Instructional Materials Adoption Committees
Curriculum Development and Adoption of Instructional Materials Curriculum is evaluated, adapted and developed on a continuing basis and in accordance with a plan for curriculum growth. All new courses or major modifications to existing courses must be approved by the superintendent or designee prior to implementation.
Criteria for Selection of Instructional Material Staff will rely on reason and professional judgment in the selection of high-quality materials that comprise a comprehensive collection appropriate for the instructional program.
Instructional Materials Committee
The committee will:
- Receive and act upon recommendations from the Curriculum Department for the adoption of basic instructional materials, approval of supplemental materials, or removal of materials from adopted lists.
- Provide oversight that will guarantee that the established process has been observed in the selection of instructional materials recommended for adoption.
- Hear challenges from patrons regarding instructional materials.
Committee Member Role
- Attend scheduled meetings (Typically three times per school year for approx. 2 hours)
- Serve as a communication link to the community they represent
- Assist in collecting data regarding the instructional materials under consideration
- Through a consensus process, make a formal recommendation to the superintendent and school board
Committee Members
- William Jackson, Chairperson
- Jacqueline Otting, Elementary Teachers
- Elizabeth Roberts, Librarians
- Claire McGee, High School Teachers
- Katelyn Hassan, Special Education Teachers
- Wendy Kuo, Patron/Parent
- Dusty Steere, Building Administrator
- Jen Rivera, Curriculum Department
- Brianne Dean, Equity Representative
- Approved Instructional Materials
- Current Curriculum Adoption Committees
- Past Curriculum Adoption Committees
Approved Instructional Materials
June 1, 2023
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Illustrative Mathematics. Approved by board members as district basic curriculum materials for grade 8-12.
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Modern World History 1200 – Present. Approved by board members as district basic curriculum materials for grade 9 and 10.
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American Government: Stories of a Nation. Approved by board members as district basic curriculum materials for grade 12.
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Launching into Aviation. Approved by board members as district basic curriculum materials for grade 9-12.
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Heggerty Phonemic Awareness. Approved by board members as district basic curriculum for grades K-2.
May 28, 2023
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Mandarin Matrix. Approved by the superintendent as district additional curriculum for grades k-5.
May 8, 2023
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Signs of Suicide. Approved by the superintendent as district additional curriculum materials for grades 6-12.
Current Curriculum Adoption Committees
Past Curriculum Adoption Committees
For information about past Curriculum Adoption Committees, please contact TandL@bsd405.org.
Approved Novels
Additional Materials are used in conjunction with the Basic instructional materials of a course. Additional Materials are for use across all sections of a course within the district and are used to support, enrich, individualize, and deliver the major skills content of a course or unit of study to meet the instructional needs of students. These materials, including novels, collections, films, plays, and non-fiction, may be in print or non-print format.
The purpose of novel adoption is to:
- Select new titles that offer multiple perspectives
- Reflect underrepresented voices in our current curriculum
- Provide opportunities for critical thinking and build empathy for others’ lived experiences
The titles below are district-approved for classroom instruction in novel study or book clubs. The Bellevue School District coordinates the development of Recommended Literature List with the assistance of teachers, teacher librarians employed by schools and public libraries, administrators, curriculum developers, students and parents.
- 6th Grade
- 6th Grade AL ELA
- 7th Grade
- 7th Grade AL ELA
- 8th Grade
- 8th Grade AL
- 8th Grade AL ELA
- 9th Grade
- 10th Grade
- 10th Grade AL
- 11th Grade
- 12th Grade
- AP Literature
6th Grade
Baseball in April
Author: Gary Soto
The Mexican American author Gary Soto draws on his own experience of growing up in California’s Central Valley in this finely crafted collection of eleven short stories that reveal big themes in the small events of daily life.
Code Talker
Author: Joseph Bruchac
“Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years.
But now Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the riveting fictional tale of Ned Begay, a sixteen-year-old Navajo boy who becomes a code talker. His grueling journey is eye-opening and inspiring. This deeply affecting novel honors all of those young men, like Ned, who dared to serve, and it honors the culture and language of the Navajo Indians.
