High School (Grades 9–12)

Two students smiling and using a laptop in a classroom.

The book selection for high schools includes drama, adventure, romance, fantasy, historical fiction, and non-fiction. The books align with multiple high school courses including American History, World History, and Cultures and Geography. The lesson plans can be used to teach 21^st Century skills including leadership, ethics, and technology literacy.

Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl

Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.

13 Days

During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

A Child Called “It”

Pelzer writes about his abusive mother who singles him out among his siblings for repeated emotional and physical punishment.

A Lesson Before Dying

Two young black men, one condemned to death for a murder and the other a teacher, form a bond in a small Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s.

A Raisin in the Sun

This play tells the story of the Younger family; and touches on issues they face in their lives: generational clashes, the civil rights, and the women’s movement.

Adventures of Ulysses

The mythological wanderings of Odysseus are recounted by the Greek epic poet, Homer. (Circa 550 B.C.)

All Quiet On The Western Front

This novel depicts the experiences of a group of young German soldiers fighting and suffering during the last days of World War I.

An Island Like You

Interconnected short stories feature life in Puerto Rico and in a New Jersey neighborhood. The Latino characters indulge in rivalries, a project to bring live theater to the barrio, and other activities.

Animal Farm

A group of barnyard animals overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up their own egalitarian society.

Before We Were Free

Twelve-year-old Anita is living in the Dominican Republic in 1960. The secret police have started terrorizing her family for their suspected opposition to the country's dictator.

Blue Gold

The lives of three teen girls are affected by coltan, or "blue gold" which is a rare mineral used in making cell phones and computers.

Bread Givers

This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share.

Breaking Through

Since coming from Mexico to California ten years ago, fourteen-year-old Francisco is still working in the fields, fighting to "break through" to improve his life and complete his education.

Bronx Masquerade

Grimes features the voices of 18 urban youths who share their innermost feelings in their open mike poetry presentations.

Call of the Wild

The story opens at a ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California when Buck is stolen from his home and sold into service as a sled dog in Alaska.

Cannery Row

The adventures and misadventures of cannery workers living in the run-down waterfront section of Monterey, California, are recounted and exposed.

Catfish and Mandala

This autobiographical account tells of a Vietnamese American who feels like an outsider in both America and Vietnam.

Children of the River

At thirteen, Sundara fled Cambodia with her aunt's family to escape the Khmer Rouge army, leaving her parents, two siblings and the boy she has loved since childhood behind.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Code Talkers

Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language.

Cry, the Beloved country

In the 1950s, a black South African accused of a crime turns to his minister father and a white attorney for help, but the racial problems of the country prevent justice from being served.

Dead Man Walking

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison.

Death Be Not Proud

Johnny Gunther was only seventeen years old when he died of a brain tumor. During the months of his illness, everyone near him was unforgettably impressed by his level-headed courage, his wit and quiet friendliness, and, above all, his unfaltering patience through times of despair.

East Side Dreams

Art Rodriguez experiences an unpleasant childhood full of difficult obstacles that could have profoundly impaired his chance for a normal life.

Fahrenheit 451

Guy Montage is a career fireman who lives in a world where thinking is dangerous and books are forbidden.

Fallen Angels

Active duty in Vietnam is seen through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old African American private. He and his new buddies experience bonding, battles, grave wounds, and the brutal fact that not all will return home.

Falling Leaves

Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval.

Farewell to Manzanar

Along with 10,000 other Japanese Americans, seven-year-old Jeanne Wakatsuki grew up behind barbed wire, under searchlight towers, and with armed guards.

Flowers for Algernon

Algernon is a lab mouse and Charlie is a mentally disabled man. Find out how a brain operation increases Charlie’s IQ and changes his life and the life of Algernon.

Grapes of Wrath

The hardships faced by migrant agricultural workers who arrived in California during the Great Depression are depicted by this Nobel Prize-winning California author.

Hatchet

After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian survives 54 days in the wilderness, initially with only the aid of a hatchet given to him by his mother.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Interrelated stories describe the experiences of the four Garcia sisters before and after their family's exile from the Dominican Republic. The novel is set in New York in the 1960s.

I Am The Cheese

Imagine discovering that your whole life has been a fiction, your identity altered, and a new family history created.

I Lived on Butterfly Hill

Eleven-year-old Celeste lives peacefully in Chile-until one day when warships are spotted in the harbor and schoolmates start disappearing from class.

If You Come Softly

This novel presents a gently told story of an interracial romance between Jeremiah, a fifteen-year-old African American, whose parents have just separated, and Ellie, an upper-middle-class Jewish girl. The story is told in alternating chapters by Ellie and Jeremiah.

Jesse

To escape a home dominated by his alcoholic stepfather, 17-year-old Jesse abruptly leaves high school, moves into an apartment with his older brother, and takes classes at Fresno City College.

