Today, for their Road Trip Wednesday feature, YA Highway asked: In high school, teens are made to read the classics – Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Bronte, Dickens – but there are a lot of books out there never taught in schools. So if you had the power to change school curriculums, which books would you be sure high school students were required to read?
I’ve chosen a curriculum geared towards open discussions, multimedia (movies! audiobooks!) and with prose geared to high-school (secondary school) readers. I kept a few of the classics and mixed in different tenses, genres and very different narrators.
A lot of the classics require a lot of translation (Shakespeare!) and working out the meaning behind old-fashioned words. This kills the joy of reading for a lot of readers, and a lot of these works speak to big, universal issues. Essential stuff, but kids are only going to take it in if they really put their mind to a book.
Fiction geared at younger readers speaks to them – issues in their life, language they can understand without a glossary down the side of the page. It’s fun, and fun reading is often forgotten in schools.
- Harry Potter: Of course this has to be on there. Harry Potter’s a phenomenon, and has such a huge range of discussion topics. The mythology, the change in maturity levels, the symbolism (Dumbledore and phoenixes!), the seamless integration of multicultural characters, the movie version changes, the Stephen Fry audiobooks!
- Catcher in the Rye: Gotta keep in some of the classes. This is a pull-no-punches book for lads and ladies alike, and I love it too pieces. The narrator’s unique, and his strong opinions are always good discussion fodder.
- Perks of Being A Wallflower: This has a lot of similarities to Catcher… as well as differences. It deals with difficult topics like abuse, themes like growing up, it’s in letter format with a strong first person narrator. It’s wonderfully blunt and honest.
- Hunger Games: The pacing! The present tense! The violence! The politics! There’s a lot to chew on in this trilogy, and while some of the politics might be lost the violence and social pressures will definitely ring true. If I were a teacher, I’d watch Battle Royale alongside this because of the similar themes.
- Of Mice and Men: I love this book. Fast, with a very unique format, it was designed originally as a stageplay so each chapter begins with a detailed scene description and character descriptions are spare. It also has an entertaining audiobook (male narrators forcing female voices for the lady characters are always a riot), and a good movie.
- Project – Pick a Banned Book: The end-of-the-year project would be to pick from a range of banned books and write about it, because exposure to new and old banned books is important so kids can voice their opinion on censorship.
The Hobbit
The Discworld books (yes, all of them, but just the YA ones would do as they’re fantastic and surprisingly edgy)
Blue Remembered Hills. It’s a play, but it was the best play I did in college
Oooh, solid call on the Hobbit – I love LOTR, but as a kid the Hobbit was much more enjoyable. DRAGONS!
Discworld’s YA books are amazing – the Wee Free Men would go down particularly well up here. :D And Amazing Maurice would work well anywhere.
Hadn’t heard of that play, it sounds powerfully dark. We did “Bang, Bang, You’re Dead” a controversial play from the point of view of a school shooter. That was amazing fun and made a big impact on me.