Golden Deer Pub Community Forums

This is wholly unorthodox. I don't post for weeks or months at a time and then I have the audacity to start a new thread. Well, basically, I need your guys suggestions.

As some of you may know I am now a 9th grade English teacher in deep East Oakland. I'm trying my damndest to convince some of these kids that reading and writing are noble pursuits, but I can't do it without a wide range of books for them to try. So I'm asking you all, knowing there are many bibliophiles here, for suggestions on what you think would go well on a 9th grade classroom bookcase!

Now my reading levels vary over a pretty huge range between my 3 groups, some of my students are very, very, very low. Some of them are already at a college level. Some of them are new English speakers. Some of them are already immersed in gang life. So basically I'm looking for pretty much any suggestion you think might be appropriate.

Help me ItL, you're my only hope.

^ 9th grade? Like 14 years. Uh, I think some of my friends read about cars. I remember reading about armoury. Generally, books and magazines with pictures and diagrams to break the text got more attention.

I think Terry Pratchett and generic fantasy were moderately popular.

What age is 9th grade?

^_^ 14. I started learning webcoding in 9th grade. And subsequently a few months later met Starfe.... XD

Anywho, there's hardly anything I would add or subtract from this list Starfe. Many of them I do not know.

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/9th-grade

I would probably do a combination of His Dark Materials, maybe Maze Runner, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Chocolate Wars... maybe Life as We Knew It. I've never read it but I heard it's a good one.

Discworld by the aforementioned Terry Pratchett is a fun series. It's an anachronistic parody of Roundworld. Also I've referencing it in the "Games you are playing" thread today.

Harry Potter
His Dark Materials trilogy
Artemis Fowl
Earthsea Quintet
Hunger Games trilogy
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Hobbit
Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Flies
The Colour Purple
Frankenstein
Dracula
The Woman in Black
1984
Watership Down
Tales Grimm
Gormanghast

Yeah but it's a nice, easy read for people who aren't into reading or with low reading ability.

I liked Lord of the Flies, but being made to annotate every page of it in perpetration for an exam kind of killed it .

The Underland Chronicles for sure, I'd need to look at my bookshelf my parent's house to remember more, but you have 0 excuse not to have the Underland Chronicles.

Thanks for the lists guys! I picked up some of the stuff mentioned today, bought about 60 books, but mostly just the literary classics as they are all super cheap in paper back. I will be combing through the lists you guys gave me to fill in the regions of literature I don't know anything about (read: Modern YAish lit).

@Age: I have students who are 13 I have students who are 15, but the average age is 14, as has been said.

@Lower level books: I teach in an underserved urban school district, so only about 50% of my students are actually at a proper 9th grade level. Requires me to have a range. I have a student who read Moby Dick over the summer, I have students who struggle with things like The Hunger Games, so its fairly broad.

@Lord of the Flies: I picked up a couple of copies, and I think my school library might have about 20 more I can borrow.

I'll try and organize what I already have and list it for you guys. Thanks!

Oh! I forgot Lord of the Flies. ^_^ It's the only book that I've ever LOVED to argue against. I think it's a beautiful well written book, but I disagree with the writer's overall opinions, but it's not stopped me from reading it five different times. I had fun writing my school essay when we had to do one for that book. Still, I read this one in my 11th grade. I'm almost tempted to disagree with placing it at a 9th grader level.

I would not agree with Frankenstein, Dracula, or even the Tolkien series, and here's why:

Starfe mentioned the 9th grade readers are ... slow of reading and he's trying to combat this by intriguing them. While I dearly LOVE these books, ESPECIALLY Tolkien, I do not think that these are good for his strategy. They are written in an old english dialect and, as in the case of Tolkien's works, they can get a bit "draggy" or over descriptive. Honestly, I think he should stay away from them. Stick to fast pace stuff. Oh! Witch and Wizard might be good. Or any Patterson book for that matter. Some of Agatha Christie's books would be good but again, some of them could get a little challenging in the old english department - though they aren't AS BAD as those works mentioned. And Then There Were None would be a safe one.

Everyone already listed everything I wanted to say. Except maybe Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That might be over the level of 9th graders though.
Or far below it. I forget how that novel works with words.

@Tolkien, Dracula, etc: I have picked up those books, not only because I have studied them deeply (especially Dracula, which was one of the focal points of my thesis), but because some of my students CAN handle those texts. No where near all of them, probably less than 10 of my 90 students could handle them. But I want them on the shelf for those who can to grow. One of my students has the highest reading score in the entire school, hes at a college level of reading, but hes just churning through YA Fantasy lit because he isn't challenged by it anymore and doesn't know any better. People like him are the people I need those books for. So yeah, can't have TONS of that stuff, but I do think it needs to be there.

@Zamisk/comics: Ordered another set of Scott Pilgrim 1-6 for my classroom already. The curriculum theme for 9th grade English is "Coming of Age" narratives, and even though Scott is 23, that is certainly what those books are about. I already have stuff like Maus, Watchmen, DKR, etc on my shelf at school, and I'm working on getting some other TPBs and graphic novels into the room as well. I totally believe in comics as literature, I just have to have different rules regarding comics to satisfy length of reading requirements because of the diminished importance of text to convey information, lack of text based imagery, etc. But yeah, you're right, its a great way to get non-readers to read SOMETHING.

I didn't recommend SP in case it was too mature. But seriously, Runaways V1. Make it work.