Giant College Prep Recommended Reading List to End All Lists

Earlier this year, one of my students asked me what they should be reading to prepare for college.  I was telling my kids that one of my high school teachers (Hi, Miss Goldsworthy!) had given me a list of classic literature mixed with modern classics that were designed to make you think and ask the right kinds of questions about who we are and what we can do better.

My kids were amused that I had carried my book list back and forth to college, graduate school, law school and 3 apartment and house moves, before it got destroyed when our garage flooded when I pipe burst a few years ago.  I had been making my way through the entire list of books, a lot of which were ones I read again in college lit classes -- so I was really, really grateful to have read a number of them before I went to college.

A couple of the students in that class asked me if I could remember a list of several of those books and share them.  So I spent some time writing down the ones that I remembered, and then did a little google magic to find some additional lists for some more modern classics that are being recommended today.

Below find my current proposed list, although I'm open to argument on why something else ought to be included or why you think a particular book has no business being on a classics reading list at all, thank you very much.  In other words, this list is a work in progress -- I'm contemplating whether I need revisions before sharing it with my kids next year, and I'd love some opinions from the readers in my audience.

So, what glorious book that you treasure did I inadvertently forget?  What must be there to help shape young minds and make them ask the difficult or important questions?  What do you think I should add or subtract from the list?  Do tell.

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Classic Books to Read Before College

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
6. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
7. The Giver by Lois Lowry
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
9. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger

Pandemic Book Club: Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Hello readers!

The Pandemic Book Club discussion on The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will begin at 4:00 pm EST today -- Saturday, March 28th.   In order to provide a little background and set the table for discussion I offer the following and will see you back here this afternoon at 4 pm EST.

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Mary Ann Shaffer was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in 1934.  Having grown up from the very beginning facing the threats of the Great Depression, growing fascism in Europe and eventually the difficulties and devastations of World War II, you would think that this is what shaped her decision to write about the island of Guernsey and the German occupation of it during the war.  But it was a whim that brought her to the subject of her novel:

She became interested in Guernsey while visiting London in 1976. On a whim, she decided to fly to Guernsey but became stranded there when a thick fog descended and all boats and planes were forbidden to leave the island. As she waited for the fog to lift, warming herself by the heat of the hand-dryer in the men’s restroom, she read all the books in the Guernsey airport bookstore, including Jersey under the Jack-Boot. Thus began her fascination with the German Occupation of the Channel Islands.

Over the course of her lifetime, Mary Ann worked as a book store clerk, a librarian and even as an editor for a small press publisher.  She was an avid participant in a book club of local friends, who met regularly to discuss favorite books they had been reading and to debate which book of the moment they should read next.  She folded her own experiences and her deep love of a good book into The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which you can see throughout the book, which her book club was instrumental in getting her to write:

Pandemic Book Club -- 3/28 at 4:00 pm EST

Hello readers!

To make this Pandemic Book Club most accessible to as many of you as possible, I did a bit of time zone calculation and tried to find a day and time that might work for the most broad range of readers. What I am proposing is this:

March 28th -- next Saturday -- at 4:00 pm EST

My friend Tracy -- waves to Tracy! -- is in Italy, so her time zone was the paramount one that I was trying to work with for this.  Some of you are as far West as California, so that's a time difference going backward a few hours.  Afternoon on the East Coast seemed the most reasonable way to go, and a weekend maximizes the potential to participate for any of the folks who may be working in essential industries at the moment.

Sorry to any of you who are medical folks -- I doubt there will be much down time for the foreseeable future, but know that you are in my prayers and that we are all sending you lots of love and thanks, and we'll hopefully have a lively chat thread for you to read when you have the time to get there.

We can chat in the comments on this blog, we can chat on Facebook and we can also chat with sound and video on Zoom.  It feels like we could all use a little contact and laughter with each other, so those of you who have downloaded the Zoom app, I'm happy to set up a chat room so we can gab in person about the book and life in general.

As the week moves forward, I'm going to share a few recipes that I think work well with the book, and that also might be ingredients you are likely to have in a pandemic pantry of shelf stable foodstuffs, and we can perhaps set the mood with something yummy to snack on together while we discuss the book.

Does that sound good for everyone?

