Contemporary, Contemporary Classic, and Classic Texts About Adolescents
Disclaimer: The texts on these lists are for your review and consideration only. We make no claim that they are appropriate for all adolescents or for the students in your classroom. We urge you never to assign any text that you have not carefully previewed yourself. In some cases, you may decide to read books on this list yourself, just to get an idea of the myriad of issues that teenagers have faced throughout history. The classification of texts into Contemporary, Contemporary Classic, and Classic is also not intended to be inflexible, as definitions of these terms vary greatly from one source to the next.
As we noted in Chapter two, the list of available texts for and about adolescents is constantly growing. It would be futile to compile any kind of comprehensive list of contemporary titles. A list of useful websites is included in this site. In addition, subscribing to publications such as the Alan Review and reading reviews of current literary texts in publications by associations such as the American Library Association, the International Reading Organization, and the National Council of Teachers of English should be part of your ongoing professional practice.
The titles that follow are arranged according to some overriding themes and questions that you might want to address in your classroom. The list begins with three suggested books--one from each of the categories--that you might want to sponsor for small literature circles. For each suggested theme, this list is followed by three additional lists of texts that you might choose for whole-class or independent reading.
Focus One: Coming of Age Female
Questions:
-How is "coming of age" portrayed in the selected texts?
-What issues or events are catalysts for growth in each of the texts?
-How do gender, culture, family dynamics, and historical period complicate and define what it means to grow up or come of age?
-What differences and universals do you notice between coming of age stories with female as opposed to male protagonists?
Possible Literature Circle Books
Little Women (Alcott)
The Color Purple (Walker)
The Secret Life of Bees (Kidd)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Smith)
Heidi (Spyri)
Black Beauty (Sewell)
Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery)
My Antonia (Cather)
Where the Lillies Bloom (Cleaver)
Martha Quest (Lessing)
The Ripening Seed (Colette)
Contemporary Classics
The Summer of my German Soldier (Greene)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (McCullers)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
A Member of the Wedding (McCullers)
An American Childhood (Dillard)
Annie John (Kincaid)
Cat's Eye (Atwood)
Contemporary
Ellen Foster (Gibbon)
Charms for an Easy Life (Gibbon)
Bastard out of Carolina (Alison)
Rumors of Peace (Lefland)
When I was Puerto Rican (and) Almost a Woman (Santiago)
Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind (Fisher Staples)
Yellow Raft, Blue Water (Dorris)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou)
Nectar in a Sieve (Markandaya)
What Girls Learn (Cook)
Sweet Summer: Growing Up With & Without My Dad (Moore Campbell)
Rattlebone (Clair)
The House on Mango Street (Cisneros)
Coming of Age in Mississippi (Moody)
Lucy (Kincaid)
Autobiography of a Family Photo (Woodson)
The Patron Saint of Liars (Patchett)
A Solitary Blue (Voigt)
Focus Two: Coming of Age Male
Questions:
-How is "coming of age" portrayed in the selected texts?
-What issues or events are catalysts for growth?
-How do gender, culture, family dynamics, and historical period complicate and define what it means to grow up or come of age?
-What differences and universals do you notice between coming of age stories with female as opposed to male protagonists?
Possible Literature Circle Books
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
The Kite Runner (Housseini)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Horatio Alger series
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane)
Look Homeward Angel (Wolfe)
A Death in the Family (Agee)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Contemporary Classics
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Sillitoe)
The Yearling (Rawlings)
Sounder (Armstrong)
Old Yeller (Gipson)
A Separate Peace (Knowles)
The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
Contemporary
Kaffir Boy (Mathabane)
Montana 1948 (Watson)
The Crossing (McCarthy)
The Last Picture Show (McMurtry)
This Boy's Life (Wolfe)
Hoop Dreams: A True Story of Hardship and Triumph (Joravsky)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir (McCourt)
The Color of Water (McBride)
Boy (Dahl)
Gentlehands (Kerr)
Bless me Ultima (Rudolpho Anaya)
Focus 3 Family in Fiction
Questions:
-What are the differences in how families are constituted and portrayed across the selected texts? What might these differences mean in terms of how "family" is constructed in different cultural contexts and historical periods?
-How are these portrayals perhaps influenced by the race, gender, ethnicity, social class, and background of the protagonist and h/er family?
-What universals (if any) can you identify? What might these universals mean in terms of how the construct of "family" is portrayed in books marketed to, taught to, and/or read by adolescents?
Possible Literature Circle Books
Cheaper by the Dozen (Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey)
Ordinary People (Judith Guest)
Weetzie Bat (Francesca Lia Block)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Bobsey Twins Series (Hope et al.)
