Montessori List for Pre-Teen/Teen Books 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (pre-teen and up)

A murder mystery of sorts — told by an autistic boy. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child’s quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers…

Alex Rider Adventure, by Anthony Horowitz (pre-teen to teen)

Working as a secret agent for Britain’s most exclusive agency, M16, Alex Rider has seen it all. He’s been shot at by international terrorists, stood face-to-face with pure evil, and saved the world—twice. But fifteen-year-old Alex is about to face something more dangerous than he can imagine…

Stormbreaker
Point Blank
Skeleton Key
Eagle Strike
Scorpia
 

Brian, by Gary Paulsen (pre-teen and up)

Brian Robeson is at home in the Canadian wilderness. He has stood up to the challenge of surviving alone in the woods. He prefers being on his own in the natural world to civilization…

Hatchet
The River
Brian’s Winter
Brian’s Return
Brian’s Hunt
Guts – the real stories. stories of the adventures that inspired Paulsen to write Brian Robeson’s story
 

The Boy, by Gary Paulson (chapter books, pre-teen and up)

The Cookcamp Short, lyrical novel concerns a five-year-old boy who is sent to the north woods of Minnesota to live with his grandmother, a cook for a rough-and-tumble road-building crew…

The Quilt Spend another summer with “the boy” and his grandmother, Alida. World War II is being fought in Europe, and the boy’s mother, working in a munitions factory in Chicago, sends her six-year-old son to stay with his grandmother in Minnesota

Alida’s Song The wonderful grandmother seen through the eyes of a young boy in The Cookcamp reaches out to him at 14, offering him a haven…

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan (chapter books to adult)
Newbery Honor title! When Jake Semple is kicked out of yet another school, the Applewhites, an eccentric family of artists, offer to let him live with them and attend their unstructured Creative Academy…