Middle School

LITTLE WOMEN
by Louisa May Alcott
The story of four sisters – Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth – and of the courage, humor and ingenuity they display to survive poverty and the absence of their father during the Civil War.

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
by John Bunyan
John Bunyan was variously a tinker, soldier, Baptist minister, prisoner and writer of outstanding narrative genius which reached its apotheosis in this, his greatest work. It is an allegory of the Christian life of true brilliance and is presented as a dream which describes the pilgrimage of the hero – Christian – from the City of Destruction via the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty, the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Vanity Fair over the River of the Water of Life and into the Celestial City.

THE SECRET GARDEN
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
After losing her parents, young Mary Lennox is sent from India to live in her uncle's gloomy mansion on the wild English moors. She is lonely and has no one to play with but one day she learns of a secret garden somewhere in the grounds that no one is allowed to enter. Then Mary uncovers an old key in a flowerbed - and a gust of magic leads her to the hidden door. Slowly she turns the key and enters a world she could never have imagined.

WHERE THE LILIES BLOOM
by Vera & Bill Cleaver
In the Great Smoky Mountains region, a fourteen-year-old girl struggles to keep her family together after their father dies.

MY BROTHER SAM IS DEAD
by James Lincoln Collier
Recounts the tragedy that strikes the Meeker family during the Revolution when one son joins the rebel forces while the rest of the family tries to stay neutral in a Tory town.

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
by James Fenimore Cooper
The story of a Mohican warrior's struggle to protect two English girls from the marauding Huron; set in the frontier wilderness of New York State during the French and Indian Wars.

THE CHOCOLATE WAR
by Robert Cormier
A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

ROBINSON CRUSOE
by Daniel Defoe
Classic adventure story of a man marooned on an uninhabited island for 24 years: his struggle to survive, the dramatic encounter with Friday and their eventual escape.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
by Charles Dickens
A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Short stories revolving around the world’s most popular and influential fictional detective—the eccentric, arrogant, and ingenious Sherlock Holmes. He and his trusted friend, Dr. Watson step into the swirling fog of Victorian London to combine detailed observation and vast knowledge with brilliant deduction.

JOHNNY TREMAIN
by Esther Forbes
After injuring his hand, a silversmith's apprentice in Boston becomes a messenger for the Sons of Liberty in the days before the American Revolution.

DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL
by Anne Frank
Traces the life of the Jewish girl who hid with seven other people in an attic for two years in Nazi-occupied Holland and chronicled her day-to-day life in a diary which was discovered after her death in a German concentration camp.

JULIE OF THE WOLVES
by Jean Craighead George
While running away from home and an unwanted marriage, a thirteen-year-old Eskimo girl becomes lost on the North Slope of Alaska and is befriended by a wolf pack.

THE OUTSIDERS
by S.E. Hinton
Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders."

ACROSS FIVE APRILS
by Irene Hunt
During the Civil War, nine-year-old Jethro must run the family farm in southern Illinois almost alone.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
by Washington Irving
A superstitious schoolmaster, in love with a wealthy farmer's daughter, has a terrifying encounter with a headless horseman.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE
by Helen Keller
A serious illness destroyed Helen Keller s sight and hearing at the age of two. At seven, she was helped by Anne Sullivan, her beloved teacher and friend. Through sheer determination and resolve, she learned to speak and prepared herself for entry into prep school by age sixteen. Later she enrolled at Radcliffe and graduated with honors. Her motto: There are no handicaps, only challenges.

THE JUNGLE BOOKS
by Rudyard Kipling
The adventures of Mowgli, man-child, reared by the jungle wolf packs and educated by wild animals.

A WRINKLE IN TIME
by Madeleine L'Engle
When an atomic physicist disappears on a secret mission, his son, daughter and their friend search for him, going on an interplanetary journey through time and space.

THE CALL OF THE WILD
by Jack London
This is the story of Buck, a dog abducted from his home and thrust into the merciless world of an Arctic north consumed by a quest for gold.

ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS
by Scott O'Dell
Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.

JACOB HAVE I LOVED
by Katherine Paterson
Feeling deprived all her life of schooling, friends, mother, and even her name by her twin sister, Louise finally begins to fight back.

THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD OF GREAT RENOWN IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
by Howard Pyle
Recounts the legend of Robin Hood, who plundered the king's purse and poached his deer and whose generosity endeared him to the poor.

THE YEARLING
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
A young boy living in the Florida backwoods is forced to decide the fate of a fawn he has lovingly raised as a pet.

WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS
by Wilson Rawls
A young boy living in the Ozarks achieves his heart's desire when he becomes the owner of two redbone hounds and teaches them to be champion hunters.

THE LITTLE PRINCE
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
An aviator whose plane is forced down in the Sahara Desert encounters a little prince from a small planet who relates his adventures in seeking the secret of what is important in life.

