Reading level 9-12
Book titles, grade level, difficulty level, and short description are included to help you decide as to where you should start. Books grade level ratings are as follows; 2-5, 3 -5, 4-7, 5-7, 6-8, 6-12, 7-12, 8-12, 9-12. There is also a reading difficulty level rating system G through Z+ where G is the easiest and Z+ is the most difficult. There is also N/A (not available) which means we could not find a rating.
| Hamlet | 9-12 | M | Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother’s widow. | |
| A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court | 9-12 | N/A | A Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur’s knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. | |
| A Doll’s House | 9-12 | N/A | The play is significant for the way it deals with the fate of a married woman, who at the time in Norway lacked reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment in a male-dominated world. | |
| A Farewell to Arms | 9-12 | N/A | The unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. | |
| A Man Called Ove | 9-12 | N/A | “Ove is a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” However, behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. | |
| A Prayer for Owen Meany | 9-12 | N/A | At a Little League game in New Hampshire, one boy hits a foul ball that kills his best friend’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. | |
| A Study in Scarlet | 9-12 | N/A | The book’s title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story’s murder investigation as his “study in scarlet”: “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.” | |
| A Tale Of Two Cities | 9-12 | N/A | The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to life in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met; | |
| A Walk in the Woods | 9-12 | N/A | The book is written in a humorous style, interspersed with more serious discussions of matters relating to the trail’s history, and the surrounding sociology, ecology, trees, plants, animals and people. | |
| And Then There Were None | 9-12 | N/A | It is the world’s best-selling mystery novel. On a hot August day in the late 1930s, eight people arrive on a small, isolated island off the Devon coast of England. Each has an invitation tailored to his or her personal circumstances, such as an offer of employment or an unexpected late summer holiday. | |
| Angela’s Ashes | 9-12 | N/A | An autobiographic story of Frank (Francis) McCourt is the oldest son of Malachy McCourt and Angela Sheehan McCourt. Both of his parents immigrated from Ireland and married in a shotgun wedding over Angela’s pregnancy with Frankie. Angela is originally from Limerick, Ireland, and is fond of music, singing, and dancing. | |
| Cannery Row | 9-12 | N/A | It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardinecanneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: | |
| Complete Works of Oscar Wilde | 9-12 | N/A | A unique one-volume anthology which includes all of Wilde’s stories, plays, and poems. It also features a large portion of his essays and letters and an introduction by Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland. | |
| Cry, the Beloved Country | 9-12 | N/A | This exploration of post-colonial South Africa explores racism, classism, wealth, segregation, and the abandonment of positive religious teachings, among many other themes. | |
| David Copperfield | 9-12 | N/A | The novel features the character David Copperfield, and is written in the first person, as a description of his life until middle age, with his own adventures and the web of friends and enemies he meets along his way. Copperfield finds career success as an author, and is a person of deep emotions. | |
| Death with Interruptions | 9-12 | N/A | Living longer is an almost universal desire, and this book puts that desire on trial. | |
| Decline and Fall | 9-12 | N/A | Modest and unassuming theology student Paul Pennyfeather falls victim to the drunken antics of the Bollinger Club and is subsequently expelled from Oxford for running through the grounds of Scone College without his trousers. Having thereby defaulted on the conditions of his inheritance, he is forced to take a job teaching at an obscure public school in Wales. | |
| Einstein’s Dreams | 9-12 | N/A | The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring one dream about time that Einstein had during this period. | |
| Faceless Killers | 9-12 | N/A | Inside an almost isolated Skåne farmhouse in Lunnarp, an old man, Johannes Lövgren, is tortured to death and his wife Maria savagely beaten and left for dead with a noose around her neck. Inspector Kurt Wallander, a forty-two-year-old Ystad police detective, is put on the case with his team | |
| Girls Like Us | 9-12 | N/A | This novel examines the careers of singer-songwriters Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, whose success reflected, enervated and shaped the feminist movement that grew up with them. | |
| Gone with the Wind | 9-12 | N/A | It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following General Sherman’s destructive “March to the Sea”. This historical novel features a coming-of-age story. | |
