Books for my class library
Discover the best books for your class library with our curated list of must-read titles. Enhance learning and engagement with top picks for students of all ages.
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The Giver
by Lois Lowry
In a future society, young Jonas is given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
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Witch Child
by Celia Rees
The year is 1659, a time of fear and lies. For Mary Newbury, it is a time of desperation. While she watches, unable to intervene, her wise and beloved grandmother is falsely condemned, tortured, and hanged as a witch. Soon the relentless crowd may turn upon Mary. When a mysterious stranger offers her a way out -- safe passage to America -- she knows she must go. But she doesn't know that the turbulent voyage will bring her to yet another society where differences are feared and defiance is deadly. p(No Canadian Rights)
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White Noise
by Don DeLillo
The National Book Award-winning classic from the author of Underworld and Libra—an “eerie, brilliant, and touching” (New York Times) family drama about mass culture and the numbing effects of technology—soon to be a major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultraÂmodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet heralding something ominous.
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The Stranger
by Albert Camus
With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger—Camus's masterpiece—gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward. Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. “The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and Âdevious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” –from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.
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Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.
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The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin
A stirring, intimate reflection on the nature of race and American nationhood that has inspired generations of writers and thinkers, first published in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington “The finest essay I’ve ever read.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Between the World and Me With clarity, conviction, and passion, James Baldwin delivers a dire warning of the effects of racism that remains urgent nearly sixty years after its original publication. In the first of two essays, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” Baldwin offers kind and unflinching counsel on what it means to be Black in the United States and explains the twisted logic of American racism. In “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” Baldwin recounts his spiritual journey into the church after a religious crisis at the age of fourteen, and then back out of it again, as well as his meeting with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Throughout, Baldwin urges us to confront the oppressive institutions of race, religion, and nationhood itself, and insists that shared resilience among both Black and white people is the only way forward. As much as it is a reckoning with America’s racist past, The Fire Next Time is also a clarion call to care, courage, and love, and a candle to light the way.
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The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
Oedipa Maas finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy.
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Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift
An Englishman's two voyages carry him to Lilliput, a land of people six inches high, and Brobdingnag, a land of giants.
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Awakening
by Kate Chopin
"She grew daring and reckless. Overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out. Where no woman had swum before."
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Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's story shows a futuristic World State where all emotion, love, art, and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. An ominous warning to the world's population, this literary classic is a must-read.
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The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields
An aged woman discovers herself as she reflects upon her life in the 20th century.
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The Edible Woman
by Margaret Atwood
The novel that put the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments on the literary map. The Booker Prize winner's first novel is both a scathingly funny satire of consumerism and a heady exploration of emotional cannibalism. Marian McAlpin is an “abnormally normal” young woman, according to her friends. A recent university graduate, she crafts consumer surveys for a market research firm, maintains an uneasy truce between her flighty roommate and their prudish landlady, and goes to parties with her solidly dependable boyfriend, Peter. But after Peter proposes marriage, things take a strange turn. Suddenly empathizing with the steak in a restaurant, Marian finds she is unable to eat meat. As the days go by, her feeling of solidarity extends to other categories of food, until there is almost nothing left that she can bring herself to consume. Those around her fail to notice Marian’s growing alienation—until it culminates in an act of resistance that is as startling as it is imaginative. Marked by blazingly surreal humor and a colorful cast of eccentric characters, The Edible Woman is a groundbreaking work of fiction.
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Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
The Congo diary is an enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism.
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Anthem
by Ayn Rand
Anthem is Ayn Rand’s classic tale of a dystopian future of the great “We”—a world that deprives individuals of a name or independence—that anticipates her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. They existed only to serve the state. They were conceived in controlled Palaces of Mating. They died in the Home of the Useless. From cradle to grave, the crowd was one—the great WE. In all that was left of humanity there was only one man who dared to think, seek, and love. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all trace of science and civilization, he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunted. He was marked for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: He had stood forth from the mindless human herd. He was a man alone. He had rediscovered the lost and holy word—I. “I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”—Ayn Rand
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Animal Farm
by George Orwell
75th Anniversary Edition—Includes a New Introduction by Téa Obreht George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.
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Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin
This American classic has been corrected from the original manuscripts and indexed, featuring historic photographs and an extensive biographical afterword.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac’s classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation “An authentic work of art.”—The New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope—a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
Read the cult-favorite coming of age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic. The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. A years-long #1 New York Times bestseller, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and Best Book for Reluctant Readers, and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.
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Light in August
by William Faulkner
From the Nobel Prize winner—one of the most highly acclaimed writers of the twentieth century—a novel set in the American South during Prohibition about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality. Light in August features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry. “Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner
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Letters from a Nut
by Ted L. Nancy
Who is Ted L. Nancy? He's a concerned hotel guest searching for a lost tooth... He's a superstitious Vegas high-roller who wants to gamble at a casino in his lucky shrimp outfit... He's the genius inventor of "Six Day Underwear"... He's a demanding dramatist seeking an audience for his play about his 26-year-old dog, Cinnamon... He's the proud owner of Charles, a 36-year-old cat who owes his longevity to a pet food company... He's a loyal fan of the King of Tonga... He is, in reality, a twisted prankster -- a supremely off-kilter alter ego who sends patently ridiculous letters and queries to (and receives surprisingly earnest responses back from) corporate honchos, entertainment conglomerates, national publications, politicians, celebrities and heads of state to everyone, in fact, from the president of the Bon Ami Cleanser Company to U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Letters From A Nut is an insanely inspired, truly madcap collection of Nancy correspondence, a laugh-out-loud-in-public-places aggregation of official -- and officially certifiable -- requests, complaints, fan mail and questions that could not possibly have been taken seriously...but, amazingly, were! Dear Mr. Nancy:"It is not often that we receive such enthusiastic support for the paper bag." --The Paper Bag Council "On behalf of Greyhound, there should be no problem traveling while in your butter costume." --Greyhound Bus Lines "I look forward to working with you to create a better future for this great nation." -- Vice President Al Gore "An unending stream of some of the most hilarious exchanges I've ever read. Everyone I lent this book to just read it and laughed out loud like I did. It's so simple, yet totally inventive. I'm sure some sort of mail fraud charges could be brought to stop this man but, personally, I hope they never catch him." --Jerry Seinfeld