IVANHOE
by Sir Walter Scott
Scott's classic historical romance, set in the twelfth-century England of Richard I, depicts the adventures of the heroic Wilfred of Ivanhoe in winning the hand of beautiful Lady Rowena.

THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND
by Elizabeth George Speare
In 1687 in Connecticut, Kit Tyler, feeling out of place in the Puritan household of her aunt, befriends an old woman considered a witch by the community and suddenly finds herself standing trial for witchcraft.

THE RED PONY
by John Steinbeck
Tells a story of a young boy and life on his father's California ranch, raising a sorrel colt.

TREASURE ISLAND
by Robert Louis Stevenson
While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.

ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY
by Mildred D. Taylor
A black family living in the South during the 1930's are faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand.

ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
by Mark Twain
The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the early nineteenth century.

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
by Jules Verne
The adventures of a French professor and his two companions as they sail above and below the world's oceans as prisoners on the fabulous electric submarine of the deranged Captain Nemo.

THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
by Johann David Wyss
Relates the fortunes of a shipwrecked family as they imaginatively adapt to life on an island abundantly inhabited by animals and plant life.

High School

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
by Jane Austen
A delightful novel about "how girls catch husbands." What will happen to sister Lydia, will the arrogant Lady Catherine de Burgh's intrigues be foiled, will sister Jane marry Mr. Bingley and especially, will Elizabeth, cured of her prejudice, and Mr. Darcy, cured of his pride, fall into each other's arms?

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
by James Baldwin
Based on the author's experiences as a teenaged preacher in a small revivalist church, the novel describes two days and a long night in the life of the Grimes family, particularly the fourteen-year-old John and his stepfather Gabriel.

JANE EYRE
by Charlotte Brontë
In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
by Emily Brontë
Against a background of English moors in the 19th century, the lives of two families become intertwined through marriage, passion, and the dominating force of a man called Heathcliff.

MY ÁNTONIA
by Willa Cather
Antonia Shimerda, mystical and mythical, suffers the agony of her father's suicide and her husband's desertion but never loses her passion for life and the land.

FAHRENHEIT 451
by Ray Bradbury
Nowadays firemen start fires. Fireman Guy Montag loves to rush to a fire and watch books burn up. Then he met a seventeen-year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid, and a professor who told him of a future where people could think. And Guy Montag knew what he had to do...

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
by Anthony Burgess
A nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology.

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S
by Truman Capote
A story of the life of Holly Golightly, a young woman transplanted to Manhattan with an unknown past. She is trying to find her place in the world when she meets her neighbor, an unnamed, unemployed writer.

THE AWAKENING
by Kate Chopin
At age twenty-eight Edna Pontellier vows to honor the deep yearnings within herself that she senses are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. Trapped in a dehumanizing marriage, Edna is forced to struggle against her circumstances. Her odyssey captures the personal emotions of women, their passions, and their search for individuality.

RED BADGE OF COURAGE
by Stephen Crane
Bored with farm life, and anxious for some excitement, Henry Fleming sets off to join the Union troops fighting the Civil War. An inexperienced fighter, he is anxious to get into battle to prove his patriotism and courage. He swaggers to keep up his spirits waiting for battle, but when suddenly thrust into the slaughter he is overcome with blind fear and runs from the field of battle.

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
by Alexandre Dumas
Dashing young Edmond Dantès has everything. He is engaged to a beautiful woman, is about to become the captain of a ship, and is well liked by almost everyone. But his perfect life is shattered when he is framed by a jealous rival and thrown into a dark prison cell for 14 years. A tale of betrayal, adventure, and revenge.

INVISIBLE MAN
by Ralph Ellison
Expelled from a southern black college for introducing a white trustee to some local color, a nameless young man moves to Harlem. There he embarks on what will become a life-long search for truth and a better life.

THE GREAT GATSBY
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In 1920s Long Island, a mysterious American millionaire's efforts to recapture the sweetheart of his youth result in tragedy.

LORD OF THE FLIES
by William Golding
A group of boys, aged six to twelve, are marooned on a tropical island after a plane wreck. Their struggle to survive and impose order quickly evolves from a battle against nature into a battle against their own primitive instincts.

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN
by Joanne Greenberg
Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to destroy that world of fantasy.

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
by Thomas Hardy
Hopelessly torn between two men – Alec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood, and Angel Clare, her provincial, moralistic, and unforgiving husband – Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.

THE SCARLET LETTER
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
In early colonial Massachusetts, a young woman endures the consequences of her sin of adultery and spends the rest of her life in atonement.

CATCH-22
by Joseph Heller
Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, this is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen.

FAREWELL TO ARMS
by Ernest Hemingway
An unforgettable World War I story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his love for an English nurse.