| Half of a Yellow Sun | 9-12 | N/A | Adichie illustrates a seminal moment in African history through “ordinary” people suffering through life in an unrelenting war. She compassionately presents poverty and other hardships. | |
| I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You | 9-12 | N/A | Editors grouped nearly 200 poems into pairs to demonstrate the different ways in which male and female poets see the same topics. How women see men, how boys see girls, and how we all see the world — often in very different ways, but suprisingly, wonderfully, sometimes very much the same. | |
| Identical | 9-12 | N/A | Raeanne and Kaeleigh are identical twins including dimples and were born into a successful family. daughters of a district-court judge father and mom is a politician. Each twin has there own differences and this is the story. | |
| Jane Eyre | 9-12 | N/A | The novel that the focuses on Jane’s moral and spiritual development is told through an intimate, first-person narrative, where actions and events are colored by a psychological intensity. The book contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core. | |
| Jaws | 9-12 | N/A | A man-eating shark terrorizes a beach town, and it’s up to Chief Brody, scientist Matt Hooper, and the gruff fisherman Quint to do something about it. | |
| Jurassic Park | 9-12 | N/A | An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. | |
| Murder on the Orient Express | 9-12 | N/A | After taking the Taurus Express from Aleppo in Syria to Istanbul, private detective Hercule Poirotarrives at the Tokatlian Hotel. There he receives a telegram prompting him to return to London. He instructs the concierge to book a first-class compartment on the Simplon-Orient Express, leaving that night. | |
| My Family and Other Animals | 9-12 | N/A | This is an autobiographical work by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It tells of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island. | |
| My Name Is Asher Lev | 9-12 | N/A | Asher Lev is a Hasidic Jewish boy in New York City. Asher is a loner and has artistic inclinations. His art, however, causes conflicts with his family and other members of his community. The book follows Asher’s maturity as both an artist and a Jew. | |
| Oliver Twist | 9-12 | N/A | The story centres on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Twist travels to London, where he meets “The Artful Dodger”, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin. | |
| One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | 9-12 | N/A | Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system. He was accused of becoming a spy after being captured briefly by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II. He is innocent, but is sentenced to ten years in a forced labor camp. | |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | 9-12 | N/A | The story of the rise, fall, birth, and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. This story is inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul. | |
| Orphan #8 | 9-12 | N/A | One Holocaust victim’s nightmare into an unlikely chance for revenge … or a rarer opportunity for grace. | |
| Orphan Train | 9-12 | N/A | Based on the emotional journey of two women who, on the outside, appear to have nothing in common, Orphan Train is a story of second chances. | |
| Poetry 180 | 9-12 | N/A | A dazzling new anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. | |
| Readings for Writers | 9-12 | N/A | This is a book for those who want to be writers. | |
| Rebecca | 9-12 | N/A | Rebecca, who died in a boating accident about a year before Maxim and the second Mrs. de Winter met. Loneliness, of a wealthy widower marring a year later. Mrs. Danvers continually attempts to undermine the new Mrs. de Winter psychologically, subtly suggesting to her that she will never attain the beauty and charm her predecessor possessed. | |
| Room | 9-12 | N/A | Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating—a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child. | |
| Saturday | 9-12 | N/A | Character Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the evening. As he goes about his day, he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it; however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man. | |
| Sense and Sensibility | 9-12 | N/A | Edward and Elinor marry, and later Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, having gradually come to love him. The two couples live as neighbors, with both sisters and husbands in harmony with each other. Willoughby considers Marianne as his ideal but the narrator tells the reader not to suppose that he was never happy. | |
| Siddhartha | 9-12 | N/A | The story of Siddhartha and the Buddha is a reminder to let go of our egos and embrace true peace. Nothing else will satisfy us. | |
| Silent Spring | 9-12 | N/A | An environmental science book by Rachel Carson which brought environmental concerns to the American public. Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and inspired an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. | |
