100+ Novels Every High School Student Should (Consider) Read(ing)

What books should high school students read? If you’re a more traditional teacher, you may have visions quietly reading your favorite novels from the Western canon and discussing them with your students. This is where I started.

But after five years of classroom experience and trying to figure out how to convince actual high school students to enjoy reading, I realized that the traditional Western literature canon only appeals to a small subset of students. A very small subset. If I wanted to convince more of my students to value reading inside my class and once they leave my class, I’d need to find books that either mirror their experiences, or serve as windows into the current world. (Thank you, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop for that metaphor!)

For this reason, I’ve included a list of books divided by class subject. For example, “Introduction to Literature” could be taught in the 9th grade. At my school in Oklahoma, “American Literature” is taught in the 11th grade.

Personally, I think it would make more sense to teach the introductory course freshman year, then broaden student horizons to reading American literature sophomore year, and expand to world literature junior year. I also think, if we’re going to divide literature this way, we should continue with an overview of world literature during senior year instead of narrowing the focus to British literature.

Truth be told though, I think it would make more sense to focus on themes or topics each year and provide students with opportunities to choose what they want to read independently and in literature circles. We should focus our reading instruction on the students in front of us and their interests, not on a prescribed list or a literary canon dominated by dead white men.

Introduction to Literature

1. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
2. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
3. A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer
4. Crank by Ellen Hopkins
5. Divergent by Veronica Roth
6. Dune by Frank Herbert
7. Frankly in Love by David Yoon
8. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
9. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
10. The Giver by Lois Lowry
11. The Harry Potter series by J K Rowling
12. The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
13. His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
14. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
15. House of Night series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
16. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
17. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
19. The Maze Runner series by James Dashner
20. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
21. The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare
22. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
23. The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot
24. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
25. Speak: The Graphic Novel by Laurie Halse Anderson
26. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
27. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
28. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

For more recommendations, check out our list of Books for Secondary English Class.

American Literature

1. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
2. All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
3. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
4. Anthem by Ayn Rand
5. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
6. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
9. Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
10. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
11. Crank series by Ellen Hopkins
12. Delirium series by Lauren Oliver
13. Dragonwings by Laurence Yep
14. Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham
15. Every Day by David Levithan
16. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
17. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
18. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
19. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
20. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
21. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
22. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
23. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
24. Holes by Louis Sachar
25. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
26. The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
27. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
28. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
29. Jubilee by Margaret Walker
30. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
31. Looking for Alaska by John Green
32. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
33. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
34. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
35. Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
36. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
37. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
38. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
39. Paper Towns by John Green
40. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
41. Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition by Katie Rain Hill
42. Roots by Alex Haley
43. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares
44. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
45. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
46. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
47. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
48. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

World Literature

1. 1984: A Novel by George Orwell
2. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
5. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
7. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
8. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
9. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
11. Dracula by Bram Stoker
12. The Hobbit series by J.R.R. Tolkien
13. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
14. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
15. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
16. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

British Literature

1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
4. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
7. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
8. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
9. Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. The Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle
11. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
12. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
13. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
14. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
15. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (especially if you’re a Twilight fan)