20 Books Worth Teaching to Teens

Earlier I posted about how to choose novels for classroom study. Here’s a short list of books that I think fit the criteria. Remember, however, that you must pick one that you’re passionate about, so use this list as a jumping-off point. Books marked with an asterisk would be especially appropriate for use in Catholic schools.

• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri*
• Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury*
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton*
• The Ox-bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Crime and Punishment by FyodorDostoevsky
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene*
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (abridged Enriched Classics edition)
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr.*
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Shane by Jack Schaefer
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr.*

I mentioned yesterday not to worry about the availability of teaching materials as a criteria for choosing a book. However, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. One good source of novel guides is The Center for Learning. One thing I like about their selection is that they’re constantly adding new titles.