70 free Middle School Book trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This is book trivia for middle schoolers, built from the novels that actually get read in grades 6 to 8: The Giver, Hatchet, Holes, Wonder, The Lightning Thief, The Hunger Games, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Bridge to Terabithia, Number the Stars, The Outsiders, Where the Red Fern Grows, A Wrinkle in Time, Tuck Everlasting, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Maniac Magee, Bud, Not Buddy, The Westing Game, Freak the Mighty, The Hobbit, Narnia, Anne Frank's diary and the newer classics like The One and Only Ivan, The Crossover, Brown Girl Dreaming, Smile and Hello, Universe. The questions ask about characters, plots, settings and authors, and a few about the Newbery Medals and true stories behind the books. Most are answerable by anyone who has read the book, and the harder ones reward paying attention: the plane in Hatchet, the town in Holes, the game show in When You Reach Me. Teachers can use it for a library quiz or end-of-unit game; parents can use it to check who actually finished the book. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the book, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Giver, 12-year-old Jonas is selected to become the community's what?
Receiver of Memory
He inherits every memory of the time before Sameness, including colour, snow and pain.
Q 02Who wrote The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner?
Lois Lowry
She won a second Newbery for it four years after her first, and it became one of the most challenged books in American schools.
Q 03In Hatchet, what happens to the pilot that strands Brian Robeson in the Canadian wilderness?
He has a heart attack
Brian crash-lands in an L-shaped lake with only his windbreaker and a hatchet.
Q 04Who gave Brian the hatchet he survives with in Hatchet?
His mother
He learns to make fire with it and eats everything from turtle eggs to the grouse he calls fool-birds.
Q 05In Holes, where is Stanley Yelnats sent to dig after being wrongly convicted of theft?
Camp Green Lake
There has been no lake there for over a hundred years, which is rather the point of the digging.
Q 06Who wrote Holes, which won both the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal?
Louis Sachar
He also wrote the Wayside School books; the 2003 film starred Shia LaBeouf as Stanley.
Q 07In Wonder, what is the name of the boy with a facial difference who starts mainstream school?
August Pullman
Auggie has Treacher Collins syndrome; the author got the idea after her own son reacted with distress to a girl with a facial deformity.
Q 08In Wonder, Auggie starts fifth grade at which private school?
Beecher Prep
Mr Tushman asks Jack Will, Charlotte and Julian to give him a tour before term starts.
Q 09In The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson turns out to be the son of which Greek god?
Poseidon
That breaks an oath the three eldest gods swore never to have children, and it is why Zeus suspects Percy of stealing his master bolt.
Q 10Percy's school friend Grover in The Lightning Thief turns out to be what kind of creature?
A satyr
He steers Percy to Camp Half-Blood, where Chiron the centaur trains demigods.
Q 11In The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers as tribute to take the place of whom?
Her sister Primrose
Katniss is 16 and from coal-mining District 12; Prim is 12 and her name has only been in the reaping once.
Q 12Who is Katniss's fellow tribute from District 12, the baker's son who once gave her bread?
Peeta Mellark
Their drunken mentor Haymitch is the only living District 12 victor.
Q 13In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg Heffley insists his book is not a diary but a what?
A journal
Jeff Kinney spent eight years on the first book, and it ran online at Funbrain before it was ever printed.
Q 21Where the Red Fern Grows is set in which mountain region?
The Ozarks
It is autobiographical fiction drawn from Wilson Rawls's own childhood there.
Q 22In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg and Charles Wallace travel through space and time to rescue which family member?
Their dad
Calvin goes with them; they fight The Black Thing that has invaded several worlds.
Q 23Who wrote A Wrinkle in Time?
Madeleine L'Engle
It won the 1963 Newbery Medal and opens her Time Quintet.
In Tuck Everlasting, what has made the Tuck family immortal?
Q 14Who is Greg Heffley's loyal best friend, who later got his own spin-off series?
Rowley Jefferson
Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jefferson's Journal came out in 2019.
Q 15In Bridge to Terabithia, how do Jess and Leslie get into their secret kingdom?
By swinging over a creek on a rope
The author based the story on the death of her son's friend, who was struck by lightning in 1974.
Q 16In Bridge to Terabithia, Jess first meets Leslie when she does what?
Beats him in a footrace
He had trained all summer to be the fastest runner in fifth grade.
Q 17In Number the Stars, Annemarie helps Ellen Rosen escape occupied Copenhagen to which neutral country?
Sweden
They cross from her Uncle Henrik's coastal home, using a fake funeral for a made-up Great Aunt Birte as cover.
Q 18In The Outsiders, the greasers' rivals, the wealthy Socs, get their name from what word?
Socials
S. E. Hinton started the book at 15 and used her initials so male reviewers would not dismiss it.
Q 19Who narrates The Outsiders?
Ponyboy Curtis
His brothers Darry and Sodapop are raising him; Francis Ford Coppola filmed the book in 1983.
Q 20In Where the Red Fern Grows, what does Billy name his two coonhounds?
Old Dan and Little Ann
He saw the names carved in a tree on the walk home from Tahlequah after two years of saving up the $50.
Drinking from a spring
Ten-year-old Winnie Foster sees Jesse Tuck drink from it and he stops her from doing the same.
Q 25Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on the true story of a woman left alone on an island for how many years?
18
Karana's real-life counterpart, Juana Maria, lived alone on San Nicolas Island in the 19th century.
Q 26Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry follows the Logan family in which state in the 1930s?
Mississippi
Unlike most Black families around them, the Logans own their land, which is what the whole story turns on.
Q 27In Maniac Magee, the orphan Jeffrey Magee is allergic to which food?
Pizza
He can also untie any knot and runs everywhere he goes in the segregated town of Two Mills.
Q 28In Walk Two Moons, Salamanca's grandparents drive her across the country to find whom?
Her mother
Sal tells them the story of her friend Phoebe on the way; the book won the 1995 Newbery Medal.
Q 29In Esperanza Rising, Esperanza's family flees Mexico for farm work in which US state?
California
Her father is murdered the day before her 13th birthday and her step-uncle takes the ranch.
Q 30Bud, Not Buddy follows an orphan travelling from Flint to Grand Rapids, in which state, during the 1930s?
Michigan
Bud goes from Flint to Grand Rapids; the book was the first to win both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award.