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE”
Shelf Life: Stories by the Book
Author: Edited by Gary Paulsen
Newbery Honor author Gary Paulsen asked prominent authors to write an original story; the only restriction was that each story was to include mention of a book. The result is this collection, Shelf Life: Stories by the Book. From Jennifer L. Holm’s story of a girl on Mars trying desperately to return to Earth to Gregory Maguire’s domestic intrigue; from Kathleen Karr’s story of a thief in turn-of-the-century Chicago to M. T. Anderson’s mysterious shipboard adventure; from A. LaFaye’s tale of magical wonderment to Marion Dane Bauer’s story of doing good, this volume provides a full range of reading for every taste. Other authors featured here are Joan Bauer, Ellen Conford, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and Ellen Wittlinger.-SIMON & SHUSTER
The Crossover
Author: Kwame Alexander
The Crossover is a poignant novel in verse that mixes basketball, family, and coming-of-age themes and includes serious issues regarding adult health and a parent’s life-threatening condition. It won the 2015 Newbery Medal and a Coretta Scott King Book Honor, Josh and his twin brother Jordan live for basketball and plan to play at rival colleges. Their mother is tough but fair with the boys, but she tries in vain to persuade their father to make healthier choices. The title refers to a move made on the court, but The Crossover is destined to reach—and touch—readers who never gave basketball or poetry a second thought until now. It’s tough, muscular writing about a tender, unguarded heart. There’s an audiobook version narrated by Corey Allen. -COMMON SENSE MEDIA
6th Grade AL ELA
Hurricane Dancers
Author: Margarita Engle
Lyrical telling of conquest and resistance in the Americas.
Quebrado has been traded from pirate ship to ship in the Caribbean Sea for as long as he can remember. The sailors he toils under call him el quebrado—half islander, half outsider, a broken one. Now the pirate captain Bernardino de Talavera uses Quebrado as a translator to help navigate the worlds and words between his mother’s Taíno Indian language and his father’s Spanish. But when a hurricane sinks the ship and most of its crew, it is Quebrado who escapes to safety. He learns how to live on land again, among people who treat him well. And it is he who must decide the fate of his former captors.
The Alchemist
Author: Paulo Coelho
Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.
Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
The Hobbit
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey ‘there and back again’. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon! The prelude to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies since its publication in 1937, establishing itself as one of the most beloved and influential books of the twentieth century.
The Pearl
Author: John Steinbeck
Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull’s egg, as “perfect as the moon.” With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security….
A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.
7th Grade
Inside Out and Back Again
Author: Thanhha Lai
“Inspired by the author’s childhood experience as a refugee—fleeing Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon and immigrating to Alabama—this coming-of-age debut novel told in verse has been celebrated for its touching child’s-eye view of family and immigration. This middle grade novel is an excellent choice for tween readers in grades 5 to 6, especially during homeschooling. It’s a fun way to keep your child entertained and engaged while not in the classroom.
Hà has only ever known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, and the warmth of her friends close by. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope—toward America.–THANHHA LAI WEBSITE
Newbery Honor Book, and a winner of the National Book Award!”
One Crazy Summer
Author: Rita Williams Garcia
“Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of three sisters who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 to meet the mother.
In One Crazy Summer, eleven-year-old Delphine is like a mother to her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern. She’s had to be, ever since their mother, Cecile, left them seven years ago for a radical new life in California. But when the sisters arrive from Brooklyn to spend the summer with their mother, Cecile is nothing like they imagined. Unexpectedly, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern learn much about their family, their country, and themselves during one truly crazy summer. -AMAZON
This moving, funny novel won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the Coretta Scott King Award and was a National Book Award Finalist. “
Trickster
Author: Edited by Matt Dembicki
“All cultures have tales of the trickster – a crafty creature or being who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. He disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself. In Native American traditions, the trickster takes many forms, from coyote or rabbit to raccoon or raven. The first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of the graphic novel.
