A children’s novel on friendship, love, loneliness, sorrow and melancholy. 10 year-old India Opal Bulloni has just moved to a trailer park in a small town in Florida. Her father preaches at the local church and India trys to settle in and get to know her neighbors. When she sees a scruffy little dog at […]
A dystopian, social science fiction novel about the importance of memory, individualism and identity construction. 12 year-old Jonas lives in a society where the ruling force is ‘Sameness’. A life without colours, pain or past. Everyone is assigned their job at the age of twelve. No uncertainty, no problems. The only person who safekeeps the […]
A relentless exploration of racial prejudice and finding your voice as a young adult. 16-year-old Starr is a black student attending an elite school with a white majority, always carefully presenting herself in order to fit in. When her friend is accidentally shot by a police officer in front of her eyes, Starr is not […]
This magic novel about the invigorating and healing power of nature, friendship, childhood, isolation and rebirth follows 10-year-old Mary, a sour child of wealthy British parents living in India. When Mary’s parents suddenly die of cholera, she is sent to England to live with her uncle in the Yorkshire Moors. It is not long after […]
In this collection of illustrated poems, Dahl gives his own versions of fairy tales that could do with some dark humour. Ranging from Cinderella to The Three Little Pigs, all of them come with a dark twist.
A children’s book series about a sentient, anthropomorphic school bus that takes a teacher and her class on unusual field trips to explain different scientific facts or phenomena. Destinations include outer space, the human body, the past and more. The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body provides a good entry point to the series. […]
An entertaining novel about the origins of the English language. It covers the etymology of English words, dialects, spelling reform, prescriptive grammar and swearing among other topics. This book can be both helpful and entertaining when dealing with difficult grammar quirks in 11th or 12th grade. Read as a whole or in excerpts, this novel […]
This dystopian novel leads the reader down a dark path towards the perils of religion and oppressive patriarchy. A religious shift in the US-American government calling itself the ‘Pure Movement’ results in women being stripped of their voices: Handcuffs every woman has to wear count their spoken words and if the daily number exceeds 100, […]
In The Crucible, Arthur Miller tells a tale about how little is needed for a small community to turn on each other. When rumors of witchcraft arise in rural Salem during the 1690s, it does not take long for people to start to denounce anybody in order to save their own skin. Eventually, truth is […]
A Shakespearian tragedy of forceful love, hate, violence, identity and society. In Verona two powerful families, the Montegues and the Capulets, are in a feud. One night, at a ball, Romeo, son of the house Montegue meets Juliet, a Capulet, and the two fall in love. They get married secretly, but Juliet’s father does not […]
A collection of nine humurous short stories about the unusual exploits of different animals. The fifth short story, “The Ant-Eater”, provides a good entry point for poems that can easily be incorporated into the classroom. This poem presents the differences between American and British pronunciation in an unusually witty way. A spoiled American boy begs […]
A science fiction, fantasy novel about a girl fighting for her life and finding herself in the process. When her mostly absent father gives her a virtual reality gaming experience as a birthday present, she’s hesitant but up for it. It all goes downhill when she’s suddenly trapped inside this looping virtual reality medieval setting. […]
A Shakespearian comedy on love, jealousy, foolishness, the power of dreaming and the supernatural. In ancient Athens, Egeus wants to force his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius, even though she is in love with Lysander. Helena loves Demetrius but he doesn’t love her back. Hermia and Lysander decide to run away, and Demetrius and Helena […]
A Shakespearian tragedy on hypocrisy, murder, guilt and remorse. Macbeth, the brave Scottish general of King Duncan revives a prophecy by three witches that one day he will become the new king of Scotland. Imbued with ambition he takes the throne and becomes a tyrannic ruler who plunges the land of his people in misfortune […]
This 19th century best-selling novel about human trafficking, violence and slavery follows Tom, a middle-aged, enslaved African-American slave. As Tom is sold again and again, his life fully depends on the mercy and goodwill of his current owner… The novel is praised for having laid the groundwork for the abolition of slavery, but also harshly […]
This powerful novel on violence, betrayal, dehumanisation and redemption follows the life of a child soldier in an unnamed West-African country. Written by an American author of Nigerian parents, this novel tells the story of civil war from the perspective of Agu, a young boy who lives with his family in a small village. One […]
A story about the Troubles in Ireland and an unemployed teenager caught in a bloody conflict. Cal is a member of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Like his peers, he goes to school but unlike his peers, he occasionally works as a driver for the Irish Republican Army IRA. This way he becomes complicit […]
An epistolary novel about oppression, abuse and the power of love. Celie is an African-American teenager who grows up in poverty with her younger sister in a small village in Georgia and is raped by her father Alphonso at the age of fourteen. Living around abusive men, Celie builds relationships with other black women and […]