English Books for 12 to 13-year-olds

[milztoday]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Aberforth's Goat" 
<Aberforths_Goat at Y...> wrote:
> Hi guys!
> 
> A friend of mine teaches English in a local middle school. 
Recently, two
> children moved back to Switzerland after having grown up in New 
Zealand.
> Apparently, their English-language skills are on par with children 
of their
> age back in New Zealand - but they've ended up in a school for 
educationally
> challenged kids. That makes sense in most of their other classes, 
but not in
> English.
> 

Yes, it does make sense! My college roommate was born and raised in 
the US and spoke Spanish at home, but her Spanish language skills 
(ie. grammar, writing) were the equivalent of a functional literate. 
Same goes for English. In my experience, generally people who learn 
English as a second language tend to speak and write grammatically 
correct English. Native speakers generally don't.
 
Milz