“I can’t be as my dad or my mum, you know?” This award-winning graphic novel on gender stereotypes, friendship and identity construction follows thirteen-year-old Aster in the magical world of witches and shapeshifters. In this world, boys normally become shapeshifters, and girls grow up as witches, but as a boy, Aster is rather interested in […]

“The first thing you’re going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl?“ This teenage novel on identity construction, gender fluidity, internet blogging, peer pressure and coming out follows the story of Riley Cavanaugh, a nonbinary teenager, who neither fully identifies as a boy or a girl. […]

This heart-warming picture book for children about queer identities, belonging, empathy and acceptance follows a rabbit called Herbert, who identifies as a fox. Herbert loves everything about foxes, so he eventually wants to become one. First, his mum is not quite happy with her son cross-dressing as a fox, but then she accepts that Herbert […]

This modern novel describes a dystopian version of the year 1984. The world is ruled by three totalitarian superpowers with the book focusing on Oceania. The people are under constant surveillance and anyone opposing or even criticising the regime is eliminated together with all records of existence. Only thinking about another life or reality is […]

A Shakespearean Renaissance sonnet that satirises the idealistic descriptions of beauty in the Elizabethan era. The lyric persona uses stereotypical Renaissance nature imagery to contrast his mistress with. In the end, he indicates that his love is truer as it is not based on “false compare”. This sonnet, which is in the public domain, provides […]

The Canterbury Tales are a medieval collection of 24 different short stories written in verse and prose. Frame action is a storytelling contest between a couple of pilgrims on their way from London to Canterbury. The characters such as the Knight, the Nun, the Cook, the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath represent different estates […]

This heart-warming picture book explores family relations, gender-nonconformity, identity construction, and understanding. Young Julian is out with his grandma called ‘Nana’ in town when he spots three women in spectacular mermaid costumes. Their colourful dresses let him daydream and rise his desire to dress as the most exotic mermaid ever seen. He gets home and […]

Here, four of Shakespeare’s most famous plays are rewritten for a younger audience: Twelfth Night, Macbeth, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They are shorter and told from the perspective of the side characters Malvolio, Banquo, Caliban, and Peaseblossom. I, Shakespeare might be useful if you want to avoid reading the longer originals but […]

These two one-act plays by award-winning author Drew Hayden Taylor on belonging, identity, hope, tradition and modern life examine the past, present and the future of the Canadian First Nations from a teenage perspective. Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock follows teenage boy Rusty to the spiritual place of his ancestors. While sipping his beer at Dreamer’s Rock, he […]

This award-winning young adult fantasy novel about murder, coming of age, friendship and belonging follows baby-boy ‘Nobody’ who, after his family is murdered, is adopted by the supernatural inhabitants of a nearby graveyard. ‘Nobody’ also called ‘Bod’ grows up with ghosts, ghouls, vampires, witches and werewolves, who become family and friends to him. In and […]

This Gothic novel explores the themes of the supernatural, masculinity and femininity, class and revenge in a Romantic context. Mr Lockwood encounters the strange constellation of people at the remote farmhouse Wuthering Heights who are all quite inhospitable. He is haunted at night by a former inhabitant of his room. Later, his housekeeper tells him the intricate […]

This early 18th-century satire novel was supposed to parody the popular genre of travel literature. It juxtaposes physical and moral strength, the power of knowledge and differences of societies and state structures. English surgeon Lemuel Gulliver leaves England again and again for travels to far-off lands. The countries and societies he visits are fictional and, […]

An epistolary Gothic novel, which describes the most popular vampire hunt, also exploring the fields of mental health, religion and the occult, love and seduction, as well as the relationship between life and death and what might be in-between. Transylvania in the late 1800s: Count Dracula wishes to buy a house near London and asks […]

This science fiction short story explores the power of and the utter dependence on technology as well as the importance of nature. At some point in the future humans have lost the ability to live on the earth’s surface, life is taking place underground using a global machine. Every individual has their separate section and […]

This dystopian comedy movie explores the power of media, commercialism and simulated reality. Truman has the all-American life: A loving wife, kids, a house complete with a picket fence… Then he starts noticing the occasional oddity. Whether it be his wife sounding like an infomercial or the people around him doing everything in their power […]

Robinson Crusoe is the unreliable narrator of this travelogue from Restauration and Enlightenment referred to as the first English novel. The protagonist decides to go to sea against his father’s will and becoming quite a successful merchant in the colonies abroad. One day, he is shipwrecked and finds himself on a lonely island where he […]

This beautifully illustrated picture book tells the empowering story of a boy and a penguin, abilities and disabilities, flying and friendship. Everyone knows that penguins can’t fly but it is the penguin’s greatest wish to do so. Will the boy let his friend’s dream come true? The story is the sequel of Oliver Jeffer’s award-winning […]

This rhyming picture book adaptation of Grimm’s famous fairy tale follows Little Red Reading Hood, who loves to come up with new endings for the stories she reads. She reminds the wolf and the readers of this beautifully illustrated book, that stories can end any way we want them to if we use our creative […]