Rachel Baack

Summary: This book is written as a series of letters written by the fictional Charlie to his pen pal. He writes about his experiences as a high school student getting over the death of a friend, making new friends, and meeting a mentor. Charlie has a dark secret that he has repressed for a long time, however, and it is threatening to come out.

This novel deals with some heavy themes such as drug and alcohol abuse, sex and sexual abuse, and mental illness. It's definitely a hard read, and I felt that it was especially so when I read it as an adult because it was just really sad to imagine children going through the things that the characters had to face. That's not to say you shouldn't read it; just have your tissues ready if you do!

Summary: This book is written as a series of letters written by the fictional Charlie to his pen pal. He writes about his experiences as a high school student getting over the death of a friend, making new friends, and meeting a mentor. Charlie has a dark secret that he has repressed for a long time, however, and it is threatening to come out.

This novel deals with some heavy themes such as drug and alcohol abuse, sex and sexual abuse, and mental illness. It's definitely a hard read, and I felt that it was especially so when I read it as an adult because it was just really sad to imagine children going through the things that the characters had to face. That's not to say you shouldn't read it; just have your tissues ready if you do!

Summary: Ponyboy is a member of a gang called the Greasers. The gang is like a family to him, and he knows they’ll always have his back against their rival gang, the Socs. One night, after Ponyboy has a fight with his brother and runs out of his house, he and a fellow greaser get into more trouble than they ever imagined.

Summary: Delphine, Fern, and Vonetta go to California in the 1960s to visit their mother whom they haven’t seen in four years. She is not exactly welcoming, and she starts sending the girls to a summer camp run by the Black Panthers. The book traces the girls’ experiences getting to know more about their mother and their African-American heritage. It offers a great inside look at the Black Panther movement of the 60s while maintaining focus on the individual lives of the three girls.

Summary: This novel is considered by many to epitomize the beat generation. Sal Paradise shares his experiences traveling across the country over the course of several years with Dean Moriarty and other friends, and he gives a glimpse into the wild lives that they lived.

Summary: George and Lennie are travelling farm workers who stick together, George more or less looking after Lennie, who has an intellectual disability. The two men begin work on a farm that is owned by a man with a son who is always ready to fight and who has a wife who the men suspect of being a floozy.

This short book explores the difficulties encountered by poor farm workers in the 1930s as well as the treatment of people of color, women, and people with intellectual disabilities.

Summary: This story begins when a seventh-grade student named Pierre Anthon declares that everything is meaningless and leaves school. His classmates set out to prove him wrong, but the story takes a dark turn.

Summary: This book is written from the perspective of a miserable, disillusioned man who lives alone in Russia. It is divided into two parts. In the first part, the man gives an abstract explanation of his views on free will, arbitrary actions, alienation, and other ideas. In the second section, he describes a series of interactions that he had with others at an earlier point in his life that demonstrate his alienation.

Summary: When Catherine Moorland, a seventeen-year-old girl who is not yet wise to the ways of the world, accompanies some family friends to the town of Bath, he has the pleasure of making several new acquaintances, some of whom prove to be true friends and others of whom do not. An avid reader of Gothic novels, Catherine often imagines situations to be more dramatic than they really are, but, throughout the course of her interactions with her new friends, she learns that, while reality is often less frightful than she would imagine, it can sometimes be just as tumultuous.

Summary: In this classic, Margaret Hale is forced to move to the city with her parents during the time of England’s Industrial Revolution. She faces several challenges as she tries to get used to city life, and she begins to recognize the issues that exist between factory workers and their bosses.

This work exposes some of the injustices that occurred during the Industrial Revolution and explores the complex relationships between the factory workers and factory owners.

Summary: A series of serious misunderstandings plague the very unfortunate John Nicholson. This novella shows how seemingly small errors in judgement can have disastrous effects.

