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Teen Reading Lists

Edgemont Grades 7-12

Local Middle/High School Summer Reading Lists

• 1=somewhat below grade level
• 2=at grade level
• 3=somewhat above grade level
• 4=challenging read

Edgemont, Grade 7

1. Collier, James—War Comes to Willie Freeman (1) —When Willy's father, a free black man and patriot, is killed during the Revolutionary War and her mother is captured, Willy is alone to face to horrors of war and racism.
2. Avi—The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (1-2)(required for all students) — In 1832, thirteen-year-old Charlotte is the only passenger and the only female aboard a sailing ship bound from England to Rhode Island. She finds herself accused of murder as she becomes involved in a plot to overthrow the villainous captain.
3. Voigt, Cynthia—Homecoming (2) —When the four Tillerman siblings are abandoned by their mother in a parking lot in the middle of Rhode Island, they decide that their only hope is to seek out their Great-Aunt Cilla, who lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Dicey, thirteen, must take care of her younger siblings and lead them to safety on only $11.
4. Hinton, S.E.—Rumblefish (2) —Rusty-James isn't book-smart —he relies on his fists instead of his brains. So far, whenever he has gotten into trouble, his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy, has bailed him out. Then, one day, Rusty-James's world comes apart in an explosive chain of events —and this time the Motorcycle Boy isn't around to pick up the pieces.
5. Spinelli, Jerry—Stargirl (2) —Stargirl arrives at quiet Mica High and enchants the students from the start. Igniting school spirit, she becomes the most popular girl on campus, until...pressured to conform and be "normal," she struggles with popularity, high school and first love in this award winning novel.
6. Farmer, Nancy—The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (2) —Tendai and his siblings, the children of a military ruler in Zimbabwe in 2194, leave their home and go on an adventure in which dangers abound. Facing all kinds of obstacles, Tendai perseveres with bravery and always a sense of humor.
7. Jacques, Brian—Redwall (3) —As the inhabitants of Redwall Abbey bask in the glorious Summer of the Late Rose, all is quiet and peaceful. But things are not as they seem. Cluny the Scourge, the evil one-eyed rat warlord, is hell-bent on destroying the tranquility as he prepares to fight a bloody battle for the ownership of Redwall.
8. Christie, Agatha—The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (3) —This mystery with a full cast of characters includes many clues —both real and misleading —all cleverly woven together into a story with a stunning, unexpected finale.
9. Funke, Cornelia—The Thief Lord (3) —The hidden, magical underworld of Venice is the setting where runaways and orphans create their own society led by the mysterious Thief Lord. Many adventures unfold through this tale of petty crime and daring escapades, leading up to a dramatic and surprising ending.
10. Smith, Betty—A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (4) —Francie Nolan, a young Irish-American girl, grows up in Brooklyn at the turn of the last century. Despite her poverty, Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive.
11. Pullman, Philip—The Golden Compass (4) —This is the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy. The story is about Lyra, a carefree orphan who spends her days exploring Oxford University, playing pranks and going on imaginative adventures. However, the magical world in which she lives becomes a dangerous one when she becomes inadvertently intertwined with a serious game involving deception, murder and a mystery.

