{"id":524,"date":"2010-06-20T10:06:54","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T15:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/?p=524"},"modified":"2010-06-23T12:47:38","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T17:47:38","slug":"high-school-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/high-school-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"High School Reads"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently got an interview request from Louisville Magazine to share my thoughts about books. \u00a0A thrill! \u00a0Anyone who hasn’t read E. Lockhart surely must, and I will tell them so. \u00a0Also the fine nature of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “American Wife” must be trumpeted. They also asked me, Which book do you think should be required for high school students?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You’d think, what with all my opinions and the fact that I taught middle-school for quite a while, I’d be able to name one, but I am having the hardest time with that question! \u00a0Part of the trouble is that I’ve been traveling\u00a0since I got the interview request, so I haven’t been able to look at the bookshelf, but I can picture it pretty well and can’t seem to name anything perfect.<\/p>\n

I offered The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson, since, as Queen says (although not about this book), it is “guaranteed to blow your mind” if you are in high school. \u00a0A story about Napoleon’s chicken-cook and a girl with webbed feet, set in Venice, The Passion has history, love, world-melting, and beautiful language. \u00a0But does it expose the reader to new insights about the actual world? \u00a0Does it help develop empathy? \u00a0(It may, and maybe I just can’t remember, but that doesn’t seem to be one of its salient features, and high-school students can be so grounded in their own worldview that I’d want to recommend a book that forces discussion of differences.<\/p>\n

\"\"For that, I might recommend The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, about four sisters stuck on their parents’ mad mission trip to the Congo. \u00a0Kingsolver alternates perspectives and each girl’s voice is amazingly distinct; we learn about history and geography, we’re moved by the stories, and the problems of Colonialism would spark a meaty discussion. \u00a0But the book is pretty accessible, and if I get to make students read something, shouldn’t it be something they might not finish on their own?<\/p>\n

\"\"Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex might strike a good balance between The Poisonwood Bible and The Passion. \u00a0A story about an intersex kid growing up in Michigan, the granddaughter of Greek immigrants, this book won a Pulitzer Prize\u00a0and is both world-broadening and stylistically cool. \u00a0But is the book a little cold? \u00a0Would high-school students want to keep going with it?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oh, maybe Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison. \u00a0Everyone in my sophomore-year English class loved this story, about four generations of African-Americans in the south, for the rich language, aforementioned world-melting nature, and the fact that it recounted an experience outside of our own. \u00a0Hmm, that is definitely seeming like the most likely contender so far,\u00a0maybe because I have firsthand experience of what it felt like to read it. \u00a0It was like hiking through the woods only to come upon a glacier field–gorgeous, unique, and totally unexpected. \u00a0On the other hand,\u00a0this is already on lots of lists. \u00a0I want to make a splash in my fictional curriculum!<\/p>\n

Any thoughts, reader friends? \u00a0What do you think all high-school students should read, and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently got an interview request from Louisville Magazine to share my thoughts about books. \u00a0A thrill! \u00a0Anyone who hasn’t read E. Lockhart surely must, and I will tell them so. \u00a0Also the fine nature of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “American Wife” must be trumpeted. They also asked me, Which book do you think should be required […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writerly-monday","tag-required-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}