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ELA Grade 7 Required and Recommended Texts

Note: MetaMetrics® made changes to the Lexile® levels in June 2017 in order to provide more accurate measures for early readers. These changes affected 32% of all previously assigned Lexile® levels, including some texts for elementary and middle grade readers. The Lexile® levels listed on EL Education materials were added before this shift and do not reflect updated Lexile® levels.

Module 1

Texts and Resources to Buy

Texts that need to be procured. Please download the Trade Book List for procurement guidance.


Text or Resource Quantity ISBNs
Nasreen’s Secret School
by Jeanette Winter
One per classroom
ISBN: 9781442441217
Brothers in Hope
by Mary Williams
One per classroom
ISBN: 9781584302322
God Grew Tired of Us (DVD)
by Christopher Quinn (director)
One per classroom
ISBN: 0043396198999
A Long Walk to Water (Audiobook)
by Linda Sue Park
One per classroom
ISBN: 9781501237553
A Long Walk to Water
by Linda Sue Park
One per student
ISBN: 9780547577319

Recommended texts for independent reading

Optional texts for students to read on their own to learn more about the topic. You can also download a PDF of this list.

Text Genre Lexile Measure
Fierce and True: Plays for Teen Audiences
by Children’s Theatre Company
Literary
Home of Brave
by Katherine Applegate
Literary
A Hare in the Elephant’s Trunk
by Jan L. Coates
Literary
Outcasts United: The Story of a Refugee Soccer Team That Changed a Town (Young Readers Edition)
by Warren St. John
Informational 980
Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan
by John Bul Dau
Informational 900
The Red Pencil
by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Literary 620
Now Is the Time for Running
by Michael Williams
Literary
One Well: The Story of Water on Earth
by Rochelle Strauss
Literary 960
How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child
by Sandra Uwiringiyimana and Abigail Pesta
Informational
Lost Girl Found
by Leah Bassoff and Laura Deluca
Literary
The Milk of Birds
by Sylvia Whitman
Literary 780
The Good Braider
by Terry Farish
Literary

Module 2

Texts and Resources to Buy

Texts that need to be procured. Please download the Trade Book List for procurement guidance.


Text or Resource Quantity ISBNs
Patient Zero
by Marilee Peters
One per student
ISBN: 9781773215150

Recommended texts for independent reading

Optional texts for students to read on their own to learn more about the topic.

Text Genre Lexile Measure
Fever 1793
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Literary
Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918
by Albert Marrin
Informational 1 040
The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel
by Deborah Hopkinson
Literary 660
Epidemics and Pandemics: Real Tales of Deadly Diseases
by Judy Dodge Cummings
Informational 940
Pandemic: How Climate, the Environment, and Superbugs Increase the Risk
by Connie Goldsmith
Informational
The Ebola Epidemic: The Fight, The Future
by Connie Goldsmith
Informational 1 160
The Birchbark House
by Louise Erdrich
Literary 970
Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure
by Jim Murphy and Alison Blank
Informational
Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing
by Suzanne Jurmain
Informational 1 010
A Death-Struck Year
by Makiia Lucier
Literary
Fever Year: The Killer Flu of 1918
by Don Brown
Informational 1 020
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
by Jim Murphy
Informational 1 130
More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War
by Kenneth C. Davis
Informational 1 170
Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America
by Gail Jarrow
Informational
Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary
by Gail Jarrow
Informational 1 010
When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS
by James Cross Giblin
Informational
Deadly
by Julie Chibbaro
Literary 930
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio
by Peg Kehret
Informational

Module 3

Texts and Resources to Buy

Texts that need to be procured. Please download the Trade Book List for procurement guidance.


Text or Resource Quantity ISBNs
Shuffle Along (CD)
by Eubie Blake
one per classroom
ISBN: 632433320426
One Last Word
by Nikki Grimes
one per student
ISBN: 9781681196022

Recommended texts for independent reading

Optional texts for students to read on their own to learn more about the topic.

Text Genre Lexile Measure
Black Stars of the Harlem Renaissance: African Americans Who Lived Their Dreams
by Jim Haskins (Ed.)
Informational
Langston Hughes (Poetry for Young People)
by David Roessel and Andrew Rampersad (Eds.)
Poetry
The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader
by David Levering Lewis
Informational
The Harlem Renaissance: An African American Cultural Movement
by Tamara B. Orr
Informational
Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance
by Laban Carrick Hill
Informational 1 270
I See the Rhythm
by Toyomi Igus
Literary
Zora!: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin
Informational
Jazz
by Walter Dean Myers
Poetry
Finding Langston
by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Literary 760
The Great Migration: An American Story
by Jacob Lawrence
Informational 830
Augusta Savage: Sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance
by Charlotte Etinde-Crompton
Informational

Module 4

Texts and Resources to Buy

Texts that need to be procured. Please download the Trade Book List for procurement guidance.


Text or Resource Quantity ISBNs
A Plastic Ocean (DVD)
by Craig Leeson, director
one per classroom
ISBN: 602573215302
Trash Vortex
by Danielle Smith-Llera
one per student
ISBN: 9780756557492

Recommended texts for independent reading

Optional texts for students to read on their own to learn more about the topic.

Text Genre Lexile Measure
World without Fish
by Mark Kurlansky
Informational 1 160
The New Ocean: The Fate of Life in a Changing Sea
by Bryn Barnard
Informational 1 070
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
by Donovan Hohn
Informational
Trash Talk: Moving Toward a Zero-Waste World
by Michelle Mulder
Informational 1 050
This Book Stinks!: Gross Garbage, Rotten Rubbish, and the Science of Trash
by Sarah Wassner Flynn
Informational
Human Footprint: Everything You Will Eat, Use, Wear, Buy, and Throw Out in Your Lifetime
by Ellen Kirk
Informational 890
Plastic, Ahoy!: Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
by Patricia Newman
Informational 900
Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion
by Loree Griffin Burns
Informational
Going Blue: A Teen Guide to Saving Our Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, & Wetlands
by Cathryn Berger Kaye and Philippe Cousteau
Informational
The Plastic Problem
by Rachel Salt
Informational
Plastic Pollution
by Geof Knight
Informational
Eyes Wide Open: Going behind the Environmental Headlines
by Paul Fleischman
Informational
Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Polution
by Marcus Eriksen
Informational
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
by Laura Perdew
Informational

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