Middle School Book Trivia
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69 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 69 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
Jonas is chosen as the Receiver of Memory at the Ceremony of Twelve, inheriting from the Giver every memory of the time before Sameness, including colour, snow and pain.
Q 02Who wrote The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner?
Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry won the 1994 Newbery Medal for The Giver, her second after Number the Stars in 1990; the book became one of the most frequently challenged titles in American schools.
Q 03In Hatchet, what happens to the pilot that strands Brian Robeson in the Canadian wilderness?
He has a heart attack
The pilot has a heart attack mid-flight and dies, and Brian crash-lands the Cessna 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
Stanley is sent to Camp Green Lake, a Texas juvenile detention camp where there has been no lake for over a hundred years; the boys dig a hole a day in the dried lakebed.
Q 06Who wrote Holes, which won both the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal?
Louis Sachar
Louis Sachar wrote Holes, which took the 1998 National Book Award and the 1999 Newbery Medal; he also wrote the Wayside School books, and Shia LaBeouf played Stanley in the 2003 film.
Q 07In Wonder, what is the name of the boy with a facial difference who starts mainstream school?
August Pullman
August Pullman, known as Auggie, has Treacher Collins syndrome; R.J. Palacio got the idea after her son reacted with distress to a girl with a facial difference.
Q 08In Wonder, Auggie starts fifth grade at which private school?
Beecher Prep
Auggie enters fifth grade at Beecher Prep, where the director Mr Tushman asks Jack Will, Charlotte and Julian to show him around before term starts.
Q 09In The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson turns out to be the son of which Greek god?
Poseidon
Percy is claimed by Poseidon, breaking an oath the Big Three swore after World War II to father no more demigods; that 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
Grover Underwood is a satyr, half goat and half human, who guides 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 takes the place of her sister Primrose, whose name was in the reaping only once; Katniss is 16 and Prim 12, both from coal-mining District 12.
Q 12Who is Katniss's fellow tribute from District 12, the baker's son who once gave her bread?
Peeta Mellark
Peeta Mellark, the baker's son, threw Katniss burnt bread when her family was starving; 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
Greg insists on the first page that it is a journal, not a diary; Jeff Kinney worked on the book for eight years and serialised it on Funbrain from 2004 before it was printed.
Q 21In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg and Charles Wallace travel through space and time to rescue which family member?
Their dad
They tesser to Camazotz to rescue their dad, the physicist Mr Murry, who vanished while working on a secret government project; Calvin O'Keefe goes with them.
Q 22Who wrote A Wrinkle in Time?
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle wrote A Wrinkle in Time; it won the 1963 Newbery Medal and opens her Time Quintet, followed by A Wind in the Door.
Q 23In Tuck Everlasting, what has made the Tuck family immortal?
Drinking from a spring
The Tucks became immortal by drinking from a spring in the wood near Treegap; ten-year-old Winnie Foster sees Jesse Tuck drink from it, and he stops her from doing the same.
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
Jess and Leslie reach Terabithia by swinging over a creek on a rope; Katherine Paterson based the story on her son's friend Lisa Hill, who was killed by lightning in 1974.
Q 16In Number the Stars, Annemarie helps Ellen Rosen escape occupied Copenhagen to which neutral country?
Sweden
The Rosens are smuggled by fishing boat to Sweden from Uncle Henrik's home in the fishing village of Gilleleje, using a fake funeral for an invented Great-aunt Birte as cover.
Q 17In The Outsiders, the greasers' rivals, the wealthy Socs, get their name from what word?
Socials
Socs is short for Socials, the rich West-side kids; S. E. Hinton wrote the book as a Tulsa teenager and used her initials so male reviewers would not dismiss it.
Q 18Who narrates The Outsiders?
Ponyboy Curtis
Ponyboy Curtis, 14, tells the story as a school theme; his brothers Darry and Sodapop are raising him, and Francis Ford Coppola filmed the book in 1983.
Q 19In Where the Red Fern Grows, what does Billy name his two coonhounds?
Old Dan and Little Ann
Billy names them Old Dan and Little Ann after seeing the two names carved inside a heart on a tree, camping on the walk home from Tahlequah after two years of saving the $50.
Q 20Where the Red Fern Grows is set in which mountain region?
The Ozarks
Billy Colman's story unfolds in the Ozarks of northeastern Oklahoma, where Wilson Rawls grew up; the book is autobiographical fiction drawn from his own boyhood coon hunting.
Q 24Island 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, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, lived alone there for 18 years, from 1835 until she was brought to Santa Barbara in 1853.
Q 25Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry follows the Logan family in which state in the 1930s?
Mississippi
The Logans farm their own 400 acres in rural Mississippi in 1933; unlike most Black families around them they own the land, and keeping it is what the story turns on.
Q 26In Maniac Magee, the orphan Jeffrey Magee is allergic to which food?
Pizza
Jeffrey 'Maniac' Magee turns out to be allergic to pizza; he can also untie any knot, including Cobble's Knot, and runs everywhere he goes in the divided town of Two Mills.
Q 27In Walk Two Moons, Salamanca's grandparents drive her across the country to find whom?
Her mother
Sal and her grandparents drive from Ohio to Lewiston, Idaho, to reach her mother, retelling her friend Phoebe's story on the way; the book won the 1995 Newbery Medal.
Q 28In Esperanza Rising, Esperanza's family flees Mexico for farm work in which US state?
California
Esperanza's family ends up in a farm-labour camp near Arvin, California, after bandits murder her father on the eve of her birthday and his stepbrother Tío Luis seizes the ranch.
Q 29In Bud, Not Buddy, orphan Bud Caldwell searches for his supposed father in which state?
Michigan
Bud Caldwell travels from Flint to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1936 to find the bandleader Herman E. Calloway; the book was the first to win both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award.
Q 30In The Westing Game, sixteen strangers are invited to rent apartments in which building?
Sunset Towers
The heirs are gathered as tenants of Sunset Towers, a new lakeshore apartment block within sight of the Westing house; Samuel Westing made his fortune in paper, and his will turns them into players.