In Trickster, 24 Native storytellers were paired with 24 artists, telling cultural tales from across America. Ranging from serious and dramatic to funny and sometimes downright fiendish, these tales bring tricksters back into popular culture. – SCHOLASTIC
2010 Maverick Award winner, 2011 Aesop Prize Winner, 2011 Eisner Award Nominee.”
7th Grade AL ELA
Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
“A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus, the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.–SIGNET CLASSIC PUBLISHING”
Brown Girl Dreaming
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. . Penguin Random House
8th Grade
Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
“A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus, the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.–SIGNET CLASSIC PUBLISHING”
Fahrenheit 451
Author: Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.- SIMON & SCHUSTER
The Outsiders
Author: S. E. Hinton
No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he’s got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends—true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up on “greasers” like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect—until the night someone takes things too far. -SPEAK PUBLISHING
8th Grade AL
Enders Game
Author: Orson Scott Card
Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender’s childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn’t it?- MACMILLIAN
The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. Lois Lowry has written three companion novels to The Giver, including Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son. Newberry Medal Winner- HMH PUBLISHING
8th Grade AL ELA
Around the World in Eighty Days
Author: Jules Verne
“Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (roughly £1.6 million today) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne’s most acclaimed works. The story starts in London on Tuesday, October 1, 1872.”
Julius Caesar
Author: Shakespeare
Tragic play based on history of Caesar’s rule.
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones…”
How do you choose between the life of your friend and the future of your homeland? In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus, “the noblest Roman of them all,” has only his personal integrity to help him choose which is the greatest good and where he must place his allegiance. The wrong choice will result in certain personal and national devastation. With its stirring speeches and vivid images of men at both their noblest and most terrible, the play will leave the reader with a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
My Family and Other Animals
Author: Gerald Durrell
Comedic novel about British expats.
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.
The Odyssey
Author: Homer
Epic poem recounts the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War.
The Odyssey is one of the two major ancient Greek epic poems (the other being the Iliad), attributed to the poet Homer. The poem is commonly dated to between 800 and 600 BC. The poem is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, and concerns the events that befall the Greek hero Odysseus in his long journey back to his native land Ithaca after the fall of Troy.
9th Grade
Enders Game
Author: Orson Scott Card
Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender’s childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn’t it?- MACMILLIAN
Exit West
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Exit West is the fourth novel from the Pakistani-born author and is at once a love story, a fable, and a chilling reflection on what it means to be displaced, unable to return home and unwelcome anywhere else. Hamid encourages to us to put ourselves in the shoes of others, even when they’ve lived lives much harder than anything we’ve endured. We have nothing in common except the most essential things, the things that make us human — as Hamid writes, “We are all migrants through time.” -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Author: Jamie Ford
In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Mythology and You
Author: Edith Hamilton
Classical mythology and its relevance to today’s world
Myths have much to teach us about ourselves, and this comprehensive presentation of Greek mythological tales reaches across the ages. From Apollo to Zeus – including such well-known mythological figures as Pandora, Midas, Pygmalion, Daedalus and Icarus, and many more – these majestic and mysterious stories provide insight not only into the lives of those who told them, but also into the modern character. These myths offer your students a unique context in which to examine their own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses as they learn about the ancient culture from which the stories arose.
Night
Author: Elie Wiesel
Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. It eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.- MACMILLAN PUBLSIHING
Of Mice and Men
Author: John Steinbeck
Laborers in California’s dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations, nor predict the consequences of Lennie’s unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.
Parrot in the Oven
Author: Victor Martinez
Dad believed people were like money. You could be a thousand-dollar person or a hundred-dollar person — even a ten-, five-, or one-dollar person. Below that, everybody was just nickels and dimes. To my dad, we were pennies. Fourteen-year-old Manny Hernandez wants to be more than just a penny. He wants to be a vato firme, the kind of guy people respect. But that′s not easy when your father is abusive, your brother can′t hold a job, and your mother scrubs the house as if she can wash her troubles away. In Manny′s neighborhood, the way to get respect is to be in a gang. But Manny′s not sure that joining a gang is the solution. Because, after all, it′s his life — and he wants to be the one to decide what happens to it.– HARPER COLLINS
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Author: Shelby Van Pelt
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.