| Smoke and Mirrors | 9-12 | N/A | This is a collection of short stories and poems by Neil Gaiman. Many of the stories in this book are reprints from other sources, such as magazines, anthologies, and collections (including ten stories and poems from Gaiman’s earlier small press miscellany Angels and Visitations). | |
| Sound and Sense | 9-12 | N/A | The poet states writing quality poetry requires learning and practice. Poets do not learn to rhyme and write, they know how to match the sound of their words to content. After stating his theory, he displays the mastery of his poetry by giving examples. | |
| Stiff | 9-12 | N/A | In the book, Roach gives firsthand accounts of cadavers, a history of the use of cadavers, and an exploration of the surrounding ethical/moral issues. She places each chapter’s content into a historical context by discussing the history of the method of using a cadaver she is about to witness. | |
| Thank You | 9-12 | N/A | Roger, a young African-American boy, and Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, an elderly African-America woman. Luella interrogates Roger and learns that he has no one at home taking care of him, not even to wash his face. | |
| The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights | 9-12 | N/A | This is unfinished story by Steinbeck but succeeds in the objective. It is a magical piece of literature you should read. | |
| The Alchemist | 9-12 | N/A | Paulo Coelho Santiago, a shepherd boy, longs for riches, only to find riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. His 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 Autobiography of Malcolm X | 9-12 | N/A | A collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination. The Autobiography is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X’s philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. | |
| The Bees | 9-12 | N/A | Modern, feminist twists find protagonist Flora 717 questioning tradition and subsequently at odds with the queen bee. With a pinch of bee biology, a dash of environmental and natural intricacies, and boundless lessons in love | |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | 9-12 | N/A | The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. It begins just before the Hundred Days period (when Napoleon returned to power after his exile). | |
| The Crucible | 9-12 | N/A | A dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692-1693. | |
| The Devil in the White City | 9-12 | N/A | he book is based on real characters and events. It tells the story of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago from the viewpoint of the designers, including Daniel Burnham, and also tells the story of H. H. Holmes, a criminal figure in that same time. | |
| The Fellowship of the Ring | 9-12 | N/A | The first chapter in the book begins in a light vein, following the tone of The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins celebrates his 111th (or eleventy-first, as it is called in Hobbiton) birthday on the same day, 22 September, that his younger cousin and adopted heir Frodo Bagginscelebrates his coming of age at thirty-three. | |
| The Glass Castle | 9-12 | N/A | The book recounts the unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing Walls and her siblings had at the hands of their deeply dysfunctional parents. The title refers to her father’s long held intention of building his dream house, a glass castle. | |
| The God of Small Things | 9-12 | N/A | Seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their lives in India shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional. | |
| The Grapes of Wrath | 9-12 | N/A | This epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. | |
| The Great Gatsby | 9-12 | N/A | The story follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. | |
| The Handmaid’s Tale | 9-12 | N/A | Atwood creates a society in which misogyny is king and women have no power. This disturbing world and story eerily reflect our world today. | |
| The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy | 9-12 | N/A | Most books find their identity in delving into suffering and raw human emotion. Not this book. Because sometimes you need to laugh at the ridiculousness of life, the universe, and everything. | |
| The Host | 9-12 | N/A | The book is about Earth, in a post apocalyptic time, being invaded by a parasitic alien race, known as “Souls”, and follows one Soul’s predicament when the consciousness of her human host refuses to co-operate with the takeover of her body. | |
| The Hot Zone | 9-12 | N/A | 1995 nonfiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebolaviruses and marburgviruses. Along with describing the history of the diseases caused by these two Central African diseases, Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease, Preston described a 1989 incident in which a relative of Ebola virus, named Reston virus, was discovered at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia… | |
| The Iliad | 9-12 | N/A | Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles’ imminent death and the fall of Troy. | |
