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Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl |
A chilling yet inspirational story of Viktor Frankl’s struggle to hold on to hope during the unspeakable horrors of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. |
What’s Dr. Fishman-Weaver reading this summer?
Dr. Kathryn Fishman-Weaver serves as our executive director. Her background is in inclusive practices for neurodiverse learners and school leadership. This summer she is enjoying mostly young adult fiction with her middle school daughter.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan |
An intensely moving middle grade novel about being an outsider, coping with loss, and discovering the true meaning of family. |
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Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed |
Middle-grade compelling story of a girl’s fight to regain her life and dreams after being forced into indentured servitude. |
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Maestrapeace : San Francisco’s Monumental Feminist Mural by Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, Edythe Boone, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton, and Irene Perez |
The Maestrapeace is the monumental and fabulously detailed mural that adorns two sides of the Women’s Building in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. This book allows readers to take an extended tour of the mural, revealing intricacies and nuances that may go unnoticed from a street-level view. |
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Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds |
A gripping, galvanizing graphic novel, with haunting artwork, about a boy who lost his older brother to gun violence. |
What’s Ms. King reading this summer?
Dominique King serves as our executive assistant. Her background is in public schools and community-based work. This summer she recommends biographies, young adult fiction, and history reads.
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Title and Author |
Short Description |
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Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman |
In this groundbreaking narrative history, the author charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit it from the moment the act was signed into law. |
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Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music by Margarita Engle |
This book contains beautiful artwork and is inspired by the childhood of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a Chinese-African-Cuban girl, who broke Cuba’s traditional taboo against female drummers. |
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Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala |
At a beach resort off the coast of Sri Lanka, the author and her family were swept away by a tsunami. Only the author survives to tell the tale. |
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Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes |
Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that’s been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing. |