Favorite book?

[Derek Reese 29]

So there is an off-chance I might be teaching English this fall, so I am putting this thread out there for suggestions for kids who may not have yet learned to love to read. I am an avid reader and have been since my parents smartly put a few copies of Field and Stream and Outdoor Life in my grubby little hands when I was about 5.
As for me, my favorites are Reilly’s Luck by Louis L’Amour and Without Remorse by Tom Clancy.

 

[SD51555]

I think the biggest mistake the system ever made was making kids grow up reading old English literature from centuries ago. I’d figure out a way for them to pick something they are interested in and get it approved by you.


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[Derek Reese 29]

I think the biggest mistake the system ever made was making kids grow up reading old English literature from centuries ago. I’d figure out a way for them to pick something they are interested in and get it approved by you.


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For sure! I even had a teacher in highs school assign us Pat McManus! I about died on the spot.

 

[Catscratch]

I give kids old hunting and fishing magazines. Put up any newspaper articles that has a school related article such as sports, music, or FFA (kids love to read their name in print). Books full of short stories (Night Shift, Voices from Chernobyl, Phineas Gage, etc), and interestingly enough poetry if we are dissecting meaning as a group.

 

[KY wild]

Kids tend to either fight to never read or try to read even during PE class. Since the readers don't need any motivation then I would try to make reading interesting and easy to the kids that don't like reading. I would print short stories and give kids a copy and then let the computer read them the story on the overhead as they follow along. I would include these short stories because they are great.....
The Most Dangerous Game
The Problem of Cell 13
To Build A Fire
The Lady, or the Tiger
The Lottery

Then if short stories go well try an easy book like...
The Cay
The Lord of the Flies

 

[Feelslikefar.]

As a kid My Side of the Mountain was my favorite book, so that's what I say it is.

I don't have a favorite book as an adult, even though I used to read quite a lot, all non fiction. I just can't enjoy reading with glasses now.

 

[Westwind]

@Derek Reese 29 I don’t know if this works for high school kids but you mentioned Tom Clancy.

Damascus Station by David McClosky is really good. One of the main characters is a female chief of station. Insurgents have broken into the embassy and she is battling them in a hallway with a Mossberg shotgun. She screams at them “I SAW MY OWN DEATH IN A DREAM AND IT WAS A EFF OF A LOT MORE VIOLENT THAN THIS!” That will make a hell of a movie scene one day.

Moscow X is good too.

I just ordered “7th Floor” and I think I heard he has another one coming out soon.

 

[chucker66]

Not sure of the age group but I loved Call of the Wild by Jack London. I first read it in 4th grade.

 

[Angus 1895]

The old man and the sea.

Horses hitches and rocky trails.

My two favorite books.

 

[BenA]

Kids will read if it's something they're interested in. When I was a kid, it was hunting magazines, Louis L'Amour, Tom Swift, books about mountain men and frontiersmen, and books about turtles or other animals. My daughter likes to read age appropriate murder mysteries. Maybe books made into some of their favorite movies would be a good place to start. They could discuss what the differences are and which they thought was better and why.

 

[Telemark]

Robert B. Parker has some great books. I enjoyed reading the Spenser series when I was in high school.

It's hard to know what schools will allow these days. I would try to find a few books on their interests and see how that goes. The best part about literature class in school was having a group chat about each chapter as an entire class. The worst part was reading boring dogmatic crap about apartheid, holocaust, etc. I really don't like reading when it feels like a chore. But sitting in my hammock with a good fiction book is one of life's great joys.

 

[Native Hunter]

Herter's Professional Guide Manual shaped my life at age 6..................

 

[Kev]

A Thousand Campfires by Jay Massey.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Kids tend to either fight to never read or try to read even during PE class. Since the readers don't need any motivation then I would try to make reading interesting and easy to the kids that don't like reading. I would print short stories and give kids a copy and then let the computer read them the story on the overhead as they follow along. I would include these short stories because they are great.....
The Most Dangerous Game
The Problem of Cell 13
To Build A Fire
The Lady, or the Tiger
The Lottery

Then if short stories go well try an easy book like...
The Cay
The Lord of the Flies

Derek -
I'll 2nd what KY wild said of some books. Our English teachers in JHS & HS had us reading books & short stories such as -

To Build a Fire, - The Call of the Wild, - The Lottery, - The Telltale Heart (Poe), - The Grapes of Wrath, - A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, - Huckleberry Finn, - and anything about the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

If you want to give kids a taste of anything outdoors / nature - I recommend Gone or the Day by the late Ned Smith - a Pa. outdoor writer/hunter/fisherman/naturalist. If you're not familiar with the author or the book, it's Ned's day-to-day, short writings as a kind of field journal. Entries are short paragraphs of his outdoor wanderings & sightings, about anything from insects, plants, animals, vistas (Hawk Mountain, for one), fish, with sketches of subject matter in some of the entries. Not heavy reading, but it stokes curiosity about nature in young people - and us older ones! Pa. kids will be able to relate to some of the locations mentioned in this book. BTW - Ned Smith painted many covers for the Pa. Game News magazine over the years, and his paintings / prints are nationally known in the outdoor world.

 

[356]

Chronicles of Narnia, almost anything Louis L'Amour and The Cat Who mystery series by Lilian Jackson Braun.

 

[BenA]

I almost forgot about Aldo Leopold's, A Sand County Almanac. That would be a great discussion.

 

[Barndog56]

Really liked Jack London when I was a kid, then Agatha Christie, and Louis L'amour a little later. I had an hour long bus ride to school every morning and it was spent reading.

Got into reading any book that had been made into an action movie for awhile. Favorites were the Hunt For Red October and Totall Recall. Favorite author now is John Sandford.

 

[trampledbyturtles]

Brian's Winter. The follow up to The Hatchet.

Still read it every year during hunting season at some point.

 

[Hoytvectrix]

So there is an off-chance I might be teaching English this fall, so I am putting this thread out there for suggestions for kids who may not have yet learned to love to read. I am an avid reader and have been since my parents smartly put a few copies of Field and Stream and Outdoor Life in my grubby little hands when I was about 5.
As for me, my favorites are Reilly’s Luck by Louis L’Amour and Without Remorse by Tom Clancy.

For a year after grad school I ended up teaching 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English Lit and Composition. I am an agronomist by trade and hated these subjects when I was going through high school. Teaching those classes was a blast and I am so glad I got the opportunity.

With that said, the classics are classics for a reason. A few have been mentioned already. Depending on the age(s), I would consider Of Mice and Men, 1984, and Brave New World among essential reads.

I like what others had suggested as well. Give the students some autonomy in choosing what they want. Some might like non-fiction a little more, some might like young adult coming of age stories. John Green is pretty popular these days. The AP has some lists that could help narrow the list down.

Since you asked about favorite book, I will share mine. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Probably the best book out there for learning critical thinking skills that seem all the more needed today.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

For sure! I even had a teacher in highs school assign us Pat McManus! I about died on the spot.

I had a teacher in high school who knew that I was a WWII buff. It was some kind of a boring Western Civilization class and each kid was assign to read a book about the Aztecs or the Incas or something like that. I forget exactly....but stuff I was not into. He came to my desk and said "Here Mahar....you're reading this" and handed me a book called The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. It's a WWII classic about a German fighting on the Russian Front.

Great teacher. And a great book. Read it when I was in his class as age 14. Have read it multiple times. I actually have the very book he handed me that day on my shelf at in my home. I work in the school I went to and our library closed and I grabbed the book before they shipped them all off.