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Language Arts

Read Aloud Recommendations - High School Titles

Intermediate

Middle school

High school

This list was reviewed and recommended by Kama Mitchell, Chugiak High School

Title	Author	Details	Categories	ISBN	Description
The Wild Kid	Harry Mazer	Simon & Schuster 1998 112 pp., $15.00	Mental Disability	ISBN 0689807511	Sammy is a twelve-year-old boy with Down syndrome. Facing daily frustrations, followed by the theft of his bicycle, Sammy takes off on a search. It isn't long before he's lost his bearings. In this slim and fast-moving novel, Sammy does stumble onto some help—in an out-of-the ordinary form. Sammy literally stumbles onto the makeshift home of a feral boy who calls himself "K-Man." K-Man fends for himself in the woods while avoiding a return to reform school. The tension of the interaction between the two keeps you turning the pages as they struggle to survive in tandem. It's not exactly smooth going for the two boys, right down to the end (which leaves you hanging in a hopeful sort of way). Adventure is combined with learning about mental disability and runaways. This book would work as a read-aloud at intermediate, middle, and high school levels.

Skullcrack	Ben Bo	Lerner Publications Company 2000 160 pp., $15.00	Family	ISBN 0822533081	Jonah lives in Ireland with his alcoholic father. Not surprisingly, he spends a lot of his time away from the house, surfing at Craxkull Point. As Jonah devotes himself to water sport, mystical images appear. Images of a young girl continue to haunt him. He's not sure what to make of it but senses that the images are somehow connected to him. Ultimately, it is revealed that he may have a long lost sister somewhere. It's all tied in with Jonah's struggle to find himself. The struggles of family life riddled with alcoholism are combined with a high-interest sport and scenery (think swirling mists and inlet coves) that you can almost see and feel.

How I Spent My Last Night on Earth	Todd Strasser	Simon & Schuster 1998 176 pp., $16.00	High School	ISBN 0689811136	How I Spent My Last Night on Earth portrays a high school version of the apocalypse with a humorous slant. The opening grabs your attention when you learn that the kids at Time Travel High have stumbled on an Internet news flash indicating that the world will end in precisely 24 hours. A giant asteroid is pointed directly toward Earth. A frenzy of high school activity--from academics to dating--ensues. After all, it IS the end of the world (or could be, if you believe what you read on the Internet). The occasionally wacky action moves at a quick pace. You can't help but want to learn the fate of planet Earth and the Time Travel High coeds.

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet	Retold by Bruce Coville, Pictures by Dennis Nolan	Dial Books 1999 38 pp.	Romance/Classics	ISBN 0803724624	Everyone enjoys the story of Romeo and Juliet, but perhaps none so much as high school students. Coville expertly crafts the prose of this beautifully illustrated picture book with key lines from the play. A wonderful introduction to both Shakespeare and the play, this retelling makes a stunning statement of love taken to extremes. Adolescents caught up in the ideals of romance will easily relate to this simplified telling of Shakespeare's play.

Leaving Home	Stories selected by Hazel Rochman and Darlene Z. McCampbell	Harper Collins 1998 231 pp., $15.00	Life Changes	ISBN 0064407063	Wonderful short pieces by distinguished authors (Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Tim O'Brien, Toni Morrison and many more) revolve around the theme of personal journeys. Many of the stories portray personal experiences not unlike our own Alaskan experience of "cabin fever" or the need to escape from a feeling of being "locked inside." These sixteen talented writers portray the ideas that we all eventually move on, we all need to leave home and undergo "trials and rites" at various junctures in our lives. We all undertake our personal journeys, and find ourselves transformed in the process. Leaving home is necessary to "find ourselves." As the book jacket suggests, we leave home to find home. A great selection for soon-to-be graduates.

