Identity Development
Students will read about the growth in the self-image of protagonists. They will discuss how the social, cultural, and religious environment shapes young people’s sense of self-efficacy and personal aspirations.
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.
Bronx Masquerade
Grimes features the voices of 18 urban youths who share their innermost feelings in their open mike poetry presentations.
Catfish and Mandala
This autobiographical account tells of a Vietnamese American who feels like an outsider in both America and Vietnam.
Child of the Owl
The story is set in 1960 in San Francisco's Chinatown. Casey, a Chinese American teen, slowly discovers the value of her Chinese heritage while living with her grandmother.
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.
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.
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.
Heaven
When fourteen-year-old Marley discovers her parents are not her natural parents, her previously peaceful world is suddenly not what it seemed to be. This novel is useful for a discussion about adoption.
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 Heard the Owl Call My Name
Kingcome’s younger generation is disenchanted and alienated from its heritage. And now, coming upriver is a young vicar, Mark Brian, on a journey of discovery that can teach him-and us- about life, death and the transforming power of love.
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.
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.
Miracle's Boys
Set in contemporary Harlem, this novel tells of three African-American brothers who are left alone after their mother's passing.
Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights
Carley recalls the summer when, as a troubled fourteen-year-old, he came to northern Minnesota to stay with his Uncle David who was a blacksmith and gained not only new skills but also a new sense of himself.
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.
Riding Freedom
Posing as a boy, Charley Parkhurst ran away from an orphanage in the mid-nineteenth century, moved to California as a stagecoach driver, and fooled everyone by her appearance.
Seedfolks
When a young Vietnamese girl plants some bean seeds in a vacant lot because she misses her family, the beginnings of a community project emerge.
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.
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 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 Maze
Rick Walker is a troubled teen who breaks out of Blue Canyon Youth Detention Center and becomes a stowaway in a pickup truck headed into Utah's canyons.
The Red Badge of Courage
Deserting his battalion, 18-year-old Henry Fleming escapes into the woods. He finds a group of injured soldiers and is embarrassed the he’s whole. Find out how Henry proves his courage as a man on the battlefield.
Wringer
The annual pigeon shoot provides the young boys of the community the opportunity to prove their fortitude and manhood by serving as "wringers."