Pottering Around

Toward the end of the school year, the kids get a little restless:  the weather warms, the sunshine beckons, and keeping a classroom full of pre-adolescents engaged can be rough on the best of days.  This year, after so much snow and ice and arctic blasts of deadly frigid air and cabin fever, that is proving to be true already.

They simply want to be outside in the fresh air.

Frankly, I can't blame them, because I feel the same way.  This winter has been brutal, and we are all longing for some flowers and leaves and fun.

So, in anticipation of this summer break antsy pantsy-ness only growing as the calendar moves forward, I am planning a bit of fun for the end of school that will, I hope, keep everyone engaged while we attempt to still learn a little something.  If nothing else, I'll have some fun with it, but I do hope the kids do as well.

We had planned on having a Harry Potter party for The Peanut this year for her 11th birthday.   While we were at Universal on vacation, we picked up some fun items to use for invitations that you can only get in Hogsmeade, and had planned a surprise way to deliver the invitations by "owl post."  (Bless you, people on Pinterest, for your genius ideas!)

Rather than let all my pins and internal planning go to waste, I've decided to use it for the amusement of my class instead.  Will be posting some ideas as I firm them up, but I wanted to throw out to the crowd the fact that I'm looking for some great, educational ways to use the Harry Potter theme in the classroom over a two week stretch.

Figuring the last two weeks of the year will be a lost cause, am trying to come up with a way to make that not be the case.  Perhaps it is naive of me to think this can be accomplished, but you can't blame a girl for trying, can you?

Any thoughts on ways to do actual lesson planning in a Harry Potter context?

Am thinking about setting this up so that they have "wizarding" classes each day instead of our regular ones.  But I haven't quite figured out how to morph our regular classes into the wizarding ones just yet.  Things I have contemplated thus far:

Building An Enthusiastic Reader

This morning, The Peanut woke up for school when her alarm went off, brushed her teeth, got dressed, fussed with her hair a little bit...and then crawled right back into bed to read for another half an hour.

Her father, thinking she hadn't gotten up at all, rushed upstairs to get her moving only to find her nose completely buried in the Percy Jackson series.  Which is how she was last night, too, when we had to make her turn her lights out and go to sleep.

It really is every parent's dream to build an enthusiastic reader, isn't it?  But how do you do it?

I don't have the answer for every child, but in terms of my own child I do think this was key:  we have been reading to her and with her since she was tiny.  We never went anywhere without a book -- in the diaper bag, in the back seat of the car within reach of her car seat when she was younger, all over our house in every room, fairy tales on my kindle, good stories crammed on her bookshelves in her own room...first in board books and later in regular books and then on her own kindle.

We wanted her to know that reading is important to us, so that it will also be important to her...and from the earliest age. 

Both of us are big readers -- we read every night before bedtime, and have made it a point to let The Peanut crawl in bed and read with us fairly often.  Also, during the summer on hot and humid afternoons when being outside in the sweltering haze is miserable, she and I will crawl onto the king-sized master bed and enjoy some reading time in the air conditioned splendor together.

Also, each summer, The Peanut and I pick out a book to read together -- something that might have been a big reach for her when she was smaller, but that was a wonderful story.  One summer it was The Cricket in Times Square -- we happened to be taking a trip to New York City that summer, to tag along with daddy to a conference, and I wanted to introduce her to the hum and rattle of the city and the subways before we got there. She loved it, and we spent the time in New York periodically looking for lost crickets, which was very fun indeed for wee girlies.

Another year, it was The Borrowers, a story that I highly recommend reading aloud together. At the time we read it, the vocabulary would have been well past where The Peanut was, but by reading it together she got a wonderful story and a built-in personal dictionary and context explainer right there in the chair next to her, and that was both handy and cozy.

Books To Love: The Borrowers

The Peanut and I choose a different book every summer as "our book," and we read a chapter or so in the heat of the afternoon in the master bedroom, snuggled comfortably in the air conditioning on the big, king-sized bed, reveling in the glorious lazy goodness of summer and excellent storytelling.

