Recommended Young Adult Books

Do you remember that teacher who struck fear in your heart?  That teacher who you never made eye contact with for fear of drawing attention to yourself ?  That teacher for me was my high school English teacher, Mr. Jones.  


He looked like an average man.  He was medium height, thin and he dressed professionally (the meaning of the word casual eluded this man) every day.  Yet, he scared me to my core.  He could cut you down in a heartbeat or with the flick of his pen.  

Yet, he was the most memorable teacher I had in high school not just because of his demeanor, but because he excelled at what he did.  He is the one most responsible for teaching me how to write.  I could write an essay in college with the best of them due to this man's teaching.  

I will never forget when he had assigned us a novel to read.  And it was not one of the smut books, as he called the romance books one of the girls at the front of the room read (often blatantly in front of him).  We were discussing thesis sentences, I believe.  He asked one of my closest friends her thoughts on the book.  My friend (who sat across from me) looked him directly in the eye and told him she would love to give her opinion but unfortunately she hadn't read the book.  


Dead silence.  No one even breathed.  We were all expecting her to get screamed at (Mr. Jones didn't yell often but when he did...) or worse-kicked out of class. 


He looked at her and to our amazement he told her that he appreciated her honesty.  To this day, we still talk about that day in Mr. Jone's class.  I still admire my friend for she is one of the most honest people I have the privilege of knowing. If you want to know how it is, just ask her.


To this day I could rattle off the list of books we had to read in Mr. Jone's English class.  Several of which are on this list.


Recommended Books For High School Students (Especially Those College-Bound) :
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Jane Eyre  by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
Queen Eleanor, Independent Spirit of The Medieval World: Biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine by Polly Schoyer Brooks
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier 
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, & A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas by Frederick Douglass

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Rebecca  by Daphne Du Maurier
Silas Marner George Eliot
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Th e Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lord of the Flies William Golding
I, Claudius Robert Graves
Roots by Alex Haley
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

The Scarlet Letter & The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
For Whom the Bell Tolls & A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Short Stories by O. Henry
The Iliad & The Odyssey by Homer
Poems by Langston Hughes
Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor .Hugo
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
The Portrait of a Lady by James Henry

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Poems by John Keats
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
Charles Kuralt's America by Charles Kurault
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Moby-Dick  by Herman Melville

The Crucible & Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Beloved by Toni Morrison
1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
All Quiet on the Western Front  by Erich Maria Remarque

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
MacBeth, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, sonnets, and King Lear by William Shakespeare
Pygmalion by George Bernard.Shaw
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
Walden Henry David Thoreau
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien 
Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Aeneid by Virgil
Candide by Voltaire
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

The Color Purple by Alice walker
The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Night by Elie Wiesel
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolfe
Native Son by Richard Wright

Other Books Found on Reading Lists From Schools Across the Country:
Twinkie Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats by Steve Ettlinger
Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrap
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Water for Elephants: A Novel  by Sara Gruen
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Piccoult
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood  by Rebecca Wells  
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
The Davinci Code by Dan Brown
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Maximum Ride: The Angle Experiment by James Patterson
Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

If you missed my lists of other books, here they are:
Recommended Books for Preschoolers
Recommended Books for K-3
Recommended Books For Grades 4-6

Recommended Books For Grades 4-6

In 6th grade, my reading arts teacher held a writing contest.  We were to create our own ghost stories and she showed us how to make our own faux hardback novels using cardboard (from a cereal box if memory serves me correctly) and contact paper.

I won by writing a story about a girl and a ghost.  Or was it about a girl who was a ghost?  I don't remember the details but I do remember some of the words I had used that I had found in the dictionary in my attempt to impress my teacher.  

What was my prize?  I got to choose any book from the Scholastic Book Order that periodically was sent home.  I choose a Babysitter's Club book.  Remember those?

Here is a list of recommended books for children ages 9-12:

Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little by E.B. White
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson 
Black Beauty by Anna Sewall 
The Giver and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
The Borrowers by Mary Norton

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl 
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle  Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume  
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery 
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub by Jamie Gilson
My Side of the Mountain and Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craigheade George
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary 
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater  
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White
Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor  
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
Jacob Have I Loved and The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Bunnicula by Deborah Howe
Little House on the Prarie by Laura Ingalls Wilder 
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett  
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor 
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt 

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss  
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner  
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting  The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh  
The Whipping Boy by Peter Sis 

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan 
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks 
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell  
Holes by Louis Sachar
The Rescuers by Margery Scharp
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare 
The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum 
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

Recommended Books for K-3

Many of the books that I have listed are classics and books that I also enjoyed as a child.  The first time I realized that I could read a book in one sitting by myself was in first grade.  I am not talking about a picture book but an actual book with over twenty-five pages. 

In first grade, our teacher had encouraged us to read a set number of books in a set amount of time.  We got a star for every book we finished.  Me and another little girl were almost done reaching our goal.  My last book was a Dick and Jane book. Remember them?  "See Spot.  See Spot run." Do they still read Dick and Jane books in elementary school? 

I raced home and curled up on the couch and read and read and read.  I remember that the sun was out and I could hear my mother making meal preparations for our dinner.  The afghan beneath me that had been crocheted by my grandmother was scratchy against my legs and arms.  I burrowed into the couch trying to block everything out so that I could concentrate on reading.   I finished the book that night, without any help.

I was exhilarated. I was going to get my last star.  I was going to be the first one in my class to finish all of her books. Even then I was competitive.

When I went into school the next morning, I took my book and went to my teachers desk. I told her I was finished.  She didn't believe me.  She sent the book home with me again and the request that my mom sign off when I finished the book.  I was crestfallen.  That other little girl, finished reading her books that day.  I came in second.  I would like to say that it was enough to know that I had finished first, but what can I say, I was six years old.

I ran into my former first grade teacher, who saw my mother periodically.  I was in college and shopping with my mother. I had an armful of undergarments and was standing in line waiting to check out.  Yes, I still felt a twinge at the slight she had inflicted on my six year old self but nary a word came out of my mouth about the incident.  In all honesty, I still think of her fondly.  She was one of my favorite and most memorable elementary school teachers from my youth.  I have lots of wonderful memories of her classroom.

Books for 4-8 Year Olds

Alexander and the Terible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
Arthur series by Marc Brown
The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
Polar Express by Chris van Allsburg
Green Eggs and Ham and any other book by Dr. Seuss
Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire
Tawny, Scrawny Lion by Kathryn Jackson
The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey
The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper
Little Critter series by Mercer Mayer
Tess's Tree by Jess M. Brailler
Eloise series by Kay Thompson
Curious George by Hans Augusto Rey
Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
The Berenstain Bears series by Stan and Jan Berenstain
A Treasury of Dick and Jane and Friends by  William S. Gray
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Madeline series by Ludwig Bemelmans
Junie B. Jones  series by Barbara Park
What Do People Do All Day and Best Word Book Ever by Richard Scarry
Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

Click here, to read the recommended books for preschoolers.

I am working on compiling the lists for older children.  Stay tuned!