You are what you read? [link]

I'm a vampire who runs away with a circus? Rock on!

The 7th grade English teacher at my school is looking for inspiration. They read To Kill A Mockingbird for the last few years, but that is moving up to 8th grade in the future. She needs to find a novel (or possibly two if significantly shorter than TKAM) that, in her words, has the "hold on to your heart factor" but also some "literary heft". As we are an all-girls school, having an admirable female protagonist or POV character is definitely a plus, but not a requirement.

Our girls are pretty much all reading at or above - in many cases well above - reading level for 7th graders. I thought about Jacqueline Woodson, but most of her books seem to be in the "Grades 4-7" zone, which would probably be dismissed as too young.

Suggestions?

Suggestions?

I don't know, but I will note that Emmett has complained that his reading list this year has been relentlessly depressing as each ethnic group in turn has been crushed by tragic social injustice. Which made me think that yes, there is a tendency for schools to teach books of a certain brand of Realism which can be a drag, especially if you're not a particularly angsty kid and don't need your dark adolescent feelings validated. (He's currently reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.)

Maybe One Hundred Years of Solitude? Can't beat that for literary heft, and it's not the usual social realism and it's also a very enjoyable reading experience. And it's not that dense or difficult to parse.

I think that might be a little too hefty. Not at a vocabulary or parsing level, necessarily, but at a sophistication level. TKAM can be read at a variety of levels, I know, but at it's core it's a pretty simple story and easy to get invested in, which is what grabs the girls. I don't think many of them (still essentially children) are quite ready for Marquez.

Both very intense and possibly not appropriate for any but a very emotionally mature reader, but Mama Day, or Mister Pip?

eta: Mister Pip is probably way too intense. Skip that suggestion (but read it for yourself).

Well now I want to read both of those... I'll pass the suggestions on to the teacher. Keep 'em coming!

House on Mango Street's good. That girl kind of has it rough, but she doesn't really know that, kind of like the girl in "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn"

They read House on Mango Street in 9th grade, and the girls don't get it, unfortunately. Our students are, well, exceedingly white and in many cases exceedingly privileged, and the subtlety of House on Mango Street passes them by.

I wish they would do excerpts from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but excerpts and abridgements seem to have become something worth staring down one's nose at. Which I think is stupid, since Great Expectations is far too long, but the abridged version we had in my literature textbook as a 9th grader was perfect, as one example.

Silas Marner?

The Weetzie Bat books by Francesca Lia Block?