We have done this each summer since she was small.  And it is something we look forward to now each year when school is out.  We haven't yet selected this year's story, although I am thinking The Secret Garden may be a good pick, or perhaps Treasure Island.  But it could also be one of the Harry Potter books that she hasn't yet read (she's somewhere in the middle of the series, along with reading a bunch of other books at the same time).

The key is to pick a book that has a really good story that will pull her along day in and day out and make her drag me to read aloud again.  I know that I've hooked her when she is begging for more story the moment she wakes up.

Two summers ago, our read together book was The Borrowers by Mary Norton.  And it was just such a book.

Even now, two years later, she still talks about scenes from The Borrowers. And wants to make presents for The Borrowers in our own house that she is convinced we must have.  Her reasoning?  "Our house is 109 years old, how could we not?"  You can't really argue with that.

Last summer, Studio Ghibli released The Secret World of Arrietty. At our house, it was a much anticipated film, because The Borrowers is all about Arrietty, her family and her world, and the adventures she has trying to stay out of sight from humans while still being close enough to them to borrow what her family needs.

While the movie is enchanting, as pretty much all Ghibli offerings are given Miyazake's amazing gift of storytelling and visual art, it just isn't as good as the original book from whence it came.  If you haven't yet read The Borrowers, you really should -- it is fabulous.

There are several books in the Borrowers series, and we haven't yet read them all, so perhaps this summer will be more of a series read.

What's your read aloud for your kids lately?  We're always looking for our next good read...

Books To Love: The Sisters Grimm

Sometimes, you find a series of books that are so awesome, you wish you'd written them yourself.

That is true in spades for The Sisters Grimm.

We bought the first book in the series over spring break two weeks ago.  I am now on the last book of the series -- Book 9.  And The Peanut?  Is halfway through Book 6 and chugging away.

UPDATE:  The Peanut finished the 6th book while I was working on this post -- she read it in less than 24 hours even though it is a 304 page book! -- and is already chugging through Book 7 while munching on a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.  I love these books!!

These books are absolutely going in the school library when we are done with them.  The series is fantastic.

Long story short, two sisters appear to be orphaned by parents who disappear, and are then taken in by a grandmother they thought was already dead.  Her last name is Grimm.

As in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm of fairy tale fame.

Hilarity, mysteries, and adventure ensue, as the Sisters Grimm are pulled from one fractured fairy tale into another and another and another.

I am 43 years old and I cannot put these books down.  The same is true for my 9 year old daughter.  Now that is some excellent reading!

Blogger disclosure:  Links in this post may include links to my Amazon account.  Purchases made through these links - or through the Amazon search engine in the right hand column on this blog - contribute a few pennies to me, which are then used for purchases for the school library.  Thanks so much for all of your support! 

Dragon Rider

This summer, part of my reading time was devoted to reading through children's and young adult's fiction that I hadn't previously read, to get an idea of some of the more recent books that we had in the school library.

Just in case I was helping a child find a book, I wanted to actually have read the book in question that might be recommended.  I figured the fastest way to lose credibility with a kid was to have no idea what I was talking about with the books.  So I'm making the extra effort to try and read (or know that I already have read in a lot of cases) just about every fiction book in the library.

It's a dauntingly large task, but will serve me well in the long run, I think.

Plus, it's been so long since I've read some of the classics of children's literature, that I wanted to go back and re-read a few of those as well.  (Or perhaps it is just my excuse to re-read Wrinkle in Time and Little House on the Prairie.  As if I needed an excuse.  LOL)

One of my favorites has been Cornelia Funke's Dragon Rider. It is a superbly crafted story about a silvery dragon named Firedrake, his furry cat-looking brownie friend named Sorrel, a young orphan boy named Ben, and their adventures along the way on a quest that is a race against the humans threatening a dragon settlement, a number of mystical beings and an evil entity named Goldeneye.

I absolutely loved the book.  And I loved that the characters were drawn as real, imperfections and doubts and all, and not just as perfect cardboard stand-ins that you often find in children's books.  Really well done on the character development.

Moreover, I loved that the main characters learn to work together, and that they recognize and are profoundly grateful for the help they receive along the way.  There is a lot of serendipity woven into the tale, but that's also how it weaves itself into our day to day lives -- learning to recognize it and be grateful is one of the things that makes life bearable, I think, on our bleaker days.