| The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | 9-12 | N/A | The book is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, known as HeLa, that came from Lacks’s cervical cancer cells in 1951. The book is notable for its science writing and dealing with ethical issues of race and class in medical research. | |
| The Kite Runner | 9-12 | N/A | Amir is a young Afghani from a well-to-do Kabul family; his best friend Hassan is the son of a family servant. Together the two boys form a bond of friendship that breaks tragically on one fateful day. Years later, Amir is called back to Kabul to right his wrongs. | |
| The Light Between Oceans | 9-12 | N/A | A beautifully written novel sweeps us into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss. | |
| The Little Prince & Letter to a Hostage | 9-12 | N/A | After the outbreak of the Second World War, Saint-Exupéry escaped to North America. Despite personal upheavals and failing health, he produced almost half of the writings for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth. | |
| The Lord of the Rings (Series) | 9-12 | N/A | The title of the novel refers to the story’s main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron,[note 1]who had in an earlier age created the One Ring to rule the other Rings of Power as the ultimate weapon in his campaign to conquer and rule all of Middle-earth. | |
| The Maltese Falcon | 9-12 | N/A | ‘Sam’ Spade is a private detective in San Francisco, in partnership with Miles Archer. The beautiful “Miss Wonderly” hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who has run off with her sister. Archer takes the first stint but is found shot dead that night. Thursby is also killed later and Spade is a suspect. | |
| The Mists of Avalon | 9-12 | N/A | Morgaine, priestess of Avalon, who is King Arthur’s half-sister. Their mother, Igraine, is married to Uther Pendragon after Morgaine’s biological father, Gorlois, is killed in battle. Rumors spread in Avalon that before Igraine knew her husband Gorlois was killed, Uther consulted with Merlin who used his magic to transform the king into the likeness of Gorlois and thus gain access to Igraine at Tintagel. | |
| The Odyssey | 9-12 | N/A | The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myths), king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres or Proci, who compete for Penelope’s hand in marriage. | |
| The Old Man and the Sea | 9-12 | N/A | The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as “salao”, the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him and has been told instead to fish with successful fishermen. | |
| The Phantom of the Opera | 9-12 | N/A | The setting of The Phantom of the Opera came from an actual opera house that Gaston Leroux had heard the rumors about from the time the opera house was finished. The details about the Palais Garnier and the rumors surrounding it are ones that are closely linked in Leroux’s writing. | |
| The Poisonwood Bible | 9-12 | N/A | The Price family packs up their belongings for their flight to the Congo, where they are going to spend a year as the family of a missionary. However, shortly before leaving, they are informed that they are limited to 44 pounds of luggage per person. | |
| The Red Badge of Courage | 9-12 | N/A | Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a “red badge of courage,” to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standard-bearer, who carries a flag. | |
| The Remains of the Day | 9-12 | N/A | In 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealized love between the butler and his housekeeper. | |
| The Return of the King | 9-12 | N/A | Gandalf and Pippin arrive at Minas Tirith in the kingdom of Gondor, and there Pippin gets to view for the first time the mighty city built on seven levels and with the Tower of Ecthelion high above the Pelennor Fields. | |
| The Screwtape Letters | 9-12 | N/A | In the thirty-one letters which constitute the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining God’s words and of promoting abandonment of God in “the Patient”, interspersed with observations on human nature and on the Bible. | |
| The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ | 9-12 | N/A | The story is set in 1981 and 1982, and in the background it refers to some of the historic world events of the time, such as the Falklands War and the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana as well as the birth of Prince William. Mole is also a fierce critic of prime minister Margaret Thatcher, listing her as one of his worst enemies. | |
| The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings | 9-12 | N/A | Is a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator, who insists he is sane but is suffering from a disease which causes “over-acuteness of the senses”. The narrator insists that his careful precision in committing the murder proves that he cannot possibly be insane. | |
| The Three Musketeers | 9-12 | N/A | Set in 1625–1628, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d’Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard. Although d’Artagnan is not able to join this elite corps immediately, he befriends the three most formidable musketeers of the age—Athos, Porthos and Aramis—and gets involved in affairs of the state and court. | |
