My senior year of high school my English teacher gave us options to choose from and I really liked that! She said we could either choose lord of the flies or pride and prejudice. The class basically split in two and we had a mini book club type vibe! I would highly recommend doing something like that!

16

My classmate did her senior thesis on teaching Hunger Games and I totally support that!! Dear Martin is good for around that age too. Some favs I read as an IB student were Handmaid’s Tale and Beloved.

11

For tenth grade I would say: the great Gatsby, the handmaids tale (this might be better for 11th grade tbh), the help, the color purple, the book thief, pride and prejudice (these were all books I read for school around 10th and 11th grade too!!)

10

The body by Stephen King

7

My favorite will always be To Kill A Mockingbird, I read it at a time when I felt more like an adult than a child because of responsibilities I had to take up while my dad was sick so the ending of Scout still focused on the story of her brother breaking his arm more than the actual story really and the message about a child’s innocence really hit home, plus you can use that message as a way to talk about nature vs nurture and how hate is learned.

7

The hunger games would be good. During my highschool years some of my favorites were All the light we cannot see, Nothing to envy, A long way gone, The scarlet letter, the metamorphosis, and the yellow wallpaper. These were books we read during 9th and 10th grade.

6

Hamlet but also emphasize how funny shakespeare was

5

the book thief and homegoing by yaa gyasi!

4

I liked reading secret life of bees. Wish I had read lord of the flies (though I think that might be middle school?). Would have loved reading and analyzing the hunger games

4

Just for fun, some I haven’t enjoyed have been A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Jungle, and Grapes of Wrath. Also really didn’t like Lord of the Flies, but that was technically middle school. Catcher in the Rye is also terribly outdated and icky in some regards, but I think that’s been pretty phased out (I read it for a YA lit grad class. Maybe would have liked it at 16, but hated it as an adult).

2

Diary of Anne frank or something really jarring. Or also something by Brontë.

2

Uhhhh for funsies I suggest Sic of Crows! It handles politics and interpersonal relationships well, as well as slavery, drug abuse, and oppression. I suggest reading it first to make sure it’s what you’re looking for (it’s a fantasy book), but I loved it when I read it in 6th grade on my own!! It’s still one of my favorites

1

Slaughterhouse 5!!! I read it in honors sophomore English and most of the class loved it, plus you can design some really creative projects to go along with it. We also read the Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men that year. We read Frankenstein in 11th grade honors English, I enjoyed it but our teacher didn’t do a good job teaching it. We also had several independent reading projects where we read a banned/controversial book of our choice and then researched and discussed why they were banned

1

My favorite books that I read for class in 10th grade are Lincoln in the Bardo and House of the Spirits!

1

My 10th grade honors English teacher gave us a bunch to pick from and I picked Born A Crime by Trevor Noah and it was such an educational book while being absolutely hilarious. It was the most engaged I had ever been reading an assigned book and I’ll never forget that

1