Literature Teacher’s Essential Library

Which books should be on the bookshelf of every literature teacher?  The following list represents my personal picks:

1. How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler – If you’ve read Teen Literacy Tips for any length of time you probably know how much I value this book.  It’s the book that’s had the biggest impact on my own personal reading habits and on the way I teach literature.
2. The New Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major
3. Read for Your Life: 11 Ways to Better Yourself Through Books by Pat Williams
4. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia: Fourth Edition (Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia)
5. The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers by Nancie Atwell
6. In the Middle: New Understanding About Writing, Reading, and Learning by Nancie Atwell
7. Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs & Reading Groups by Harvy Daniels
8. Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels
9. Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical And Creative Thinking In Middle And High School by Matt Copeland
10. Socratic Seminars and Literature Circles for Middle and High School English by Victor Moeller
11. Reading for Understanding by Ruth Schoenbach
12. Building Academic Literacy: Lessons from Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, Grades 6-12
13. Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship
14. Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies: Modeling What Good Readers Do by Jeffrey Wilhelm
15. Going with the Flow: How to Engage Boys (and Girls) in Their Literacy Learning by Jeffrey Wilhelm
16. “You Gotta BE the Book”: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents, Second Edition by Jeffrey Wilhelm
17. The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them
18. For the Love of Books by Ronald Shwartz
    
19. A Passion for Books : A Book Lover’s Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Love and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books
20. The Book on the Bookshelf by HenryPetroski
21. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books by H.J. Jackson
22. The Delights of Reading: Quotes, Notes & Anecdotes edited by Otto Bettmann
23. The Reader’s Quotation Book, a Literary Companion edited by Steven Gilbar
24. Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize edited by John Hollander
25. The World’s Shortest Stories: Murder, Love, Horror, Suspense, All This and Much More in the Most Amazing Short Stories Ever Written, Each One Just 55 Words Long edited by Steve Moss

What’s in your library?