| The Turn of the Screw | 9-12 | N/A | A friend, read a manuscript written by a former governess whom Douglas claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the deaths of their parents. He lives mainly in London but also has a country house, Bly. He is uninterested in raising the children. | |
| The Two Towers | 9-12 | N/A | As Aragorn searches for Frodo, he suddenly hears Boromir’s horn. Aragorn finds Boromir mortally wounded by arrows, sitting with his back against a great tree, surrounded by many slain orcs. Before Boromir dies, Aragorn learns that Saruman’s Uruk-hai soldiers have kidnapped some of the hobbits, in spite of his efforts to defend them; that Frodo had vanished after Boromir had attempted to take the Ring from him; and that he truly regretted his actions. | |
| The Perks of Being a Wallflower | 9-12 | N/A | Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. | |
| Things Fall Apart | 9-12 | N/A | Capturing life in both pre-colonial and colonial Africa, Achebe presents the modern African experience from within, displaying all the heartache and tragedy that shaped Africa into what it is today. | |
| This Changes Everything | 9-12 | N/A | Naomi Klein explores the issue of climate change from a political perspective because it’s about capitalism and the lack of political will to implement change. We have the technology to reduce carbon emissions but there is no one to lead. | |
| Treasure Island | 9-12 | N/A | A drunken sea captain who has a stroke. The captain tells a young Jim he has a treasure map and the treasure is in danger of being discovered. Jim’s finds the map takes to the judge and squire together they go on the adventure. | |
| Tuesdays with Morrie | 9-12 | N/A | A magical chronicle of the time spent together between a man and his college professor from nearly 20 years ago. | |
| Unbroken | 9-12 | N/A | Is a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic track star who survived a plane crash in the Pacific theater, spent 47 days drifting on a raft, and then survived more than two and a half years as a prisoner of war in three brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. | |
| Vanity Fair | 9-12 | N/A | Follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. | |
| Watership Down | 9-12 | N/A | Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a prophet, receives a frightening vision of his warren’s imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own, accompanied by nine other rabbits who choose to go with them. The first challenge in the small band’s search for a new home comes immediately, as they are forced to elude the Owsla, the warren’s military caste. | |
| Sold | 9-12 | T | Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl living with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor while a Himalayan monsoon wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. She is introduced to a stranger who take her to India to the House of Happiness and she realizes she has been sold into prostitution. | |
| Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie | 9-12 | Y | The novel follows Scott Hudson’s journey as he learns what to do and what not to do in high school as well as balancing activities, homework, friendships, and relationships with girls. | |
| The Art of Racing in the Rain | 9-12 | Y | Despite the ever-present theme of love and loss, this book is fantastically funny and uplifting. Though there won’t be a dry eye in the classroom, the lessons from this family pet and his fast car will have students thinking about life and their relationships in a much more profound way | |
| Animal Farm | 9-12 | Z | 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. | |
| Animal Farm | 9-12 | Z | Animal Farm is a short novel by George Orwell. It was written during World War II and published in 1945. It is about a group of farm animals who rebel against their farmer. They hope to create a place where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. In the end, however, they are betrayed and the farm ends up as bad it was before. It is one of the most famous allegories about political events. It is based on Joseph Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution. | |
| Brave New World | 9-12 | Z | Largely set in a futuristic World State of genetically modifiedcitizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a utopian societythat goes challenged only by a single outsider. | |
| Code Name Verity | 9-12 | Z | It’s 1943. Two women are aboard a British spy plane that crashes in Nazi-occupied France. In order to survive, Verity has to leave her friend Maddie behind in the crash. | |
| Monster | 9-12 | Z | The novel begins with 16-year-old Steve Harmon writing in his diary awaiting for his trial for murder. Musing on his short time in prison so far, he decides to record this upcoming experience in the form of a movie screenplay. Kathy O’Brien, Steve’s lawyer, informs him on what will happen during the trial. | |