Romeo and Juliet
Author: William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet fall in love at a party. But they come from families which hate each other. They are sure they will not be allowed to marry. Nevertheless, helped by Friar Laurence, they marry in secret instead. Unfortunately, before their wedding night Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin in a duel, and in the morning he is forced to leave her. If he ever returns to the city, he will be put to death.– AMAZON
The Hate U Give
Author: Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. After she witnesses her childhood best friend fatally shot by a police officer, Starr confronts the reality of racial injustice in America, grapples with how she can continue to straddle two completely different worlds, and is drawn into activism.-HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHING
The Secret Life of Bees
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina–a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sister, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.- PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
10th Grade
American Born Chinese
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Jin Wang starts at a new school where he’s the only Chinese-American student. When a boy from Taiwan joins his class, Jin doesn’t want to be associated with him. Jin just wants to be an all-American boy, because he’s in love with an all-American girl. Danny is an all-American boy: great at basketball, popular with the girls. But his obnoxious Chinese cousin Chin-Kee’s annual visit is such a disaster that it ruins Danny’s reputation at school, leaving him with no choice but to transfer somewhere he can start all over again. American Born Chinese is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature, the winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album –MACMILLAN PUBLISHING
Born a Crime
Author: Trevor Noah
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.– PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Cry the Beloved Country
Author: Alan Patton
Cry, the Beloved Country, is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.– SCRIBNER PUBLISHING
Everything I Never Told You
Author: Celeste Ng
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.– PENGUIN BOOKS
Macbeth
Author: William Shakespeare
The tragedy of Macbeth, follows the life of Scottish General Macbeth after his victory against invading Viking forces. A chance encounter with three mysterious witches stokes Macbeth’s ambition and leads Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to murder the rightful King, King Duncan. With King Duncan dead Macbeth assumes the role of Scottish king, only to be stricken with paranoia that his newly-attained throne will be usurped by those around him. This tragic play reveals the very real dangers of one man’s bloodthirsty rise to power. ‘Macbeth’ presents man’s cruel ability to corrupt power of unchecked ambitions.” Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” –AMAZON
Othello
Author: William Shakespeare
One of the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Othello tells the story of a Moorish general in command of the armed forces of Venice who earns the enmity of his ensign Iago by passing him over for a promotion. Partly for revenge and partly out of pure evil, Iago plots to convince Othello that Desdemona, his wife, has been unfaithful to him.
Iago succeeds in his evil aims only too well, for the enraged Othello murders Desdemona. When Othello later learns of her innocence, he takes his own life. Bleak and unsparing, this play offers a stunning portrait of an arch-villain and an astute psychological study of the nature of evil.
Persepolis
Author: Marjane Satrapi
In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.–PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Alchemist
Author: Paulo Coelho
Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.
Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
The novel details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world. –LITTLE BROWN PUBLISHING
The House on Mango Street
Author: Sandra Cisneros
Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers. –VINTAGE PUBLISHING
Unaccustomed Earth
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
These eight stories by beloved and bestselling author Jhumpa Lahiri take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life. Here they enter the worlds of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers., Unaccustomed Earth exquisitely renders the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. VINTAGE PUBLISHING
Welcome to the Monkey House
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Collection of short stories including Harrison Bergeron.
This long-awaited volume brings together the finest of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.”s, shorter works. Sex, machines, pills, men, women, society, good, evil, outer space, inner space, time past, present and future, are among the subjects infused with the fascinating, fantastic and formidable Vonnegut magic. It is a funny, sad, explosive, wildly gyrating gathering, a mind-bobbling grab-bag in which every selection is a winner. Better than any other book, it displays the enormous range of the author’s extraordinary creative vision.
10th Grade AL
The Refugees
Author: Viet Than Nguyen
The Refugees is the remarkable debut collection of short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Sympathizer. In these powerful stories, written over a period of twenty years and set in both Vietnam and America, Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth.
With the same incisiveness as in The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to the hopes and expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, and the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, and family that accompany relocation. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of migration.