Edgemont, Grade 8

1. McCormick, Patricia—Cut (1) —Callie is a girl struggling with serious teenage issues. She's been placed in a treatment center, but wants nothing to do with the other girls residing there. They all have their own problems. She doesn't even want to speak —until she finally can't take it any longer.
2. Lipsyte, Robert—The Contender (1) —Alfred Brooks, a seventeen-year-old Harlem boy, struggles to make the right decisions. He's a high school drop-out working at a grocery store. As his best friend is drifting behind a haze of drugs and violence, Alfred tries to pursue boxing. He wants to become a champion —and not just in the arena.
3. Anonymous—Go Ask Alice(2) —This is the real-life story of a lonely, awkward teenager, under extreme pressure from herself and her parents. She turns to drugs, which take the edge off her loneliness and self-hate, but they also turn her life into a nightmare of exalting highs and excruciating lows. The diary is an account of her life as it spins out of control.
4. Korman, Gordon—Jake Reinvented (2) &8212; Rick becomes friends with popular new boy Jake Garrett, football player and host of superlative parties. In the process, he discovers the true nature of his schoolmates and uncovers the mystery of Jake's past.
5. Hunt, Irene—No Promises in the Wind (2) —In 1932, America was in the depths of a deep depression. A job, food, a place to sleep, and shoes without holes were, for millions of people, nothing more than dreams. The protagonist, fifteen-year-old Josh, leaves home because of conflicts with his father. He has to make his own way through a country of angry, frightened people. This is the story of a young man's struggle to find a life for himself in the turbulent 1930's.
6. Albom, Mitch—The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2) —Main character Eddie learns more about his life after he dies than he understood while he was living. Was his life a complete failure? Or did he have his own share of successes? Eddie uncovers the secret of his life thanks to the five people he meets in heaven.
7. Christie, Agatha—And Then There Were None (2) —Ten guests on an eccentric millionaire’s private island, each with a wicked secret past, are murdered one by one.
8. Clancy, Tom—Red Storm Rising (3)—Muslim terrorists blow up a key Soviet oil complex, creating a critical oil shortage that threatens the stability of the USSR. Russian leaders decide to seize the oil in the Persian Gulf, surprising NATO and the U.S. and threatening to eliminate them as political and military forces in Europe.
9. Card, Orson Scott—Ender's Game (3) —Ender Wiggins is a bright young boy with a powerful skill. One of a group of children bred to be military geniuses and save the Earth from an inevitable attack by aliens, he becomes unbeatable in war games and seems ready to lead Earth to victory.
10. Adams, Douglas—The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (any book in the series) (3) —Hapless hero Arthur Dent travels the galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, getting into amusing messes, and generally wreaking hilarious havoc. Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet to build a freeway.
11. Heinlein, Robert A.—Stranger in a Strange Land (3-4) —Valentine Michael Smith, a man from Mars, struggles for his life on the planet Earth and tries to teach humans new ways of understanding life and relationships.
12. Wouk, Herman—Marjorie Morningstar (4) —Marjorie rebels against the confining middle-class values of her industrious American-Jewish family and tries to find her own way in the New York social world.
13. Du Maurier, Daphne—Rebecca (4) —In this novel of mystery and passion, Maxim de Winter and his frightened new wife try to live with the haunting legacy of Maxim's first wife.
14. Crichton, Michael—State of Fear (4) —A millionaire suddenly changes his mind about donating $10 million to an environmental organization. His surprised lawyer is drawn into a web of intrigue when the millionaire is presumed dead after his car careens off the road.

Edgemont, Grade 9

1. Albom, Mitch—Tuesdays with Morrie (1) —After learning that his university mentor Morrie Schwartz is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, sportswriter Mitch Albom visits him regularly and listens to Schwartz's touching, funny, heartwarming stories and lessons about life.
2. Spiegelman, Art—Maus I and Maus II (1) —Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, using comic-book format, documents his father's experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland. Spiegelman twists this chillingly real Holocaust survival tale by portraying the repressive Nazis as cats and hunted Jews as mice.
3. Tolkien, J.R.R.—The Hobbit (1-2).—Whisked away from his comfortable, unambitious life by a wizard and a company of dwarves, Bilbo Baggins finds himself caught up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of a large and dangerous dragon.
4. Oates, Joyce Carol—Big Mouth and Ugly Girl (1-2) —When Matt Donaghy is falsely accused of threatening to blow up his high school, one of his classmates, Ursula Riggs, who calls herself “Ugly Girl,” knows the truth and comes to his defense. This tale of friendship and romance, by an acclaimed novelist, provokes real thought about the threat of school violence in America.
5. Anderson, Laurie Halse—Speak (1-2) —This 1999 National Book Award finalist tells of the isolation of teenager Melinda Sordina, who is hated for phoning the police to break up a summer party. This truthful, often painful account of a typical high school experience teaches a powerful life lesson: don't be afraid to do the right thing.
6. Armstrong, Lance-It's Not About the Bike (2) —As an up-and-coming young cyclist, Lance Armstrong beat testicular cancer in 1996 and went on to win the most grueling and prestigious cycling race in the world, the Tour de France. While this memoir contains sometimes graphic medical detail, it relates the inspirational story of a man who, though faced with tremendous adversity, refused to quit.
7. Frey, Darcy—The Last Shot (3) —Written as a journal, this true story tells of four high school basket players (including Stephon Marbury) and the obstacles they face on their paths to playing Division I college basketball.
8. McBride, James—The Color of Water (3)—The author, an African-American, uncovers the life story and family history of his white, Jewish mother.
9. Potok, Chaim—The Chosen (3) —This is the moving story of the friendship of two fifteen-year-old Jewish boys and their relationships with their fathers.
10. Golden, Arthur—Memoirs of a Geisha (4) —Nine-year-old Chiyo, sold with her sister into slavery by their father after their mother's death, becomes Sayuri, a beautiful geisha accomplished in the art of entertaining men.
11. Homer —The Iliad (Fagles translation) (4) —Scenes of warfare, woulds, heroes, gods, and a wide range of human emotions fill the pages of this epic classic of the Trojan War.