| Night | 9-12 | Z | Elie Wiesel writes about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, at the height of the Holocaust toward the end of the Second World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity | |
| Of Mice and Men | 9-12 | Z | Tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranchworkers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. | |
| Speak | 9-12 | Z | Melinda is friendless, outcast because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. | |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | 9-12 | Z | Mark Twain The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. | |
| A Clockwork Orange | 9-12 | Z+ | This story takes place in a futuristic city governed by a repressive, totalitarian super-State. In this society, ordinary citizens have fallen into a passive stupor of complacency, blind to the insidious growth of a rampant, violent youth culture. | |
| All Quiet on the Western Front | 9-12 | Z+ | These young men become enthusiastic soldiers during WWI, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. | |
| Catcher in the Rye | 9-12 | Z+ | A classic novel originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation. The novel also deals with complex issues of innocence, identity, belonging, loss, and connection. It has been translated into almost all of the world’s major languages. | |
| Chesapeake | 9-12 | Z+ | This work depicts a number of characters over a long time period. Each chapter begins with a voyage which provides the foundation for the chapter plot. It starts in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring, moves through English settlers throughout the 17 century, slavery and tobacco growing, pirate attacks, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Emancipation… | |
| Fahrenheit 451 | 9-12 | Z+ | Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. | |
| Lord of the Flies | 9-12 | Z+ | The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. | |
| Paper Towns | 9-12 | Z+ | The novel is about the coming-of-age of the protagonist, Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and his search for Margo Roth Spiegelman, his neighbor and childhood sweetheart. | |
| Pride and Prejudice | 9-12 | Z+ | The characater Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the writing lies in the depiction of manners, education, marriage, and money during the British Regency period. | |
| The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian | 9-12 | Z+ | The book follows Junior, a fourteen-year-old boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation for a school year. The story is intermittent diary style, moving from the start of the school year to the beginning of summer. By introducing Junior’s birth defects, including the fact that he was born with hydrocephalus and therefore is small for his age and suffers from seizures, poor eyesight, stuttering, and a lisp. | |
| The Book Thief | 9-12 | Z+ | Books feed the soul—that’s this story’s message. And if that’s not compelling enough, the story is narrated by Death, who brings his own unique insights of the world during World War II. | |
| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | 9-12 | Z+ | Christopher, a fifteen-year-old boy with an autism spectrum condition, lives with his father, who has told him that his mother, Judy, died two years ago. The boy discovers the dead body of the neighbour’s dog, Wellington, speared by a garden fork. Mrs Shears, the dog’s owner, calls the police, and Christopher comes under suspicion. | |
| The Princess Bride | 9-12 | Z+ | What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the most handsome prince of all time and he turns out to be … | |
| The Things They Carried | 9-12 | Z+ | This classic is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. | |
| The Things They Carried | 9-12 | Z+ | Is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O’Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. | |
| Life of Pi | 10-12 | N/A | Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. This is all brought to a boiling point when he is suddenly the lone survivor of a sinking cruise ship. | |
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | 10-12 | Z | This memoir captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. | |
| The Help | 10-12 | Z | Skeeter, a 22-year-old college graduate; Aibileen, a black maid who is raising her 17th white child; and her best friend Minny, a sassy cook who just lost another job, ban together to write a tell-all book about the work of a black maid. | |
| The Elements of Style | 11-12 | N/A | A prescriptive American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was composed by William Strunk Jr., in 1918, and published by Harcourt, in 1920, comprising eight “elementary rules of usage”, ten “elementary principles of composition”, “a few matters of form”, a list of 49 “words and expressions commonly misused”, and a list of 57 “words often misspelled”. E. B. | |
| The Queen of the Tearling | 11-12 | Z+ | Feisty and fierce protagonist Queen Kelsea evolves from an exiled nobody into a young lady with nerves of steel. Her story of righting wrongs and taking back what’s hers is an inspiration to young readers everywhere. |
