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
Receiver of Memory: the Chief Elder skips Jonas's turn at the Ceremony of Twelve, then apologises for his anguish and announces that he has been selected, not assigned.
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
He has a heart attack mid-flight and falls unconscious, leaving Brian to bring the plane down in a lake and swim to shore, where a hatchet is almost all he has.
Q 04Who gave Brian the hatchet he survives with in Hatchet?
His mother
His mother gave him the hatchet as a present just before the flight; he learns to make fire only after it strikes sparks off the rock wall of his shelter in the dark.
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 has said the story began with its setting, dreamed up in the heat of a Texas summer just after a cool holiday in Maine; the characters came later.
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, the new boy starts fifth grade at which private school?
Beecher Prep
Beecher Prep is where the head, Mr Tushman, lines up three pupils to show the new boy round before term starts; one of them turns out to be his chief tormentor.
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
A satyr, half goat and half human: Grover was at the school to protect Percy, and reveals himself the night he warns Percy's mother to get her son to Camp Half-Blood.
Q 11In The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers as tribute to take the place of whom?
Her sister Primrose
Her sister Primrose is only 12 and in her first year in the lottery when her name is drawn; Katniss, 16, steps forward for 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 took a blow from his mother over two burnt loaves, then threw them to the starving Katniss instead of to the pigs, a kindness she never forgot.
Q 13In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg Heffley insists he is writing not a diary but a what?
A journal
A journal, he insists on the first page, not a diary; Jeff Kinney serialised Greg's story online on Funbrain from 2004, and the printed book of 2007 is an edited version of it.
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 saw the manuscript turned down by more than two dozen publishers, unsure whether it was for children or adults, before it won the 1963 Newbery Medal.
Q 23In Tuck Everlasting, what has made the Tuck family immortal?
Drinking from a spring
Drinking from a spring in the wood near Treegap stopped the Tucks ageing; when Winnie Foster catches Jesse Tuck at it, he refuses to let her drink too.
Q 14Who is Greg Heffley's loyal best friend, who later got his own spin-off series?
Rowley Jefferson
Rowley Jefferson got his turn in 2019 with Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, where he sets out to be Greg's biographer and Greg comes off rather worse than in his own telling.
Q 15In Bridge to Terabithia, how do Jess and Leslie reach 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, what are the greasers' rich West-side rivals called?
The Socs
The Socs, short for Socials, are the rich West-side kids who jump greasers; S. E. Hinton wrote the novel while still at high school in Tulsa.
Q 18Who narrates The Outsiders?
Ponyboy Curtis
Ponyboy Curtis, 14, lives with his two older brothers since their parents' death, and the whole book turns out to be the English theme his teacher sets him at the end.
Q 19In Where the Red Fern Grows, what does Billy name his two coonhounds?
Old Dan and Little Ann
Old Dan and Little Ann cost Billy two years of odd jobs to save the $50, and he walked some 20 miles to Tahlequah to collect them rather than wait for a ride.
Q 20Where the Red Fern Grows is set in which mountain region?
The Ozarks
The Ozarks of Oklahoma are where Wilson Rawls grew up; he burned his manuscripts before his wedding, then rewrote this story from memory when his wife urged him to.
Q 24In Island of the Blue Dolphins, what kind of animal is Rontu, whom Karana wounds and then tames?
A wild dog
A wild dog: Rontu leads the pack that killed her brother Ramo, and Karana shoots him to avenge it, then cannot finish him off, carries him home and nurses him.
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 26Which novel's runaway orphan hero unties the famous Cobble's Knot?
Maniac Magee
Maniac Magee: Jeffrey Magee runs from his feuding aunt and uncle and lands in Two Mills, a town split between a Black East End and a white West End, a line he crosses as if it were not there.
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
California is where the family lands, in a farm-labour camp at Arvin, after bandits murder her father on the eve of her birthday and his stepbrother Tío Luis, refused by her mother, burns down the ranch.
Q 29In Bud, Not Buddy, orphan Bud Caldwell searches for his supposed father in which state?
Michigan
Michigan: Bud walks out of Flint in 1936 to find the bandleader Herman E. Calloway in Grand Rapids, sure he is his father; Calloway turns out to be his grandfather.
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.