Edgemont, Grade 10

1. Bradbury, Ray—Fahrenheit 451 (1) —This novel is about a futuristic society where books are banned and burned instead of read.
2. Malamud, Bernard—The Natural (1) —After talented baseball player Roy Hobbs’s career is sidelined by tragic events at age 19, he gets a second chance to play in the major league during his thirties.
3. Walker, Alice—The Color Purple (2) —This novel in the form of letters tells of a black woman's life in the South and her triumph over abuse and grief.
4. Kidd, Sue Monk—The Secret Life of Bees (2) —Fourteen-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father on their Georgia farm, searches for her mother in this coming-of-age story.
5. Wolff, Tobias—This Boy's Life (2) —In this grim tale, the teenage author moves with his divorced mother from Utah to Washington to escape her violent boyfriend. When she remarries, Wolff finds himself in a bitter battle of wills with his abusive stepfather.
6. O’Brien, Tim—The Things They Carried (2-3) — Each of twenty-two short stories relates the exploits and personalities of a fictional platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam.
7. Hemingway, Ernest—Farewell to Arms (2-3) —This is the story of Lt. Henry, an American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. The two meet in Italy during World War I in this tale about the tenuous nature of love in the time of war.
8. Strout, Elizabeth—Abide With Me (2-3) —Tyler Caskey, the father of two young girls and the newly appointed minister, is quietly devastated by his wife’s death following a prolonged illness.
9. Plath, Sylvia—The Bell Jar (2-3) —A gifted young woman’s mental breakdown begins during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s.
10. Haruf, Kent—Plainsong (3) —The lives of two farming bachelors, a pregnant teenager, and a teacher whose wife won't get out of bed intersect in this touching story of life on the edge of the Colorado plain.
11. Vonnegut, Kurt—Slaughter-House Five (3) —In this humorous piece of science fiction, Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time” after surviving fire bombing of Dresden during World War II.
12. Kingsolver, Barbara—The Poisonwood Bible (4) —The Price family, originally from rural Georgia, are now wrestling with inner demons while living in the small African village of Kilanga. The saga revolves around Nathan Price, an abusive southern Baptist evangelical minister who forsakes his family on his quest to save the souls of the natives.
13. London, Jack—Martin Eden (4) (required for honors students) —In this semi-autobiographical novel, the title character becomes a writer, hoping to acquire the respectability sought by his society-girl sweetheart. Some problems accompany his climb up the ladder.
14. Steinbeck, John—The Grapes of Wrath (4) (required for honors students) —In this powerful novel, dispossessed landowners leave Oklahoma during the Great Depression and head for the “promised land” of California.

