Saturday, May 24, 2014

Summer reading for teens

Last night my neighbor asked me about summer selections for reading for her 15 year old grandson. He has a school suggested list with 2 books required. I have no experience in what teens read, but I was surprised by the list. Seemed awfully mature (and depressing). One was Killer Angels, an historical novel about the Civil War and is used in military schools; another was The Help, about black women who worked as household help in the South of the early 60s, but the narrator is white. The last runaway--an English woman and the underground railroad—which my book club read this year. I read a lot as a teen--mostly historical fiction, but probably not what adults suggested.

So I checked the Internet for summer reading lists. Although there were a few classics, many I found disturbing. Like the one about a boy who lives in a homeless shelter with his spaced out mother because dad is in prison; a 5 year old growing up in 1 room because his mother has been held prisoner for 7 years (like the Cleveland story); Devil in the White City (scariest book I've ever read). But then, Les Miserables and Uncle Tom's Cabin (also on the list) aren't a walk in the park

What are your children/grandchildren reading this summer?

1 comment:

Berit said...

This is what my granddaughter is reading


By and Including Seventh Grade

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Ben and Me, Robert Lawson
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare
Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink
Captain’s Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
The Children’s Homer (The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy), Padraic Colum The Cricket in Times Square, George Seldon
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
The Chronicles of Narnia series, C.S. Lewis
Daniel’s Big Surprise, Jerry B. Jenkins
God’s Outlaw, Brian H. Edwards
The Great Brain, John D. Fitzgerald
Heidi, Johanna Spyri
King Arthur and His Knights, Howard Pyle
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
Old Yeller, Fred Gipson
Outcast - by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers
The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald
Rainbow Garden, Patricia St. John
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
The Railway Children, E. Nesbit
The Story of Doctor Doolittle, Hugh Lofting
Tales of the Kingdom, David and Karen Mains
Tom’s Midnight Garden, Phillippa Pearce
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graeme