THE ODYSSEY
by Homer
Homer's masterpiece tells the story of Odysseus, the ideal Greek hero, as he travels home to Ithaca after the Trojan War–a journey of many years and countless adventures.

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
by Zora Neale Hurston
Fair, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person–no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

BRAVE NEW WORLD
by Aldous Huxley
Six hundred years into the future, humans are bred by cloning, and "mother" and "father" are forbidden words. Originally published in 1932, Huxley's terrifying vision of a controlled and emotionless future "Utopian" society is truly startling in its prediction of modern scientific and cultural phenomena, including test-tube babies and rampant drug abuse.

ON THE ROAD
by Jack Kerouac
Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free."

A SEPARATE PEACE
by John Knowles
Set at an elite boarding school for boys during World War II, A Separate Peace is the story of friendship and treachery, and how a tragic accident involving two young men forever tarnishes their innocence.

SONS AND LOVERS
by D.H. Lawrence
When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives. Their second son, Paul, craves the warmth of family and community, but knows that he must sacrifice everything in the struggle for independence if he is not to repeat his parents' failure.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 
by Harper Lee
This timeless classic is told through the voice of a young girl named Scout as she observes her neighborhood and family embroiled in a black man's battle for justice, defended by her father, an attorney.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE
by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Human Bondage traces the travels of Philip Carey to Germany, Paris, and London while exploring his intellectual, emotional, and psychological development and, later, his destructive relationship with a tawdry waitress.

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
by Carson McCullers
Unlikely relationships blossom between a young girl, a confused restaurant owner, an aging black doctor, a drunk carnival worker and a man who is incapable of giving them the answers they so desperately need to hear.

GONE WITH THE WIND
by Margaret Mitchell
A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga.

ANIMAL FARM
by George Orwell
A group of farm animals successfully revolt against their cruel human owner, only to be enslaved anew by the unscrupulous pig Napoleon, whose slogan is "all animals are equal but some animals more equal than others."

1984
by George Orwell
1984 depicts a gray world dominated by Big Brother and its vast network of agents, quashing freedom in a totalitarian world, where news is manufactured according to the authorities' will and people live by rote. Dissidents are disciplined into being willing tools of their masters. Winston Smith lives in this social system where surveillance, brainwashing, and execution are the state's tools for erasing personal will. His foray into passion ends with his arrest by the Thought Police and challenges him to be a hero.

THE REPUBLIC
by Plato
The Republic is Plato's best known written work, structured as a Socratic dialogue between the great teacher, his students and other citizens of Athens. A seminal investigation into philosophy, political science, the nature of justice, government, spirituality and the role of art in society.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
by Erich Maria Remarque
Through the eyes and mind of a German private, the reader shares life on the battlefield during World War I.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
by J.D. Salinger
Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.

FRANKENSTEIN
by Mary Shelley
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.

THE JUNGLE
by Upton Sinclair
This dramatic and deeply moving story documents the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the century and brings into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share in the American Dream.

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
by Betty Smith
The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan–and her erratic, eccentric family–in the turn-of-the-century Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH
by John Steinbeck
Set during the Great Depression, it traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers.

DRACULA
by Bram Stoker
The original vampire Since its publication in 1897, Dracula continues to terrify readers with its depiction of a vampire with an insatiable thirst for blood and the group of hunters determined to end his existence before he destroys a young woman's soul.

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Eliza Harris, a slave whose child is to be sold, escapes her beloved home on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky and heads North, eluding the hired slave catchers. Aided by the underground railroad, Quakers, and others opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act, Eliza, her son, and her husband George run toward Canada. As the Harrises flee to freedom, another slave, Uncle Tom, is sent "down the river" for sale. Too loyal to abuse his master's trust, too Christian to rebel, Tom wrenches himself from his family.

THE HOBBIT, OR, THERE AND BACK AGAIN
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING: BEING THE FIRST PART OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE TWO TOWERS: BEING THE SECOND PART OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE RETURN OF THE KING: BEING THE THIRD PART OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS
by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings saga tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard, Merry, Pippin, and Sam, Gimli the Dwarf, Legolas the Elf, Boromir of Gondor, and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
by Mark Twain
The adventures of a boy growing up in half-settled Missouri in the 1840s, who with a runaway slave floated down the Mississippi on a raft.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
by H.G. Wells
When a small cylinder crashes just outside London, onlookers are not prepared for what is about to be unleashed. Shortly after the onslaught begins, Earth fights back but is quickly brushed aside as the Martians destroy everything in their path.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
by Edith Wharton
A portrayal of New York society in the 1870s where money was important but counted less than manners and morals.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
by Oscar Wilde
An exquisitely beautiful young man in Victorian England retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption.

NATIVE SON
by Richard Wright
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

REVAMPED CLASSICS