Middle School

TUCK EVERLASTING
by Natalie Babbitt
The Tuck family is confronted with an agonizing situation when they discover that a ten-year-old girl and a malicious stranger now share their secret about a spring whose water prevents one from ever growing any older.

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 German concentration camp.

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."

A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A boy grows to manhood while attempting to subdue the evil he unleashed on the world as an apprentice to the Master Wizard.

THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
by Norton Juster
A journey through a land where Milo learns the importance of words and numbers provides a cure for his boredom.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA BOOK 2: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
by C.S. Lewis
Four English schoolchildren find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magic land of Narnia and assist its ruler, the golden lion Aslan, to triumph over the White Witch, who has cursed the land with eternal winter.

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.

HATCHET
by Gary Paulsen
After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive initially with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.

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.

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.

High School

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 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.

INIVISIBLE 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

BELOVED
by Toni Morrison
Proud and beautiful, Sethe escaped from slavery but is haunted by its heritage–from the fires of the flesh to the heartbreaking challenges to the spirit.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE
by Kurt Vonnegut
Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

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