Class of '79, and I was a loner. I also lived out in the country and the high school was in town, so I only really associated with the other kids in class. Otherwise I was working in the library.

I don't remember reading any of the books that have been mentioned, and if there were any movies that were supposed to define my high school life, I didn't see them. I was reading science fiction and adventure stuff and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I remember zero books we were set to read during middle school. It's possible my teachers let me be because I was already reading above the grade level. I'm almost certain anything with a whiff of controversy would have been avoided.

I've not seen or read it, but I did read his play The Invention of Love a couple of weeks ago, and it was excellent. He's a hell of a writer.

He really is. I need to read Arcadia, as there were lines and ideas that passed too quickly on stage, and I want to think about them. Fantastic stuff.

Catcher in the Rye irritated me when I read it, but I was in my 20s and reading it for a class on American literature, and I much preferred everything else that was on the syllabus for that class - I found Holden whiny. My class of tenth grade students, on the other hand, loved it - they studied it with my co-teacher, so I didn't experience it with them, but they told me they really enjoyed studying it.

Main reason I said it was depressing, was that it just seems overall a very limited list when there are so very many books they could choose from.

TOTALLY agree, Barb!

I think 7 Habits is actually pretty good. And Hope Was Here is actually pretty great, but very much a girl book.

It always depresses me to see a list of books for kids that is composed mostly of books from when I was a kid, 25 years ago. So many great books have been written since. Trying a little modernity wouldn't ever kill anyone.

Signed,

The English Teacher who teaches primarily Early Modern Lit and Victorian Lit.

So it turns out, Oliver Twist does not end with Fagin and Dodger dancing off into the sunset to steal and corrupt til the end of their days.

t is disappointed

adds Oliver Twist to her reading pile. Adds ToTC and that other one about that other boy.

So many great books have been written since. Trying a little modernity wouldn't ever kill anyone.

I was even more shocked reading the eighth grade list. It's all thematically oriented around WWII and the Holocaust. I'm wondering if it's to tie it into their history studies.

It must be.

Class of '84 here, and we had cliques galore, but it was an all-girls school, so I think we gravitated to groups even more so than in a co-ed school.

I don't remember my junior-high reading list before 8th grade, where I recall we read The Hobbit and Watership Down (which I did a detailed summary of for my high-school cousin who was taking a test on WD the next day and hadn't read it. I talked to her for 45 minutes on the phone, and she called me back a week later to thank me for the A!). But for the Book Club which I joined in seventh grade, we were reading To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, and slogging through Michener's Chesapeake (ugh!).

It's all thematically oriented around WWII and the Holocaust

Barb, yeah I think so, my daughter (a senior now!) had to read Night and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in 9th grade to match up to what they were learning in European history. My now-8th grader will read The Outsiders and Diary of Anne Frank in language arts this year...

My daughter's take on Holden? He's a whiny brat and she could not finish CitR quickly enough. She hated him - also she loved King Dork and To Kill A Mockingbird (which I forced her to read because I love it!)

I can't really remember whether I liked CitR on first reading or not, which is odd since it must have something to do with why I ended up reading everything else by Salinger. I feel pretty meh about CitR, but still love Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey.

Also, I am large with the A Separate Peace hate. In fact, I feel rather spiteful about it, and happy whenever someone says something bad about it, which is an oddly personal reaction to the book. I think mainly I just really disliked my English teacher that year (poor thing -- I always disliked my English teachers), and resented how much she went on about the symbolism.

Harry Turtledove wrote a short story called "Catcher in the Rhine" about Holden touring Germany and transported back to the time of Wagner's Ring. Funny, and kind of helps see why some people like Holden in spite of how annoying he was.

[Edit] In short story collection "Chicks in the Mail" of the "Chicks in Chainmail" series.