High School Reading Recommendations

 

With all the different high school reading lists floating around out there, we decided to make our own. This was a labor of love, comprised of my reading experience, student advice, and for the first time, staff reading recommendations! 
WPLHighSchoolRecommendations.pdf

Across the Universe
by Beth Revis
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Amy, a cryogenically frozen passenger on a spaceship making a 300-year-journey, is awoken 50 years early to discover that somebody on the ship is trying to kill her.

Al Jaffee’s Mad Life
by Mary-Lou Weisman
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A biography of Al Jaffee, the cartoonist and cultural icon who enlivened the pages of Mad Magazine beginning in 1955 with his “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and fold-in cartoons. 

Ape House
by Sara Gruen
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A family of trained apes is kidnapped from a laboratory and later mysteriously appears on a reality show, when it becomes a scientist’s personal mission to rescue them. 

Because I Am Furniture
by Thalia Chaltas
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Growing up in abusive home, a girl finds confidence and escape through volleyball. Told in verse.

Bitter Melon
by Cara Chow
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Crushed by the weight of her mother’s high expectations, until Chinese-American Frances secretly rebels and takes charge of her own life. 

Bossypants
by Tina Fey
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Tina Fey shares humorous essays on her awkward childhood, her experiences at Saturday Night Live, and her many opinions about life. 

Bound
by Antonya Nelson
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A woman finds herself the guardian of the teenage daughter of her former teenage best friend in this character-driven novel. 

Columbine
by Dave Cullen
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An account of one of the most famous school shootings in history. Released on the 10-year anniversary, the book looks at the incident from the perspective of the victims, the shooters, and society.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
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After her father and brother are forced to flee Kabul, Kamila Sidiqi becomes the sole breadwinner by starting a dressmaking business. A true story.

Exposed
by Kimberly Marcus
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Told in free-verse poetry, Liz's world is turned upside-down when she accuses her best friend's brother of rape.

Fall For Anything
by Courtney Summers
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Eddie grows closer to a boy named Culler Evans, a former photography student of her father's who may hold clues to his death.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth
by Carrie Ryan
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Mary’s mother is bitten by the Unconsecrated, the undead who live outside their walled village, and newly orphaned Mary finds her life and her town changed forever. 

Game of Thrones
by George RR Martin
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The first book in the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. Now a popular HBO series. 

Girl in Translation
by Jean Kwok
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Kimberly and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to a life of sweatshop labor and a tenement apartment, but through hard work, she attains acceptance into the Ivy League.  

The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy
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Thirteen YA authors write fiction inspired by Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Still haven’t read the Hunger Games? Go! Now! 

Glimmerglass
by Jenna Black
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Teenage runaway Dana finds that she is a Faeriewalker who can travel between the human world and the world of magic. Searching for her father in Avalon, she finds herself entwined in a cutthroat game of faerie politics. 

The Good Soldiers
by David Finkel
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Follows the true story of the 2-16 Battalion as they fight “the surge,” a 2007 operation to secure Baghdad in the Iraq War.

Grace
by Elizabeth Scott
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16-yr-old Grace has been raised for the single purpose of being a suicide bomber in a revolution against a totalitarian regime, but can follow her fate?

Half a Life
by Darren Strauss
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Half a life ago, the author accidentally killed a girl while driving his car. The book speaks of his anguish, guilt, and how one second has changed every moment of his life. 

Half Empty
by David Rakoff
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Perpetual pessimist David Rakoff shares humorous essays about how the world is going downhill. A frequent contributor to NPR’s This American Life.

Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat
by Gwen Cooper
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An eyeless cat exceeds the author’s expectations, including chasing off a burglar, surviving being trapped alone in an apartment post-9/11, and teaching the author how to love. 

Huntress
by Malinda Lo
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The world is not right; the sun hasn't shone in years, vegetation is dying and strange creatures have become to appear. Can two seventeen-year-olds restore the balance of the earth?

If I Stay and Where She Went
by Gayle Forman
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After Mia’s family is killed in a car accident, she struggles in a coma and must decide to live or die. In the sequel, her boyfriend, a burgeoning rockstar, must deal with the consequences. 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
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A poor woman’s cancerous cells live on in research labs decades after her death, leading to questions of medical ethics and familial compensation. A true story.

Imperfect Birds
by Anne Lamott
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Rosie tries to balance her rampant substance abuse with her home life until an incident causes her parents to send her to rehab. 

Mudbound
by Hilary Jordan
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Set in 1946, Laura, a college-educated schoolteacher, reluctantly leaves her job to become a farmer’s wife, where she finds herself surrounded by misogyny and racism.

My Reading Life
by Pat Conroy
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The bestselling author celebrates the effect that reading has had on his life and discusses the books which have influenced him along the way.

Orange is the New Black 
by Piper Kerman
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Convicted of drug-smuggling and money laundering for bad decisions made long ago, a Smith graduate recounts her time spent inside a women’s prison and the friends she made along the way.

Reality Check
by Peter Abrahams
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After losing out on college scholarships due to a knee injury, Cody, a high school football player drops out of school to take a job, until his ex-girlfriend goes missing. 

The Replacement
by Brenna Yovanoff
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16-year-old Mackie, a changeling who was swapped for his parents' stolen child, struggles to hide his condition, until a friend's sister is stolen and he must confront his own kind to save her.

Room
by Emma Donoghue
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A woman is held captive in a converted shed in her kidnapper’s yard, where she attempts to create a comfortable life for her 5-year-old son 

Scent of the Missing
by Susannah Charleson
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The author recounts her experience of adopting a Golden Retriever and training it to become a search-and-rescue dog. 

Sleepwalk With Me
by Mike Birbiglia
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Comedian Mike Birbiglia has mastered the art of self-deprecation: telling embarrassing stories of his childhood, his early stand-up career, and his problems with sleepwalking. 

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk
by David Sedaris
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A humorous collection of modern day animal fables, from a potbellied pig that can’t seem to diet, to a cat attending an A.A. meeting. 

The Spy
by Clive Cussler
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Set in 1908, a brilliant American battleship designer commits suicide. His daughter enlists the help of the Van Dorn Detective Agency to determine whether he took his own life... or he was murdered.

Super Sad True Love Story
by Gary Shteyngart
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The son of a Russian immigrant falls in love with a young Korean-American in this dystopian novel set in a future New York dominated by retail, media, and materialism. 

The Things a Brother Knows
by Dana Reinhardt
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A young man struggles to reconnect with his older brother, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after returning from war.

Townie
by Andre Dubois
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In this memoir, the author recounts his childhood spent between the very different worlds of his divorced parents: growing up in a dangerous, economically depressed Boston suburb with his mother, and spending weekends with his father, a successful author. 

Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing
by Roger Rosenblatt
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Speaking from his experience as a writing instructor, the author writes about the “why”—not the “how”—of writing.

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures
by Malcolm Gladwell
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A collection of the author’s essays which explore the hidden side to life, including inquiries into whether smart people are overrated, how hair dye relates to postwar America, and why ketchup has stayed the same despite the many innovations in mustard over the years, 

Will Grayson, Will Grayson
by John Green and David Levithan
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Two teens named Will Grayson find their lives intertwined when Will begins dating the other Will’s best friend Tiny. 

Wither
by Lauren DeStefano
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When an incurable disease takes a generation’s lives when they reach their early 20’s, the healthiest, prettiest females are kidnapped and sold into polygamist marriages in an attempt to repopulate a healthy world.

Z
by Michael Thomas Ford
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A generation after the eradication of a deadly zombie virus, teenagers become obsessed with playing a virtual-reality zombie game; but where does “virtual” end and reality begin? 

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