Edgemont, Grade 11

1. Christie, Agatha—Murder on the Orient Express (1) —En route to Paris, thirteen travelers, each bearing a secret, will find themselves suspect in the most ingenious crime Hercule Poirot has ever solved.
2. Braithwaite, John—To Sir With Love (1) —In this true story, a black teacher comes to an inner city school in London's East End.
3. Tammet, Daniel—Born on a Blue Day (1)—The author of this autobiography is a high-functioning, autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. His ability to think abstractly, deviate from routine, empathize, interact and communicate with others is impaired, yet he's capable of incredible feats of memorization and mental calculation.
4. Huxley, Aldous—Brave New World (2) —A look at the future makes this fascinating story of a utopian society a science fiction classic.
5. Wilde, Oscar—A Woman of No Importance (2) —This witty play criticizes English morals and manners.
6. Stoker, Bran—Dracula (2) —Evil comes to England from Transylvania. This vampire classic has served as a basis for over thirty films and a Broadway play.
7. Paton, Alan—Cry, the Beloved Country (2) —This novel exposes the racial inequality and injustice in South Africa's history.
8. Orwell, George—1984 (3) (required for honors students) —The novel, published in 1949, gave the world its first concern about the combination of recording devices and politics.
9. Forster, E.M.—Howard's End (3) —This classic tale of British class struggle follows three families that represent different gradations of Edwardian society's middle class.
10. Shakespeare, William—Othello (3) —In this classic tragedy, a Moorish prince, succumbing to his jealousy, is tricked into believing his wife is an adulteress.
11. Austen, Jane—Emma (3) —Upper class Emma Woodhouse has a taste for matchmaking but in her attempts to match her friend with a man, confusion and misunderstanding ensue.
12. Bronte, Charlotte—Jane Eyre (3) —A young governess falls in love with her employer in this classic coming-of-age tale set in 19th-century England.
13. Hardy, Thomas—Tess of the D'Urbervilles (4) —Thomas Hardy's moving novel of a girl in Victorian England who must cope with being a victim of rape, and therefore, an outcast. This novel speaks not only to feminist concerns, but to questions of guilt, compassion, and self-image as well.
14. Fowles, John—The French Lieutenant's Woman (4) —In Victorian England, minor nobleman Charles falls in love with Sarah, who is allegedly pining for a lover who left her.

Edgemont, Grade 12

1. Turow, Scott—Presumed Innocent (1) —An ordinary citizen faces conviction for a horrible crime.
2. Conroy, Pat—The Prince of Tides (1) —Spanning forty years, this is the story of Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister, and the dark, violent past of their extraordinary family in South Carolina.
3. Patchett, Ann—Bel Canto (2) —When Terrorists invade a South American Vice President's home in the middle of a party and take the guests hostage, they set off a series of events that reveal how the connections between people are sometimes stronger than the ideas that divide them.
4. Hemingway, Ernest—For Whom the Bell Tolls (2) —Set in 1937 Spain, this Civil War story is an action-packed adventure, but above all, it's a love story.
5. Kesey, Ken—One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2) —Jack McMurphy makes allies among the inmates of the insane asylum to which he is committed. He also makes enemies among the staff, especially the powerful Nurse Ratchet.
6. Atwood, Margaret—The Handmaid's Tale (2) —Set in the future, the Republic of Gilead uses fertile lower class women to serve as birth mothers for the upper class.
7. McCarthy, Cormac—The Road (2) —A father attempts to care for his sickly son in a post-apocalyptic world where people have been reduced to cannibalism.
8. Chopin, Kate—The Awakening (3) —An affair changes a woman who is stifled by both loveless marriage and middle class mores of nineteenth century Louisiana.
9. Hardy, Thomas-Jude the Obscure (3) (required for AP students) —This is the story of Jude Fawley, a poor orphan, who has dreams of becoming an educated cleric. He enounters many obstacles along the way, including marriage to Arabella and love of Sue, both of whom cause him to consider alternatives to traditional marriage that bring scandal to him and his family.
10. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel—One Hundred Years of Solitude (3) —This novel tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mystical town of Macondo through the story of the Buendia family.
11. Friel, Brian—Translations and Miller, Arthur—A View from the Bridge (2 dramas) (3)—Translations examines the effects on an 1833 Irish-speaking community when Gaelic place names are recorded and rendered into English for a geographic survey. A View from the Bridge explores 1950's Italian-American longshoreman Eddie's relationships with his orphaned niece and his wife's illegal immigrant cousins.
12. Morrison, Toni—Sula (3) —Set in a Midwestern black community called The Bottom, this story follows two friends, Sula and Nel, a rebel and a conformist, as they come to terms with their lives as women, from childhood to old age and death.
13. Tolstoy, Leo—Anna Karenina (4) —In nineteenth century Russia, Anna attempts an impossible and destructive love triangle with her beloved husband Karenin and her lover Vronsky.