Students! I need your input on books from your English class!?

I'm English, and in my last year of mandatory education before I go on to college/sixth form to do A Levels.

In the past five years, my English class have read (stating those I can recall, our reading criteria is intense as Hell) Danny the Champion of the World, which I thought was okay, Mrs Frisby, which again, I thought was okay. We've also read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which I adored. We've read War Horse, which, again, I loved. And in the last two years, which is the years we spend studying for our version of finals - GCSE's - we've read Romeo and Juliet, which I wasn't too keen on because I didn't particularly like the plot and I'm not a big fan of tragedy and romance to that extent, but I love Shakespeare. We've also read Jane Eyre, which I adored, and, most recently, and our last text to study, unfortunately, is Journey's End, which I thought was pretty okay, but didn't appeal to me much. I hoped we would be reading The Empire of the Sun after our last English exam in January, but, alas, as no one but myself and a couple of others have completed all four pieces of coursework, we haven't the time.

That's my opinion on the books I've read in English, but everyone is different...what appeals to half your class may not appeal to the other half...everyone has different tastes, and, frankly, some kids just aren't that interested in reading, no matter what book it is.

I think you should go with your instincts and decide what you think will appeal most to the class you must teach and what they are likely to get good grades in after studying.

Good luck :)

I'm a sophmore and so far in high school we've read:

Of Mice and Men - 7/10 It was okay but it was a little dull.

The Crucible - 8.5/10 It was interesting and definitely worth reading; it was a lot better than most of the ones we've read.

Catcher in the Rye - 7.5/10 It seemed like a pointless book. No one got what exactly the conflict was. We read it this year which is appropriate because there is a lot of swearing, so I wouldn't teach it to a younger group. It was fairly good though.

Tale of Two Cities - 6.5/10 It was a good book but it was really LONG and we read it FAST so everyone hated it and we all dreaded it so we all sparknoted it. If you spent a good amount of time going over it, the students would probably love it.

1984 - 2/10 God I hated this one. Absolutely loathed it. Please don't teach this one. It was appropriate for our grade, I guess, but it was all political and prostitute-ey and treachery filled which isn't exactly appealing to high schoolers.

Anthem - 8/10 It was short and concise, which is good for high schoolers. It was about being different and standing up for what you believe in. It was really interesting and was kinda like The Giver (Which would be an AWESOME book to teach).

A Doll's House - 5.5/10 Eh it was okay but as a whole, our grade didn't get much out of it.

Pygmalion - 8/10 This incorporated some romance and was interesting. Definitely one of the better plays we read.

To Kill a Mockingbird - 7/10 This one was kind of annoying. Being told from a small girls point of view it was very... youthful. It was hard for our grade to really grasp the time period. If you were to teach this one, I would recommend spending a unit on the time period of this book BEFORE delving into it. I think that would help a lot as far as understanding the book.

All of these, by the way, were taught in my Honors English 9 and AP American Literature classes.

In 7th grade, we read Bridge to Terabithia and Tuck Everlasting.

In 8th grade, we read The Halloween Tree, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and The Outsiders

In 9th grade, we read Romeo & Juliet and The Odyssey.

In 10th grade, we read Caesar.

I'm in 11th grade now, but my honors class isn't until next quarter.

Personally, I hated reading Ray Bradbury books, which my middle school teacher made us do often. :\ The only book that I didn't think was appropriate, was Romeo & Juliet. I mean, the actual story was appropriate, but she made us watch the film afterward. In the film, there is a full frontal of a THIRTEEN year old girl (Juliet). It was disgusting hearing what all the arrogant boys were saying... I think, as long as you don't show that part of the movie, it would be much more appropriate. :) Obviously, certain fourteen year old boys are going to act childish about it.

What books do I want to read? I wish they would have assigned any novels by Jane Austen or Emily Bronte. They are my two favorite authors. I suppose, most kids think the classics are somehow boring. I think we'll read Pride and Prejudice this year, though. :)

You say, you're going to a private school. Is it a religious private school? If so, I would check with the principal to see if you're allowed to bring some books into class. Nowadays, most books are allowed, but you can never be too sure. It depends how strict the school is. I went to a pretty strict Catholic middle school, so I have some experience with that.

I hope I helped a little bit. By the way, congratulations on your teaching job! I'm sure you'll be a great teacher, seeing that you seem to care about what your students read. :) Some English teachers of mine didn't care at all. They just made kids read the same books every year. It's all about getting the job done, to them.

It depends on the students, really. When I was in eighth grade, I enjoyed reading The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Prince and the Pauper. In high school my favorite books were The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights, Things Fall Apart, and Beloved. I also enjoyed Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Crucible, and Oedipus Rex.

I'm not sure what the regular grades read, becuase I had always been in advanced classes. I believe that all of these book are suitable for sophomores through seniors.

For younger children (7th and 8th graders), allow me to suggest The Giver. It is an excellent children's book with strong morals and themes.

Good luck in your career!

I am a Junior in High School

Junior Year:

The Great Gatsby- I personally liked the book, but many of the students in my class found it difficult to comprehend.

Of Mice and Men- This book was ish in my opinion, and most people in my class liked it because it was short and easy to understand

The Crucible- Meh. The characters in this book all annoyed me because they were so dense and unwilling to listen to reason. It is written as a play and I think that the kids in my class enjoyed reading it out loud.

