How to Plan a High School Reading List
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The OCD tendencies that I only half-joke about having will sometimes manifest themselves in the oddest ways. Sometimes it’s the way I arrange my groceries on the conveyor belt for check-out. Other times, it’s school planning. I’m not sure if the best title for this post is How to Plan a High School Reading List or How a Person with OCD Tendencies Plans a High School Reading List.
Back to that check-out lane, my family members have learned not to attempt to help me put groceries on the conveyor – or, at least, to just pass the items to me and let me put them where I want them. All the frozen stuff has to go first, followed by meat, followed by dairy. Then, produce, followed by canned goods, and so on. It makes sense because all the cold foods need to go in the cooler bags together so they stay cold.
How to Plan a High School Reading List
In the same way, I want the high school reading list that I plan to make sense by grouping similar things together. Doing so makes school more efficient – as efficient as having all the canned goods in the same bag when it’s time to put groceries away.
So, let’s consider how this “grouping system” works in a practical way …
Study American Literature with American History
I love learning history through literature, so it just makes sense to study American Lit alongside American History. As we work our way through our country’s history, we’ll read classics such as:
- The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- The Chosen by Chaim Potok
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The list is a work in progress. And, just for the record, I was not required – therefore, I did not – read a single one of those books when I was in high school. I plan to rectify that by reading them alongside my kids.
If you’re interested in learning American History through Literature, this review by homeschooler Sara Jordan will be helpful.
Study World Lit with World History
In the same way, we’ll be studying world literature along with world history. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to convince Josh to read any of the Bronte sisters’ works, but his list will include the following:
- Mythology by Edith Hamilton. I am fascinated by Greek mythology and this is one of the few books I clearly remember from my own high school experience.
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
This, too, is an incomplete list. As much as possible, I’m planning to approach history and literature with the structure that I learned to love so much when we used Trail Guide to Learning. We’ll spend six weeks on a topic or period in history, World War II, for example. During those six weeks, we’ll read at least one related literature selection and one biography.
Pair Modern Lit with Movies
Finally, I like Lee Binz’s advice not to focus solely on the classics. Throughout the kids’ high school years, I’ll pair modern literature with its movie adaptation mostly because it’s going to be fun, but also because these books can provide the start of some amazing rabbit trails.
This semester, Josh has been reading The Maze Runner and we saw the movie when it came out. Megan read and watched The Fault in Our Stars.
For a comprehensive list, check out these 100 Books Made to Movies You Can Watch on Amazon Prime
Interested in reading the books connected with the above movies? Do you want your kids to spend some time thinking about why certain choices are made in filmography?
You’ll definitely find this Movie from Book Study Guide & Huge Booklist helpful.
In Closing
There are a number of ways to plan your high school reading list and prepare the accompanying lit courses. However, pairing literature with history and using popular books as a jumping off point for further study makes sense to me.
How do you like to plan your kids’ high school reading list?
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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
I’m a book first kind of gal. In my opinion, watching a movie first limits your imagination as you read the book (you have the movie’s pictures already in place for characters and situations).
I used to read the book first. However, three books I am interested in reading have come from movies I have seen first. Now it’s just a depending on what I do first. Most of the time I read the book first.
Book first!
I put my food on the conveyor belt the same way. It makes perfect sense.
See? We could hang out. 🙂
I’m a book first girl. In fact I often skip movies based on books entirely. We enjoyed The Giver but have no plans to watch the movie. For my less keen reader though watching the movie first can often lead to reading the book. As for reading lists I often wing it. Some years our history programme has a lot of literature included. Other years I throw a list of books at the kids and just let them pick from that . Next year we’ll probably focus on geography so I’ll probably try and tie some of the reading suggestions in with whatever countries or regions we are studying. Since there are so many great books to be read anything but let them choose within guidelines. This year for instance my son had to do 1 play, 1 modern novel, 1 older classic, several stories, 1 movie, several poems plus some other things. He got to pick the titles but had to run them past me first.
Oh, I really like the guidelines. I might have to borrow some of your ideas. Thanks for sharing!
book first. I’ll warn you they really ruined the Percy Jackson books when they made them into movies, they did not change the names to protect innocent characters in that adaptation.
I was not required to read any of the books in your American history list either. That’s a little odd. About 6 years ago I used https://www.designastudy.com/products/1891975099.html with my late middle schooler early high school. We loved it.
Book first! And, might I say we are OCD twins 😉 Great list too, btw!
I’m usually a book first kind of person. Normally I like the book better. We recently started using the Kindle Whisper Sync, where you purchase the kindle book and the audio together. It’s a great option for books that are difficultly worded.
I’m torn. I LOVED loved loved The Book Thief in book form. I rarely get to touch pages, so this was an audiobook for me. I travel and work in the field as a nurse, so I like to listen from house to house. But the movie, for me, was such a disappointment. I wonder if I’d love the movie had I not read the book first.
Book first for me, usually. Recent example: I read The Help, then watched the movie. The movie was great, but it left out so much from the book! This leads me to ask, how do you feel about strong language in books/movies? The Help had a lot of foul language throughout. I’m not sure I would put that on a list for my kids to read. Then again, many great books do have rough language. How do you handle that? My daughter doesn’t want to read any book with any bad words.
For me, it depends on the maturity of the kid and the overall value of the book. When I was a kid, my step-dad let me watch my first Rated R movie (which probably would be PG-13 by today’s standards). It was The Breakfast Club. I was 16 and he thought that the message of the movie outweighed the language and some of the other negatives of the movie. I wouldn’t let my kids read a book filled with language if it had no redeeming qualities. Like you mentioned, many of the books that we consider classics and are required reading for many high school students contain objectionable language.
***I realize this is an old post, but I couldn’t stop myself from chiming in. 🙂 ***
ANSWER TO POLL: I normally prefer to read the book first. From conversations with others and my own experience, I’ve believe that people, ordinarily, enjoy the story more through the format they experience it first, be it the movie or the book. If I’m going to invest time over several weeks to read a book vs two hours to watch a movie, I’d rather enjoy the novelty of the story while reading the book, and with the additional richness of details that only a book can provide.. Some of the more recently released books from movies, like Room and The Glass Castle, I’ve been avoiding watching until I can read the book first, but I haven’t found the time yet TO read the books, so I may just give in and watch the movies instead to at least experience the story in some form.
RECOMMENDATION 1 : A truly WONDERFUL example of a movie that sticks closely to the book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and its Alfred Hitchcock directed, Academy Award winning, counterpart. Much (most?) of the movie dialog is lifted straight off the pages of the book, and I only noticed one plot difference in the movie compared to the book. That difference is a major one, which would be a spoiler to list here, but I understand now it was necessary in order to comply with the Hollywood Production Code in effect at the time and avoid altering the plot in other, more complicated, and ultimately less satisfying ways. I highly recommend them both!!
RECOMMENDATION 2: My favorite author as a teen and young adult was Robert Cormier!! Although often dark and thematically mature, I will forever remember the sensation of closing his book, I am the Cheese, which I’d checked out of my 7th grade teacher’s class library, and thinking, “Ah… THAT is what a book can do.” Although I loved reading at the time and had devoured the first 50 books in The Baby-Sitters Club series, I’d read NOTHING up to that point that moved me like I am the Cheese. It was truly a gift, and I went on to enjoy After the First Death, We All Fall Down, and The Chocolate War, among others. Highly recommend these books for mature teens who ready for them.