I've been thinking about what we get out of the literature we read in school. Increasingly, I think the main things to focus on for students are ethics and empathy, and, secondarily, an appreciation of style. As such, here are lists of exemplary content for both. If the book was assigned to me, the grade when I read the work is in parentheses (not including college).
Ethical Themes and Empathetic Considerations for School Literature
Absurdity
Alice
in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (8th
Grade)
The
Plague by Albert Camus (10th Grade)
Regeneration
by Pat Barker (10th Grade)
“Deer in the Works” by Kurt Vonnegut (11th Grade)
“The
Nose” and “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol (12th Grade)
Crime
and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (12th Grade)
The
Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy (12th Grade)
“In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka
“Diary
of a Madman” by Lu Xun
Waiting
for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The River Why by David James Duncan
No Exit
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Fate
“A Good
Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor (9th Grade)
Iliad
(selections) by Homer (10th Grade)
Oedipus
Rex by Sophocles (10th Grade)
Candide
by Voltaire (10th Grade)
Hamlet
by William Shakespeare (11th Grade)
Faust
by Goethe
Childhood’s
End by Arthur C. Clarke
The
Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelly
Never
Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
“The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov
Feminism,
Sexuality and Gender
“The
Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman (9th Grade)
Medea
by Euripides (10th Grade)
Hedda
Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (10th Grade)
The
Bacchae by Euripides
The
Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Angels
in America by Tony Kushner
Memoirs
of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Lysistrata
by Aristophanes
Mrs.
Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Pride
and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Spring
Awakening by Paul Wedekind
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Self
v. Society (Culture)
The
Giver by Lois Lowry (6th Grade)
Lord of
the Flies by William Golding (7th Grade)
“The
Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (9th Grade)
“The
Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin (9th Grade)
“The
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway (9th
Grade)
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut (11th Grade)
Fahrenheit
451 by Ray Bradbury
Brave
New World by Aldous Huxley
The
Monkey-Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Midnight’s
Children by Salman Rushdie
Of Mice
and Men by John Steinbeck
The
Time Machine by HG Wells
Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Self
v. State / War
Ender’s
Game by Orson Scott Card (7th Grade)
Antigone
by Sophocles (10th Grade)
Julius Caesar
by William Shakespeare (10th Grade)
The
Things They Carried by Pat O’Brien (11th Grade)
El
Senor Presidente by Miguel Asturias
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
All the
King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
Animal
Farm by George Orwell
1984 by George Orwell
I,
Claudius by Robert Graves
Religion
/ Faith / Science
Inherit
the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee (8th Grade)
Barabbas
by Par Lagerkvist (10th Grade)
Becket
by Jean Anouilh (10th Grade)
St.
Joan by George Bernard Shaw (10th Grade)
A Man
for All Seasons by Robert Bolt (10th Grade)
Galileo
by Bertolt Brecht (10th Grade)
Children
of Gebelawi by Naguib Mahfuz
Death
Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
The
Crucible by Arthur Miller
A
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
“The Atheist's Mass” by Honore de Balzac
A Contract with God by Will Eisner
Holocaust
and Internment
Number
the Stars by Lois Lowry (6th Grade)
The
Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (12th Grade)
A Day
in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (12th
Grade)
Night by Elie Wiesel
Maus by
Art Spiegelman
Racism
and Colonialism
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (11th Grade)
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Death
and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka
Devil
on the Cross by Ngugi Wa Thiongo
Season
of Migration to the North by Tayib Saleh
Things
Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Fences
by August Wilson
Invisible
Man by Ralph Ellison
Native
Son by Richard Wright
Segu by
Maryse Conde
American
Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa
Family and Generations
Danny,
the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl (6th Grade)
Romeo
and Juliet by William Shakespeare (9th Grade)
The Joy
Luck Club by Amy Tan (11th Grade)
Main
Street by Sinclair Lewis
“Buying
a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather” by Gao Xingjian
One
Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pedro
Paramo by Juan Rulfo
As I
Lay Dying by William Faulkner
“Gravel”
by Alice Munro
Stylistic Works for School
Literature
Short
Stories
“The Lady or the Tiger?” by Frank Stockton (9th Grade)
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Alan Poe
“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell (9th Grade)
“Man from the South” by Roald Dahl (9th Grade)
“An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (11th Grade)
“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges
“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
“The Dead” by James Joyce
“The Door in the Wall” by HG Wells
“Olalla” by RL Stevenson
“The Waveries” by Frederic Brown
“Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link
Poetry
Ozymandias
by Percy Shelly (9th Grade)
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams (9th Grade)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost (11th Grade)
To His
Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
Howl by
Allen Ginsburg
Ode to
a Grecian Urn by John Keats
Song of
the Wagons by Du Fu
Nefarious
War by Li Bai
Ulysses
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tintern
Abbey by William Wordsworth
If You
Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
Still I
Rise by Maya Angelou
Harlem
by Langston Hughes
The
Flea by John Donne
Slow
Rain by Gabriela Mistral
The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot
Summer
Day by Boris Pasternak
At the
Station in an Autumn Morning by Giosue Carducci
A
Vignette by Carl Spitteler
A
Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
Grieving
and Wandering by Charles Baudelaire
As
Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sit the
Noon Out, Pale and Absorbed in Thought by Eugenio Montale
The
Visions by Harry Martinson
A Song
on the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz
Eagle
or Sun by Octavio Paz
Photograph
from September 11 by Wislawa Szymborska
Alcaic
by Tomas Transtromer
Poet in New York by Federico Garcia Lorca
Wheel-Rim River Sequence by Wang
Wei
Return to the Field by Tao
Chien
The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace
Stevens
A selection of haiku by Matsuo Basho
Drama
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (11th Grade)
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe by Jane Wagner (12th Grade)
Six
Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
Life is
a Dream by Calderon de la Barca
The
Clouds by Aristophanes
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
The
Misanthrope by Moliere
Phedre
by Racine
The
China Tree by Issam Mahfouz
The
Recognition of Shakuntala by Kalidasa
No
Dramas: Early Snow, Tsunemasa
The Sandbox
by Edward Albee
The
Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder
Betrayal
by Harold Pinter
Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco
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