HIT: Mysteries/Middle School List

[Carol Van Hook <Hook2025@AOL.COM>]

LM_Netters,

Thanks to all those sharing ideas on good mystery titles and authors!  I
suppose Lois Duncan and Joan Lowry Nixon are the most popular!  I do see a
variety of  choices from the LM_Netter contributors that look very
interesting.  It will be fun sharing this list with junior high /middle
school readers.  I hope you find the following information useful:

***Joan Lowry Nixon has about 12 titles.  She has received an
unprecedented 4 Edgar Awards for outstanding mystery fiction for YA,
and 7 nominations in all.
A few are:
The kidnapping of Christine Lattimore
A Deadly Game of Magic
The Name of the Game was murder
SpiritSeekers

***When I was teaching language arts, favorite mysteries of my seventh
graders
were by Lois Duncan and Richard Peck.  If you've been following the 'net,
you'll remember than one of Duncan's mysteries _Don't Look Behind You_ was
published just before her daughter was killed, much like in the fiction.
She wrote a non-fiction account of this murder in _Who Killed My Daughter?_
She's also written non-fiction about psi and other "seeing into the future
or past" topics.  She's an excellent author to migrate kids toward
non-fiction.

***I really enjoyed Vivian Vandevelde's Companions of the Night. I didn't
known who
the real villain was til the end, plus there were a few vampires thrown in
for good measure. What was also cool for me was that it was set in a small
college town between Buffalo and Rochester called Brockport where I used
to do my grocery shopping because the town where I was teaching only had
one grocery store. So I knew the places they were talking about. Having
never experienced reading a book set in a place I'd been I thought it was
pretty darn nifty!

***My favorite is The Westing Game by Raskin. She also wrote several other
mysteries.

***Include any books by Joan Lowery Nixon, Christopher Pike, Lois Duncan,
R.L. Stine, R. Westall....

***Two of the favorite mystery authors at our school are Joan Nixon and Lois
Duncan.  Some of our better readers also like Braun, The cat who...books,
Agatha Christie, and Mary Higgins Clark.

***Harriet the spy books - isn't there a new movie?
Lloyd Alexander's Vesper Holly series (The Jedera Adventure is one title)

***An excellent 7th grade thriller is Wolf Rider: A Tale of Terror, by Avi.
It's so good...I have 3 copies for my mystery readers .  Another book might
be
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie.

***I would recommend any of Joan Lowry Nixon's mysteries, also Lois
Duncan,Willo Davis Roberts, and Poe.

***Annette Curtis Klause has several -

Alien Secrets (mystery & scifi)
Silver Kiss (vampire)
Look for me by moonlight (vampire, for more 'mature' readers at your
level)

******************Happy Reading!*****************
Carol VanHook
hook2025@aol.com
SE Polk Jr. High
Media Specialist
Runnells, IA