Back in Eight Grade, Ms. Locey, my Honors English teacher gave the class a reading list. I just found it buried in my boxes, that have moved with me some 14 times in the past 12 years. Since my life is becoming far more digitized I spent a few minutes typing up the lists, yes, I thought about scanning it BUT I wanted to take the opportunity that typing the list gave me to walk through some of those memories from my time in Washington state and with the group of folks I was going to school with there.
Below is a list for those avid 8th graders, some of these books are really worth the read even if its not for long term academic interests (i.e. high school AP English course or prospective Universities you might be considering)*:
Potok – My Name is Asher Lev
Kingsolver – The Bean Trees
Gains – The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Parks – The Learning Tree
Wiesel – Night
McCullers – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Tan – The Joy Luck Club
Buck – The Good Earth
Griffin – Black Like Me
Dickens – Tale of Two cities
Rostand – Cyrano de Bergerac
Knowles – A Sperate Peace
Borland – When the Legends Die
Lawrence – Inherit the Wind
Bronte – Jane Eyre
Wilder – Our Town
Anaya – Bless Me, Ultima
Rand – Anthem
Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
Cisneros – The House on Mango Street
Read, Enjoy, tell me what you think. Also, I have more, I have several more lists actually. I will share them as my filler blog posts because God knows how many times I make the intention to get regular with this and find myself just not committed after a period of time.
*Disclaimer is needed- some of these books are banned (which is stupid). Some of these books have adult content and otherwise have issues of an adult nature or deals with views that are strongly contradictory to Islamic religious beliefs. I strongly believe that its through facing contradiction that one develops a stronger attachment through faith, however, without proper engagement by parents with the kid reading these books it won’t help anyone. Simply reading the book doesn’t really mean much, reading something is the easy part; talking about the book is the next level and the best level is to be able to critically analyze the piece of literature and possibly compare and contrast with real events and other books.
This is the list for 12th grade, 11th grade, for 10th grade.
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