11th Grade
A Hero of Our Time
Author: Mikhail Lermentov
The novel’s narrative is the story of Pechorin a young officer in the army whose story is told in five non-chronological parts. Drawing upon his own experiences in the military, Lermontov creates a fascinating anti-hero in Pechorin, a man who is intelligent, calculating, manipulative, emotionally unavailable, arrogant, cynical, nihilistic, yet also sensitive. The principal accomplishment of “A Hero of Our Time” is the introduction of the Byronic anti-hero to Russian literature, a departure from the traditional idealized protagonist of the Romantic period which signifies a pivotal move towards the realism of the Modernist literary movement. -SCHULER BOOKS
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Author: Sherman Alexie
Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Author: Benjamin Alire Saenz
Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be. SIMONE AND SCHUSTER
Between the World and Me
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to offer a powerful new framework for understanding in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Crying in H-Mart
Author: Michelle Zauner
With humor and heart, Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
Death of a Salesman
Author: Arthur Miller
In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room.- PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Enriques Journey
Author: Sonia Nazario
Enrique’s Journey recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she is forced to leave her starving family to find work in the United States. Braving unimaginable peril, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops. But he pushes forward, relying on his wit, courage, hope, and the kindness of strangers. As Isabel Allende writes: “This is a twenty-first-century Odyssey. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Fences
Author: August Wilson
Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less. This is a modern classic, a book that deals with the impossibly difficult themes of race in America, set during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
House of the Spirits
Author: Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world’s most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future. –SIMON AND SCHUSTER
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author: Maya Angelou
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the locals. At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. –PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Into the Wild
Author: Jon Krakaur
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild. -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Kitchen
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart. GROVE ATLANTIC PUBLISHING
Little and Lion
Author: Brandy Colbert
When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn’t sure if she’ll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support. Recommended for literature circles.
Mrs. Packard
Author: Emily Mann
This play tells the tale of Woman Silenced for Her Beliefs In 1861, Elizabeth Packard was forcibly removed from her home and committed to an insane asylum because she disagreed with her Calvinist husband’s religious beliefs.– NPR
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Author: Frederick Douglass
Former slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and eloquent orator whose speeches fired the abolitionist cause, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) led an astounding life. Physical abuse, deprivation and tragedy plagued his early years, yet through sheer force of character he was able to overcome these obstacles to become a leading spokesman for his people. -DOVER PUBLICATIONS
Raisin in the Sun
Author: Lorraine Hansberry
Set on Chicago’s South Side, the plot revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family: son Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister Beneatha, his son Travis and matriarch Lena, called Mama. When her deceased husband’s insurance money comes through, Mama dreams of moving to a new home and a better neighborhood in Chicago. Walter Lee, a chauffeur, has other plans, however: buying a liquor store and being his own man. Beneatha dreams of medical school.–VINTAGE PRESS
Someone Knows my Name
Author: Lawrence Hill
Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no reader will ever forget. NORTON PUBLISHING
Stay True
Author: Hua Hsu
Stay True is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 2022 memoir by Hua Hsu that depicts his unlikely relationship with a college friend named Ken, a friendship that was unexpectedly and tragically cut short when Ken was killed in a carjacking in 1998.
Stories for Boys
Author: Gregory Martin
In this memoir of fathers and sons, Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with a man who has just survived a suicide attempt and who now must begin his life as a gay man. Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a way to build a new relationship with one another after years of suppression and denial are given air and light. HAWTHORNE BOOKS
The Crucible
Author: Arthur Miller
Based on historical people and real events, Miller’s drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town’s most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminates the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Great Gatsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, follows Jay Gatsby, a man who orders his life around one desire: to be reunited with Daisy Buchanan, the love he lost five years earlier. Gatsby’s quest leads him from poverty to wealth, into the arms of his beloved, and eventually to his demise. –SCRIBNER
The Laramie Project
Author: Moises Kaufman
On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard’s death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of the town, the event was deeply personal. In the aftermath, Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews with its citizens. From the transcripts, the playwrights constructed an extraordinary chronicle of life in the town after the murder. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Other Wes Moore
Author: Wes Moore
Two kids named Wes Moore were born blocks apart within a year of each other. Both grew up fatherless in similar Baltimore neighborhoods and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on street corners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police. How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader, while the other ended up a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer this profound question. In alternating narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world. -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Refugees
Author: Viet Than Nguyen
The Refugees is the remarkable debut collection of short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Sympathizer. In these powerful stories, written over a period of twenty years and set in both Vietnam and America, Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth.