A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
Little House on the Prarie (Wilder)
The Good Earth (Buck)
Forsythe Saga (Galsworthy)
The House of the Seven Gables (Hawthorne)
Women in Love (Lawrence)
To the Lighthouse (Woolf)
Contemporary Classics
Death of a Salesman (Miller)
Sarah Plain and Tall (MacLachlan)
Jacob Have I Loved (Paterson)
The Chosen (Potok)
The Friends (Guy)
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (Woodson)
Contemporary
The Joy Luck Club (Tan)
The Great Santini (Conroy)
This Boy's Life (Wolff)
In Country (Mason)
Baby (MacLachlan)
Rich in Love (Humphreys)
Focus Four: Race, Ethnicity, Culture, and Representation
Questions:
-How do race, ethnicity, and cultural background influence the actions, beliefs, and identities of the various protagonists?
-What stereotypes (if any) are evident in the various texts? How are these stereotypes resisted, perpetuated by, or accepted by the characters themselves?
-How are issues of race, ethnicity and culture presented in the various texts across historical periods and cultural contexts?
Possible Literature Circle Books
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Black Boy (Wright)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Alexie)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Stowe)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston)
Contemporary Classics
Go Tell it on the Mountain (Baldwin)
Soul on Ice (Cleaver)
The Invisible Man (Ellison)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Audre Lord)
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (Richard Rodriguez)
Contemporary
Life on the Color Line (Williams)
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
Witness (Karen Hesse)
Down these Mean Streets (Piri Thomas)
How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents (Alvarez)
Cantora (Lopez-Medina)
The Color of Water (McBride)
Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (hooks)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (Hong Kingston)
Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl Growing Up (Manning)
Brown Girl, Brownstones (Marshall)
The Diary of Latoya Hunter (Hunter)
Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa (Mattera)
Famous All Over Town (Santiago)
Living Up the Street: Narrative Reflections (Soto)
My Indian Boyhood (Luther Standing Bear)
Focus Five: Bad Boys, Loose Girls: Youth, Delinquency, and Violence
Questions:
-How is "delinquency" or "bad behavior" defined across historical periods and contexts?
-Do the portrayals of delinquency differ in terms of protagonist's gender?
-What do these portrayals say about the norms and mores of society across various times and in contexts?
-What happened to young people who defied these norms and expectations?
Possible Literature Circle Books
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
The Outsiders (Hinton)
Monster (Myers)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
Native Son (Wright)
Rite of Passage (Wright)
Contemporary Classics
Rumble Fish (Hinton)
The Chocolate War (Cormier)
That was Then, This was Now (Hinton)
Clockwork Orange (Burgess)
Foxfire (Oates)
Down these Mean Streets (Thomas)
Contemporary
Chinese Handcuffs (Crutcher)
Shooting Monarchs (Halliday)
Shattering Glass (Giles)
Crusader (Bloor)
Give a Boy a Gun (Strasser)
Breaking Rank (Randle)
Trino's Choice (Bertrand)
Gang Girl (Fleischman)
Party Girl (Ewing)
Drive-By (Ewing)
Holes (Sachar)
Killing Mr. Griffin (Duncan)
A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich (Childress)
Focus Six: Love, Romance, Sexuality, and Sexual Identity
Questions:
-How are love, romance, sexuality, and/or sexual identity portrayed across various historical and cultural contexts?
-What happens to young people who go beyond what society deems to be "the norm" in terms of sexuality or sexual identity? Do these norms differ historically?
-How do the various protagonists view love, romance, sexuality, and/or sexual identity in terms of their own behavior and societal expectations?
Possible Literature Circle Books
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (Head)
Speak (Halse Anderson)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Willams)
Of Human Bondage (Maugham)
The Awakening (Chopin)
Moll Flanders (Defoe)
Fanny Hill Cleland)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (Fowles)
Gone with the Wind (Mitchell)
A Farewell to Arms (Hemmingway)
Tea and Sympathy (Anderson)
Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
Contemporary Classics
Portnoy's Complaint (Roth)
Goodby Columbus (Roth)
Forever (Blume)
Annie on My Mind (Garden)
If I Love you, am I Trapped Forever? (Kerr)
Up in Seth's Room (Mazer)
Endless Love (Spencer)
Contemporary
Vision Quest (Davis)
My Darling, My Hamburger (Zindel)
Trying Hard to Hear You (Scoppetone)
Love is one of the Choices (Klein)
Too Bad About the Haines Girl (Sherburne)
It Could Happen to Anyone (Craig)
Jock and Jill (Lipsyte)
Push (Sapphire)
Deliver Us from Evie (Kerr)
Running Loose (Crutcher)
You Would if you Loved Me (Stirling)
A Very Touchy Subject (Strasser)
The Man Without a Face (Holland)
Oranges are not the only Fruit (Winterson)
Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence (Bauer)
Focus Seven: Our Bodies, Ourselves: Images of Beauty and Body Image
Questions:
-How do private and social conceptions about the body and about physical attractiveness differ across various historical and cultural contexts?
-How do the various protagonists accept or resist societal expectations and stereotypes?
-What messages might adolescents pick up about issues of body image by reading the various texts?
