Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish.  Each week we get a new theme.  This week's theme is top 10 books that should be required reading for teens. It is hard to say that any book should be "required" as I would love to see teens out there reading books that they choose. Since there will be "required' reading I feel a variety should offered in order to help them become familiar with different types of writing and perhaps find a genre they would like to read more of. It's going to be hard to choose just 10 but here are my picks:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I think this is a book everyone should read, it's one of my all time favorites.

2. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
This is not only a classic with pirates, high adventure, suspense and adventure, it is also study in moral ambiguity. Plenty of fun reading, plenty of meat to discuss.

3. Night by Elie Wiesel
The past should be remembered.

4. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
I loved this one as a teen and loved it as an adult.

5. 1776 by David G. McCullough
History that is very readable.

6. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Or any other book by this great author!

7. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
A great introduction to the fantasy genre. Perhaps they will be encouraged to go on to The Lord of the Rings. I was.

8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
They know the monster from the movies. Now read and find outr who the real monsters are.

9. Anything by John Steinbeck
Peruse his books and choose one.

10.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
This moving story of an autistic teen is a must read.

Well, there are so many great books out there it is hard to stop here.

5 comments:

Beth D. said...

Yay! Another one for Frankenstein! New Follower.

LBC said...

I'm totally with you on Frankenstein, and Steinbeck. Frankenstein is awesome because Shelley was a teen when she wrote it. Pretty awesome.

Come visit me at The Scarlet Letter.

Birdie said...

It *is* hard to stop, isn't it? I almost put Frankenstein on my list. It's so utterly teachable, and it hooks in to many of the cultural myths of its day. I am longing to teach it alongside selections from Paradise Lost.

Great list.

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Two years ago, I read Treasure Island with a high school student in a homeschool programme. We mostly focussed on the context (the Age of Exploration!) and the vocabulary, thanks to his syllabus. I really would have liked to read Treasure Island as a story of moral ambiguity, though. And given how popular pirates have become once more, it's a doubly great theme!

The Oceanside Animals said...

I think I've read all of those except 1776 and the "Curious Incident" (although the latter is on my list). We have plenty of curious incidents in the nighttime involving dogs here too. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a remembrance for Trouble the kitty. :-)