With the same incisiveness as in The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to the hopes and expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, and the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, and family that accompany relocation. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of migration.
The Scarlet Letter
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
The story begins in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. The scarlet letter “A” is to be a symbol of her sin for all to see. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. SIMON AND SCHUSTER
The Stranger (IB Only)
Author: Albert Camus
A shipping clerk living in French Algiers in the 1940s, Meursault is a young, detached but ordinary man. The novel begins with Meursault receiving a telegram informing him of his mother’s death. He attends the funeral, but surprises other attendees with his unusual calm and (once again) detachment.– PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Things They Carried
Author: Tim O'Brien
Tim O’Brien’s powerful and innovative novel about the experiences of foot soldiers during and after the Vietnam War. Drawing largely on his own experiences during the war, the author creates a fictional protagonist who shares the author’s own name, and allows this fictional “Tim O’Brien” to relate disturbing war stories as he creates an indictment against the wastefulness of war. -HMH PUBLISHING
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God focuses on the experiences of Janie Crawford, a beautiful and determined fair-skinned black woman living in the American South. The novel begins when Janie returns to Eatonville, Florida after having left for a significant amount of time. She is met by the judgmental gossiping of Eatonville’s townspeople, whose conversations focus on the fact that Janie had left town with a young man named Tea Cake. Amidst their gossiping, Janie’s friend Pheoby Watson stands up for Janie and goes to greet her friend. Janie tells Pheoby her life story, including what happened in the time since she initially left Eatonville, which is the story of the rest of the novel. LITCHARTS.COM
There There
Author: Tommy Orange
Tommy Orange’s wondrous and shattering bestselling novel follows twelve characters from Native communities. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.
Woman Warrior
Author: Maxine Hong Kingston
As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own. -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
12th Grade
1984
Author: George Orwell
Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thought crimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching… – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
All the Pretty Horses
Author: Cormac McCarthy
John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, is cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Bless Me Ultima
Author: Rudolfo Anaya
Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past-a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world…and will nurture the birth of his soul. – GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING
Bone Black
Author: Bell Hooks
In this memoir of perceptions and ideas, renowned author bell hooks presents a stirringly intimate account of growing up in the South. Stitching together the gossamer threads of her girlhood memories, hooks shows us one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming a writer. AMAZON
Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. -HARPER COLLINS
Candide
Author: Voltaire
Candide is Voltaire’s fast-paced novella of struggle and adventure that used satire as a form of social critique. Candide enlists the help of his tutor, Dr. Pangloss, to help him reunite with his estranged lover, Lady Cunegonde. But the journey welcomes many unexpected challenges, and overcoming or outwitting the dangers of the world shall be their greatest task. –SIMON & SHUSTE
Crime and Punishment
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
One of the world’s greatest novels, Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder and its consequences—an unparalleled tale of suspense set in the midst of nineteenth-century Russia’s troubled transition to the modern age.– Signet Classics
Emma
Author: Jane Austin
The main character, Emma Woodhouse, is described in the opening paragraph as “handsome, clever, and rich” but is also rather spoiled. Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet, only to discover that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart.
Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelley
Victor Frankenstein, dedicated to the study of natural philosophy, gives life to a creature with monstrous human features. However, the experiment does not go as Frankenstein had imagined and, refusing his own creation, the doctor leaves him free and lonely wandering around the world. – SIMON AND SHUSTER
Gulliver’s Travels
Author: Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the “travellers’ tales” literary subgenre. It is Swift’s best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.
Hamlet
Author: William Shakespeare
The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet’s uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. Meanwhile, uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. – SHAKESPEARE.ORG
Hard Times
Author: Charles Dickens
Superintendent Mr. Gradgrind opens the novel at his school in Coketown stating, “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts”, and interrogates one of his pupils, Cecilia (nicknamed Sissy), whose father works at a circus. Because her father works with horses, Gradgrind demands the definition of a horse. When she is scolded for her inability to factually define a horse, her classmate Bitzer gives a zoological profile, and Sissy is censured for suggesting that she would carpet a floor with pictures of flowers or horses.
Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
This novel is about Charles Marlow’s experience as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa. The river is “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”. In the course of his travel in central Africa, Marlow becomes obsessed with Mr. Kurtz. The story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel of European imperialism. -PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Invisible Man
Author: Ralph Ellison
This book won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood”, and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre follows the emotions and experiences of its title character, including her growth to adulthood, and her love for Mr. Rochester, the Byronic master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel many consider ahead of its time given the individualistic character of Jane and the novel’s exploration of classism, sexuality, religion, and proto-feminism. – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
Four Chinese women, drawn together by the shadow of their past, meet in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and to “say” stories to each other. Nearly 40 years later, one of the women has died, and her daughter arrives to take her place. However, the daughter never expected to learn of her mother’s secret lifelong wish – and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation creates among the women an urgent need to remember the past. What is lost between generations and among friends – and what is salvaged – resonates throughout this novel of friendship among women and the relations between mothers and daughters.
Life of Pi
Author: Martel
After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years.
Mrs. Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
On a June morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party and remembering her past. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax.
My Year of Meats
Author: Ruth Ozeki
When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she uncovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. Soon she will also cross paths with Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife struggling to escape her overbearing husband. – RUTH OZEKI AUTHOR WEBSITE
Native Speaker
Author: Chang-Rae Lee
Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets. – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
No-No Boy
Author: John Okada
"After World War II, Ichiro Yamada, a Japanese American male and former student at the University of Washington, returns home in 1946 to a Japanese enclave in Seattle, Washington. He had spent two years in an American internment camp for Japanese Americans and two years in federal prison for refusing to fight for the U.S. in World War II. Now home, Ichiro struggles with his parents for embracing American customs and values, and he struggles to maintain a relationship with his brother, Taro. Also, Ichiro faces ostracism from the Japanese American community for refusing to join the U.S. military and fight Japan when many in his community did. Despite his struggles with his family and some members of the community, Ichiro maintains a friendship with Kenji, a Japanese American who fought for the U.S. and badly injured one of his legs. Kenji introduces Ichiro to Emi whose husband re-enlisted and remained in Germany after the war. Ichiro even manages to meet Mr. Carrick who interviews him for a draftsman position.
Perceived as disloyal to the U.S. but not fully Japanese, Ichiro struggles to find his path. Through Ichiro's story, Okada examines what it means to be American in a post-war society whose non-white communities are struggling to find their places. "
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Author: Ken Kesey
Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. –PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austin
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel by Jane Austen that follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Author: Tom Stoppard
Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eve view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. -GROVE ATLANTIC PUBLISHING
Siddhartha
Author: Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha is born and raised in ancient India by Brahmins, learning spiritual practices of meditation and thought. He excels at everything. He is accompanied through childhood by his friend Govinda, who loves Siddhartha dearly, as does everyone else. But Siddhartha is ill at ease. He does not think he can learn anything more from the Brahmin teaching and so decides to begin a pilgrimage with the samanas, a group of wandering ascetics. His father very reluctantly lets him go but Govinda follows. – LIT CHARTS
The Bluest Eye
Author: Toni Morrison
Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Color Purple
Author: Alice Walker
A feminist work about an abused and uneducated African American woman’s struggle for empowerment. The Color Purple documents the traumas and gradual triumph of Celie, an African American teenager raised in rural isolation in Georgia, as she comes to resist the paralyzing self-concept forced on her by others. Celie narrates her life through painfully honest letters to God.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression. – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde
This lighthearted play tells the farcical tale of Jack Worthing and Algernon Montcrieff—two men who falsely claim to be named Ernest when they fall in love with two women whose affections are illogically but irrevocably tied to the name. –HARPER COLLINGS
Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe
It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s. Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. – PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Bronte
Famous, all-encompassing, passionate, but ultimately doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and the people around them.
AP Literature
The Leavers
Author: Lisa Ko
One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, 11-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy”. It’s the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he’s loved has been taken away – and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.