Summary: Fanny Price, the eldest daughter of a very large family, is sent to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle. While she is educated and materially taken care of there, her feelings and wellbeing are often disregarded. It is not long before she starts developing feelings for the one person in the house who seems to care about her, but when the Crawfords come to visit, things get a little bit messy in the romance department.

Summary: This unchronological recounting of the first two years of a romantic relationship is arranged by keywords and in alphabetical order, like a dictionary. The story captures the real and the raw, the good and the bad of the relationship.

Summary: Fifteen-year-old Will has grown up in a community where murder is a regular occurrence and everyone follows three rules: don’t cry, don’t snitch, and get revenge. When Will’s older brother is shot and killed, he decides that he needs to follow rule number 3, but, as he goes down the elevator to find the boy he believes to have killed his brother, something strange starts to happen that makes him think a little harder about what he’s about to do.

The book is several hundred pages, but it’s written in verse and is a really quick read.

Summary: This book follows the story of its title character, Jane Eyre, who, after a trying childhood, becomes the governess of a girl who is under the guardianship of Mr. Rochester. As Jane gets to know Mr. Rochester, she finds that his personality, despite being somewhat unusual, is captivating. She also begins to sense, however, that something is not quite right in the Rochester residence, and what she discovers is more shocking than she could have even guessed.

This book starts off a little slow but gets much more interesting as it goes on. It is a book that I found compelling, frustrating, and thought-provoking.

Summary: An unnamed narrator begins his tale by telling readers that he has come to realize that, as a Black man in America, he is functionally invisible. He then tells readers the story of his experiences growing up and going to college in the South and then working in the North, facing revelations of the deceitfulness of others at every turn.

Summary: This novel is written in poetic verse and tells the story of a young girl who comes to America as a refugee with her mother and brothers. The book chronicles her struggles to fit in and survive in her new home all while attempting to maintain her cultural heritage.

Summary: An author named Nathan Zuckerman meets a disgraced college professor, Coleman Silk, who retired as a result of a false accusation of racism. As Nathan uncovers more about Coleman’s life, he discovers the huge secret that Coleman has been keeping for half a century and that is the real reason he retired.

The book includes some sexually explicit scenes.

Summary: The title character, Hope, lives with her aunt Addie, who is a restaurant cook. When the restaurant that Addie works for in New York City closes down, she takes a job at a diner in Wisconsin. Hope is reluctant to go, but, when she gets to her new home, she is greeted by a few friendly faces and some unexpectedly exciting happenings.

Summary: This novel, written in 1899, is narrated by Marlow, who retells his experience working for a Belgian-owned company in the Congo. On his journey down the Congo River, Maslow encounters a variety of situations, some eye-opening, some confusing, and some terrifying. The book explores ideas such as imperialism, racism, and intercultural interactions.

Summary: Scout returns to her hometown at age 26 only to discover that the people she has always loved are not who she thought they were. Set near the time of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, this book tackles issues of race relations and of relating to those with whom one may not see eye to eye.

Summary: This 1920s-era novel is the novel that defined the “Jazz Age.” It is told through the perspective of Nick, a visitor to his cousin Daisy and cousin-in-law Tom on New York’s old-money East Egg district. It doesn’t take long before Nick meets his extravagantly wealthy neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who lives in the West Egg district, and begins to slowly unravel the story of his past.

Summary: Ally is sixth-grader who has always struggled in school. She is frequently sent to the principal’s office for acting out, but what here teachers have consistently failed to notice is that her misbehavior is only a cover to hide the fact that she struggles to read. On top of all that, Ally finds herself the target of a particularly relentless bully. It looks like all of that might just start to change when Ally gets a new teacher.

Summary: Ivan Turgenev’s novel, originally written in Russian, follows a young self-proclaimed nihilist and his impressionable friend. The work gives a look into the political turmoil of 19th century Russia, but, more than that, it exposes the unexpectedness of life as it presents itself to people of all philosophical mindsets.