Possible Literature Circle Books
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Bluest Eye (Morrison)
Autobiography of a Face (Lucy Grealey)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Frankenstein (Mary Shelly)
Richard II (William Shakespeare)
Selected Fairy Tales (i.e., Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast)
Contemporary Classics
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack (Kerr)
Little, Little (M.E. Kerr)
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (Blume)
Contemporary
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (Crutcher)
Vision Quest (Terry Davis)
She's Come Undone (Lamb)
The Princess Diaries (Cabot)
Keeping the Moon (Dessen)
The Skin I'm In (Flake)
Pretty Good for a Girl: A Memoir (Haywood)
My Life as a Body (Klein)
The Best Little Girl in the World (Levenkron)
Freak the Mighty (Philbrick)
Focus Eight: A Better World?: Utopias, Dystopias, Science Fiction and Fantasy
Questions:
-What differences and commonalities emerge in the various texts across time and social/historical contexts?
-How have our visions of "the perfect world" changed or remained constant over time?
-Individually and collectively, what do these texts seem to say to young people who might choose to read them?
Possible Literature Circle Books:
Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
The Giver (Lowry)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
1984 (George Orwell)
Looking Backward (Bellamy)
Dracula (Stoker)
The War of the Worlds (Wells)
Woman on the Edge of Time (Piercy)
Contemporary Classics
The Left Hand of Darkness (LeGuin)
A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle)
The Ring Trilogy (Tolkein)
Dragonriders of Pern Series (McCaffrey)
Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions (Vonnegut)
Siddhartha (Hesse)
On the Beach (Shute)
Martian Chronicles, Farenheit 451 (Bradbury)
A Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
Dune (Herbert)
Interstellar Pig (Sleator)
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood)
Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)
Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut)
Contemporary
Harry Potter Series
Jurassic Park (Crichton)
A Gathering Blue (Lowry)
Phoenix Rising (Hesse)
Parable of the Sower (Butler)
Dragon and Thief (Zahn)
The Exchange Student (Gilmore)
The Golden Compass (Pullman)
Floodland (Sedgwick)
The Wind Singer (Nicholson)
Hole in the Sky (Hautman)
Focus Nine: Ability, Disability, and Mental Health
Questions:
-How do private and social conceptions about ability, disability, and mental healt differ across various historical and cultural contexts?
-How do the various protagonists accept or resist societal expectations and stereotypes about these issues?
-What messages might adolescents pick up about these issues by reading the various texts?
Possible Literature Circle Books
The Bell Jar (Plath)
One Flew Over the Cukko's Nest (Kesey)
Girl Interrupted (Kaysen)
Books for Whole-Class or Independent Reading
Classics
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)
King Lear (Shakespeare)
Richard II (Shakespeare)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Of Human Bondage (Maugham)
The Secret Garden (Howe)
Silent Snow, Secret Snow (Aiken)
Contemporary Classics
Go Ask Alice (anonymous)
One Flew Over the Cukko's Nest (Kesey)
Alan and Naomi (Levoy)
David and Lisa (Rubin)
I Never Promised you a Rose Garden (Greenberg)
Sybil (Schreiber)
The Three Faces of Eve (Thigpen, Cleckley, & Hunt)
I am the Cheese and The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (Cormier)
The Elephant Man (Sparks)
Contemporary
August (Rosner)
Other Women (Alther)
My Left Foot (Brown)
I Know this Much is True (Lamb)
America (Frank)
Stones from the River (Hegi)
Don't Stop the Music (Perske)
Tangerine (Bloor)
Rats Saw God (homas)
Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic (Williams)
Somebody Somewhere (Williams)
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Fadiman)
There's a Boy in Here (Barron)
Seeing in Pictures (Grandin)
"Retarded isn't Stupid Mom" (Kaufman)
Train Go Sorry (Cohen)
Deaf Like Me (Spradley & Spradley)
Jay's Journal (Sparks)
Izzy, Willy-Nilly, (Voigt)
The Crazy Horse Electric Game (Crutcher)
Invincible Summer (Ferris)
Deenie (Blume)
Icy Sparks (Rubio)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Haddon)
Top Young Adult Novels of All Time
Hipple & Claiborne (2004): survey of teachers, college professors of young adult literature, librarians, and even some authors of young adult novels.
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. 1999.
Block, Francesca Lia. Weetzie Bat. 1989.
Cormier, Robert. After the First Death. 1979.
Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War. 1974.
Cormier, Robert. I Am the Cheese. 1977.
Crutcher, Chris. Chinese Handcuffs. 1989.
Crutcher, Chris. Ironman. 1995.
Crutcher, Chris. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. 1993.
Curtis, Christopher Paul. The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963. 1995.
Garden, Nancy. Annie on My Mind. 1982.
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. 1997.
Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. 1967.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. 1993.
Myers, Walter Dean. Fallen Angels. 1988.
Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. 1999.
Paulsen, Gary. Hatchet. 1987.
Sachar, Louis. Holes. 1998.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. 1951.
Spinelli, Jerry. Stargirl. 2000.
Taylor, Mildred D. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. 1976.
Wolff, Virginia Euwer. Make Lemonade. 1993.
Zindel, Paul. The Pigman. 1968.
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