Ariel's Booklist

Mary Oliver poems, Dog Songs collection

Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

From George:

            C. S. Lewis: Narnia Series (especially The Horse and His Boy)

            Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

            Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee

            Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain Trilogy

            Christopher Paul Curtis, Bud, Not Buddy

            Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Shiloh

            Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

            John Knowles, A Separate Peace

            J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye           

From Emma: 

            Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted

            Tamora Pierce, Protector of the Small series

             Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

            Judy Blume Teen Collection: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. and more

            Veronica Roth, Divergent series

             Gregory Maguire, Wicked series

             Emily Dickinson poems:  “Hope is a Thing with Feathers,” “To Make a Prairie,” “Fame is a Bee,” “Bees are Black, with                                                                              Gilt Surcingles”

            Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Merlin’s Song”

Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess,  Swing

Harry Potter series

Brian Jacques, Redwall series

T. H. White, The Once and Future King

Shakespeare:  Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest

PBS Great American Read  https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/

BBC Top One Hundred Books http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

S. E. Hinton,  The Outsiders

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Ernest Hemmingway, The Sun Also Rises

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Lois Lowry, The Giver

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web

Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series

Beatrix Potter books

Jack London’s Call of the Wild

 

And just for fun, two of my favorite Mary Oliver poems: 

 

LUKE

I had a dog
  who loved flowers.
    Briskly she went
        through the fields,

yet paused
  for the honeysuckle
    or the rose,
        her dark head

and her wet nose
  touching
    the face
         of every one

with its petals
  of silk,
    with its fragrance
         rising

into the air
  where the bees,
    their bodies
        heavy with pollen,

hovered—
  and easily
     she adored
        every blossom,

not in the serious,
  careful way
    that we choose
        this blossom or that blossom—

the way we praise or don’t praise—
  the way we love
     or don’t love—
        but the way

we long to be—
  that happy
    in the heaven of earth—
        that wild, that loving.

 

THE SWEETNESS OF DOGS

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. It’s full tonight.
So we go

and the moon rises, so beautiful it
makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself

thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s
perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up
into my face. As though I were just as wonderful
as the perfect moon.