Julius Caesar

Brutus, best friend of the Roman ruler Caesar, reluctantly joins a successful plot to murder Caesar and subsequently destroys himself.

Kindred

A contemporary Los Angeles woman travels back in time to an Antebellum plantation, where she is assumed to be a slave and discovers the identity of her ancestors. Violent confrontations and emotional intensity are aspects of this novel depicting the political, ethical, and social influences of slavery on both black and white Americans.

Left for Dead

Recalls the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at the end of World War II, the Navy cover-up and unfair court martial of the ship's captain, and how a young boy helped the survivors set the record straight fifty-five years later.

Lord of the Flies

Stranded on an island when an atomic war destroys the rest of the world, a group of young boys revert to savagery as they struggle to survive.

Maniac Magee

Maniac is an "on-his-own" kid searching for a place that he can call home. When he sees no difference between the people of the East Side and the West Side, others begin to realize that Jeffrey "Maniac" Magee is truly the "stuff" from which legends are made.

My Brother Sam is Dead

The Meeker family is torn apart during the American Revolutionary War when one son joins the rebel forces and the rest of the family try to remain neutral in a divided town.

Nectar in a Sieve

This is a story of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India. Her entire life becomes a gallant, persistent battle to care for those she loves.

Night

This true account relates the author's experiences as a Jewish boy with his family in a Nazi concentration camp.

Nightjohn

Nightjohn, an enslaved African American, risks severe punishments by teaching a young slave girl to read.

Of Mice and Men

George and Lenny are migrant workers in the Salinas Valley of California during the Great Depression, they dream of a time when they will have enough money to buy their own farm.

Othello

Othello, a brave and frequently absent Moor general, is tricked by the evil lago into believing his beloved Desdemona has been unfaithful.

Our Town

Through simple dialogue and nostalgic touches, the play magically conveys a profound love story between George Gibbs and Emily Webb set against a rich study of citizens of a small town.

Paper Towns

Quentin has spent a lifetime loving adventurous Margo from afar. When she cracks open a window and climbs into his life-he follows.

Parrot in the Oven

Manny, fourteen years old, is confronted with an alcoholic father, friends involved in gangs, and a rough neighborhood. Manny struggles to make the right choices and to somehow belong.

Pygmalion

This play is about Pygmalion of legend who falls in love with his perfect female statue and persuades Venus to bring her to life so that he can marry her.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Set in Mississippi during the 1930s, this modern classic portrays the struggles of the Logan family, determined to retain the land they own in the face of threats, harassment, and prejudice.

Romeo and Juliet

Two lovers are destroyed by the hatred of their families for one another in this play about prejudice, innocence, and power.

Somewhere in the Darkness

In this story, Jimmy learns about his father and about himself, finding out that while things can't always be fixed, sometimes they can be understood, and maybe even forgiven.

Song of Solomon

Follow Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins. You will be introduced to a cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

Speak

Melinda is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now nobody will talk or listen to her.

Taste of Salt: A Story of Modern Haiti

Seventeen-year-old Dijo (a victim in the real-life 1991 firebombing of a boys' shelter) is remembered by a girl named Jeremie, who cares for him in the hospital after he has been beaten in an unprovoked attack.

The Art of Keeping Cool

Fear permeates the Rhode Island coastal town where Robert, his mother, and sister are living out the war with his paternal grandparents: Fear of Nazi submarines offshore. Fear of Abel Hoffman, a German artist living reclusively outside of town. And for Robert, a more personal fear, of his hot-tempered, controlling grandfather.

The Book Thief

Liesel is a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

Malawi was a land withered by drought and hunger and where modern science was a mystery. William read about windmills and dreamed about building one to bring electricity and water to his village.

The Contender

Alfred begins going to Donatelli’s Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions. There he learns it’s the effort, not the win, that makes the man.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night–time

Fifteen-year-old Christopher is gifted with a superbly logical brain, however, everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning.

The First Part Last

In this prequel to HEAVEN, sixteen-year-old Bobby struggles between sleep deprivation, school pressures, and an increasing sense of fear as he cares for his infant daughter, Feather.

The Giver

Jonas lives in a seemingly utopian society. He is about to experience the Ceremony of Twelve to determine his role in life. Little does he know that he will discover the secret memories of his dystopian society

The Golden Compass

Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jodan College, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle-a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears.

The Good Earth

The Good Earth follows the life of Wang Lung, a Chinese man who rises from a peasant farmer, struggling for a living, to become the head of the powerful House of Wang.

The Help

Three women will come together for a project that will put them all at risk. They are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their time.

The Hobbit

In the land of Middle Earth - inhabited by dwarves, elves, goblins, dragons, and humans - Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit, encounters many adventures when he is persuaded to join a band of dwarves on an expedition to recover a stolen treasure hidden by a thieving dragon.

The House on Mango Street

A young girl living in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago ponders her environment and evaluates her relationships with family and friends.

The Hunger Games

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games," a fight to the death on live TV.