What's in a Name	Ellen Wittlinger	Simon & Schuster 2000 160 pp., $16.00	Identity	ISBN 068982551x	A multitude of issues and complex concepts are interwoven throughout this book as a community struggles with whether to rename the town from Scrub Harbor to Folly Bay. Ten stories address finding an identity (on many levels), depicting high school stereotypes, and tracing the "Who am I?" question. Some of the wide-ranging issues that crop up include homosexuality, outsiders, dating, race, immigrants, cultures, and identity. These interrelated short stories are told by ten different teens; they manage to take a pretty honest look at themselves. While I did not particularly care whether the town called itself "Scrub Harbor" or "Folly Bay," I did take an interest in the wonderfully diverse characters living in the town-with-an-identity-crisis. Cautionary note: As is true of more than a few contemporary works of YA fiction, this book does contain some strong/objectionable language.

Speak	Laurie Halse Anderson	Farrar Straus Giroux 1999	Rape	ISBN 0374371520	This is one of the best YA fiction books in recent publication, as evidenced by its selection as the 2000 Michael L. Printz Honor Book and a 1999 National Book Award finalist. The author does not believe that dreams are the best inspiration for writing; nightmares are far better. Her nightmares have made for a compelling story that deals with the pain of rape, and drawing utterly within oneself. In this day and age, we're learning that it's often the quiet students about whom we should be most concerned—the ones who are screaming beneath the surface. Melinda is one such student, a freshman at Merryweather High School. She suffers the brutal after-effect of rape [the portrayal of which is handled delicately by the author] at the summer senior party. The "corrosive details" of daily life in high school are deftly illustrated. For example, the author has written that she herself was quite a "handful" in high school, and depicts a classroom scene using the experience of her own behavior in English class (pages 100-102). Speak takes a realistic look at life in high school as well as a personal wounding from which it is extraordinarily painful to recover.

The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales	Retold by Francesca Lia Block	Harper Collins 2000 229 pp.	Modern Fairy Tale	ISBN 0060281294	Students share the prior experience of listening to fairy tales, but nothing like THESE unique, evocative, passionate retellings of nine tales. They are not for the timid reader. FLB has a surreal style all her own. Not fairy tales like you've heard them before, these stories are contemporary, hip, daring, sensual. Sleeping Beauty is actually a club girl from L.A., for example. The heroines encounter an abusive stepfather, sex, and drugs. Recommended for reading to older senior high students. Cautionary note: Though the writing is some of the best and most original you'll encounter in YA literature, some of the stories have sexual content and objectionable language.

Stop Pretending or What Really Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy	Sonya Somes	Harper Collins 1999 149 pp.	Mental Illness	ISBN 0060283874	This slim volume of free verse poetry will positively inspire your students in creative writing, composition, or poetry classes. Both you and your students will reach for paper on which to write recollections. Stop Pretending somehow compels you to try your own hand at this challenging but satisfying form of poetry that reads like short chapters of a story. As the title suggests, the "story poems" deal with mental illness. A younger sister describes what it's like to see her sister breaking down, as well as its effect on the family, and the treatment of mental illness.

True Believer	Virginia Euwer Wolf	Atheneum Books 2001 264 pp.	Poverty	ISBN 0689828276	A story written in 85 free verse poems, this book (the 2nd in the Make Lemonade series) is about inner city poverty: "Šin a poor school in a poor place/ in an ugly time of people dying from guns and drugs and cruelty, there is hope." Despite the challenges of inner city life, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn finds inspiration in the lives of friends and mentors. Compelling characters include Patrick, the boy who wears the same shirt to Biology class each day; Jody, a homosexual boy whom LaVaughn loves from afar; and Myrtle and Annie, her religious friends. Perseverance and determination are the underpinnings of True Believer, as evidenced by several selected passages. "We will rise to the occasion, which is life," is one. "Defining moments present themselves to us, often disguised, when we must make momentous decisions that shape our lives," is another. And in the words of a minister in the story, "If there is a Hell/ it's when we stop caring about each other." Cautionary note: This heartwarming story deals with potentially "sensitive issues" such as homosexuality and religion.