High School Reading List

I love reading and it was definitely one of the things I wanted to pass onto my kids.

I know that it’s an uphill battle these days but I really encourage you to get your kids to read. In many ways, it will save you a lot of grief later. Reading can mitigate so many other educational issues that can arise.

Reasons to Encourage Reading

It will help your kids to be better writers. Not only in form, but also with ideas. They will have a richer depth to draw from. When I work with teens and their writing, it’s always easy to tell who reads and who doesn’t. If they are not regular readers, they usually stare at essay prompts and don’t know how to start.

It will give them the ability to self-teach and work through dry textbooks.

It will help them to understand more of the world and people.

It will help them to formulate ideas and opinions.

And honestly, it is one way to strengthen your kid’s mind and teach resiliency. Reading about the lives, experiences, and suffering of other people can help them to see that they are not alone. That people endure terrible things and can make it through.

When gatherings books, I always encourage you to check your library first. Borrow whatever books you can. Most even have inter-library loan services so they can get whatever book you are looking for even if they don’t have it.

The following is a part of my daughter’s reading list from her upper middle and high school years. I had her keep a reading list for homeschool documentation but it has also turned out to be a wonderful souvenir.

I know how hard and time consuming it is to find good books for your kids to read. Hopefully, you will find this list helpful.

Good Luck!

Reading List

1. Of Mice and Men- Steinbeck
2. The Chronicles of Narnia- Lewis
3. A Wrinkle in Time- L’Engle
4. The Hobbit- Tolkien
5. Sherlock Holmes (all books)- Doyle
6. Johnny Tremain- Forbes
7. The Outsiders- Hinton
8. To Kill A Mockingbird- Lee
9. I, Juan de Pareja- Trevino
10. Pride and Prejudice- Austen
11. The Giver- Lowery
12. Kidnapped- Stevenson
13. A Midsummer Night’s Dream- Shakespeare
14. The Slopes of War- Perez
15. Escape Across the Wide Sea- Kirkpatrick
16. Little Women- Alcott
17. Little Men- Alcott
18. Number the Stars- Lowry
19. The Good Master- Seredy
20. The War of the Worlds- Wells
21. A Wind in the Door- L’Engle
22. A Swiftly Tilting Planet- L’Engle
23. Many Waters- L’Engle
24. The Arm of the Starfish- L’Engle
25. Dragons in the Waters- L’Engle
26. Murder on the Orient Express- Christie
27. The Fellowship of the Ring- Tolkien
28. Fahrenheit 451- Bradbury
29. Snow Treasure- McSwigan
30. Pictures of Hollis Woods- Giff
31. Ella Enchanted- Levine
32. The Invention of Hugo Cabret- Selznick
33. The Two Towers- Tolkien
34. Shadow Spinner- Fleacher
35. Jane Eyre- Bronte
36. Frankenstein- Shelley
37. The Help- Stockett
38. Year of Impossible Goodbyes- Choi
39. Romeo and Juliet- Shakespeare
40. The Return of the King- Tolkien
41. A War of Gifts- Card
42. A Separate Peace- Knowles
43. And Then There Were None- Christie
44. Animal Farm- Orwell
45. The Catcher in the Rye- Salinger
46. Black Like Me- Griffin
47. A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver- Konigsburg
48. Metamorphosis- Kafka
49. The Good Earth- Buck
50. The Pearl- Steinbeck
51. The Glass Menagerie- Williams
52. The Old Man and the Sea- Hemingway
53. The Seventeenth Swap- McGraw
54. Just So Stories- Kipling
55. Death on the Nile- Christie
56. The Fisherman’s Lady- MacDonald
57. Uncle Tom’s Cabin- Stowe
58. The Great Gatsby- Fitzgerald
59. Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl- Frank
60. The House of Sixty Fathers- Dejong
61. All Quiet On the Western Front- Remarque
62. The Cherry Orchard- Chekhov
63. The Grapes of Wrath- Steinbeck
64. Emma- Austen
65. Slumdog Millionaire- Swarup
66. From Distant Days: Myth, Tales and Poetry from Ancient Mesopotamia- Foster
67. World Religions- Bowker
68. Norton Anthology: Western Literature 
69. The Kite Runner- Hosseini
70. Les Miserables- Hugo
71. Change Me into Zeus’ Daughter- Moss
72. Beowulf
73. Canterbury Tales- Chaucer
74. Much Ado About Nothing- Shakespeare
75. Henry V- Shakespeare
76. The Tempest- Shakespeare
77. Don Quixote- Cervantes
78. The Rape of the Lock- Pope
79. Sense and Sensibility- Austen
80. Lord of the Flies- Golding
81. O Pioneers!- Cather
82. The Scarlett Letter- Hawthorne
83. Hunger of Memory- Rodriguez
84. Analects- Confucius
85. Iliad- Homer
86. Odyssey- Homer
87. Huckleberry Finn- Twain
88. Walden- Thoreau 
89. Sybil- Schreiber
90. Great Expectations- Dickens
91. The Book Thief- Zusak
92. The Flames of Rome- Maier
93. Wuthering Heights- Bronte
94. Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevsky
95. Pygmalion- Shaw
96. A Room with a View- Forster
97. Macbeth- Shakespeare
98. Persuasion- Austen
99. Killer Angels- Shaara
100. Anna Karenina-Tolstoy