Sophomore Year:

To Kill a Mockingbird- I, along with my classmates liked this book. I think that students should get a chance to read it.

The Pigman- Everybody detested this book. Everybody.

Freshman Year:

The only one I can remember is Romeo and Juliet. It was okay, and the teacher had to spend a lot of time helping students understand the language and suchlike.

Middle School:

The Outsiders- this book was amazing. I think people liked this book because they could maybe relate to the main character more than they can in most "English class books".

Books I want to read:

Huckleberry Finn

Farenheit 451

Picture of Dorian Gray

(and so on and so forth)

Also, I, as a student, would love it if we got to read more contemporary fiction and "teen" books in English class. I just don't enjoy the part where we have to analyze the happiness out of every book we read.

I'm a Junior in High School, and do AP and Honors classes, so I'm not sure if you're looking for these unless you teach those classes.

Freshman year (I had Literature and Humanities, so it was my history and english class combined) I had to read The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, which was alright. I enjoyed it well enough. Not many of the other students enjoyed it. It's a bit slow, but after we finished reading it, the teacher let us watch the movie and everyone enjoyed the movie. We also had to read All Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. That one I enjoyed a bit more, but never finished reading.

Sophopmore year (Honors English 2) I read Taming of the Shrew, Oedipus Rex, Julius Caesar and The Count of Monte Cristo. I didn't get passed the first few pages of Taming of the Shrew, Oedipus Rex was the bomb, I didn't pay much attention to Juilius Caesar but the English Department took us on a feild trip to see a reinactment of it in play and that was interesting. The Count of Monte Cristo was also intersting, but I hit slow part in the book and didn't finish it.

Sophomore year, I also had a creative writing and short story class which was part of the English course for Juniors and Seniors if they wanted but I took it as an elective and we read a few plays, the only one I remember is The Importance of Being Earnest.

This year, we've read a lot of exerpts from our AP Lit book. Mostly stuff by Shakespeare (We all enjoyed A Midsummer Night's Dream) and we read something by Edgar Allen Poe, but I don't remember what that was. Our AP Lit teacher gives us IRP (Independent Reading Projects) and she doesn't tell us what to read, as long as it's Literary Merit, which actually just depends on the person and what they consider Literary Merit as.

This year, I had a bunch of friends in the normal classes that read the Great Gatsby, but mostly they complained about not being able to follow the authors train of thought.

As far as what I would like to read, it's a bit pointless to say, because my AP Lit class consists of maybe 13 kids and I don't believe more than a couple of us have the same interests in reading material.

----

Regarding Nikki's mention about 1984, I haven't read that one personally, but everyone at my school that I talk to who has read it had nothing but good things to say about it, they all loved it.

Hello!

I remember in seventh grade, we read Dracula (the graphic novel) near Halloween. That was fun, for a while. Then we read 'Treasure Island' (yet another graphic novel version). Not one student understood what had just happened. We read TWO MORE graphic novels, and we were soon sick of them. Near Halloween, though, you could read "'Frankenstien' the Grapic novel". This one we enjoyed.

One thing that always irked us, though, was that we frequently had to read novels that were 'classics'. While this was fun for a while, we wanted something more relevant to our lives. Seventh grade was a bad reading year, I'm mentioning this so that you won't repeat those mistakes!

Eighth grade, on the other hand, was a wonderful year for books! Our teacher pulled lots of our reading material from the Battle of the Books reading list, and we found that those books were exceptional! Some of our favorites (on and not on the list) include: 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, 'The Unknowns', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', and 'Uglies'.

Hope that helped!

NOTE: I was in pre-AP English in both 9th and 10th grade. Now in 11th, I am taking AP Language and Composition.

When I was in 9th grade, we read the following:

The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

When I was in 10th grade, we read the following:

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Now in AP Lang, we read lots of nonfiction, though we did read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, over the summer. Right now we're reading And Still We Rise, by Miles Corwin.

Over the years, I've read some fantastic literature in school, but I've also had the misfortune of being forced to read some of the worst books. My favorites include, Jane Eyre, Three Cups of Tea, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, the lows were very low. I abhorred Lord of the Flies, The Bean Trees, and The Things They Carried (of those three, I think Bean Trees was the worst). I love classic literature, particularly British. On my own, I've read several Jane Austen works, which I loved--it would have been nice to see Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, or Sense and Sensibility on my reading lists.

I'm in 7th grade. So far we've read the books "The Outsiders" which I loved and a lot of other people liked. It is very appropriate. Or at least for 7th graders. We also read "A Christmas Carol" which is good. In 5th grade we read "Sign of The Beaver" which was really good. Sorry I can't be of more helped but I do hope this helped you.

hi there! i'm from singapore and an all-girls school. I'm not sure what grades you're talking about but

in primary 6 we did Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah, in Secondary 1 we did The Giver and Emily of Emerald Hill, in Secondary 2 we did Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Merchant of Venice.

CHinese cinderella was a nice book, not very exciting but its insightful on the life of neglected children. The Giver remains to be one of my favourite books ever! Its lovely! Animal Farm is also quite interesting. I was sad when Boxer died ): and the Merchant of Venice is cool too (: