St. Margaret’s Summer Reading List
All School Book:
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. 1997. (8-12) This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the
heat, dust, and wind of Oklahoma along with the discontent of narrator Billie Jo, a talented pianist growing up
during the Depression. Hesse's spare prose adroitly traces Billie Jo's journey in and out of darkness.
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 1991. (9-12) The four Garcia girls face a strange new life in
America when they are forced to flee the Dominican Republic. (FCTB)
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1976. (9-12) Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic boy resolve personal
dilemmas caused by the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his parents and society. (FCTB)
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1971. Nonfiction. (9-12) A poetic and frank autobiography about a
talented black girl who recounts her experiences growing up in Arkansas, St. Louis, and San Francisco. (SLJ, CWIS, HTR,
Bank Street, ALA2, FTCB)
Atwood, Margaret. Cat’s Eye. 1989. (10-12) Atwood’s candid, witty, and intensely moving novel about a feminist artist who
remembers growing up in the 1940s and 1950s evokes the vicious power games played by young girls who call themselves
“friends.” (ALA YA Editors’ Choice, Bank Street)
Austen, Jane. Emma. 1815. (10-12) Charming, willful Emma Woodhouse thinks she knows what is best for everybody and
amuses herself by playing with the affairs of other people, planning their lives as she sees fit. Emma’s plans go awry and she
soon discovers the meaning of her own affairs as friendship grows into love.
Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. 1956. (10-12) Fourteen-year-old John struggles against the sins of his
forefathers and the sensuous evils of Harlem to attain a religious conversion that reflects man’s battle for inner peace. (FTCB,
ALA2)
Blais, Madeleine. In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle. 1994. Nonfiction. (8-12) They were a talented team with a near-perfect
record but a reputation for choking in the crunch of the state playoffs. Finally, after five straight years of disappointments, the
Amherst Lady Hurricanes found they just might have what it takes to go all the way. This is a fierce, funny, and intimate look
into their minds and hearts during one special season. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
Boylan, James Finney. Getting In. 1998. (10-12) Boylan takes wicked aim at the college mystique, bringing together three
adults and four high school seniors for a whilrlwind tour of swanky eastern colleges that turns journey of self-discovery none of
them will ever forget. Long-kept secrets, betrayals, and complex relationships between teens and between teens and their
parents mark this raucous, and moving novel that gives new meaning to going off to college and coming of age. (ALA Best
Book, ALEX Award)
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. 1987. (10-12) The Arthurian legend is retold from the feminine point of
view with an emphasis on the conflict between the old religion and Christianity. (SLJ)
Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy Tree. 1984. (8-12) With folksy exuberance, a young boy remembers how his grandfather
turned a small turn-of-the-century Georgia on its ear. (ALA YA Editors’ Choice, EJ)
Campbell, Bebe Moore. Sweet Summer: Growing Up With & Without My Dad. 1993. (9-12) Bebe Moore grew up in a
divided world—between her mother's house in Philadelphia and the "sweet summers" spent South with a disabled father. Sweet
Summer is her acclaimed account of those years, a story of finding her father in a fractured family. (500 Great Books by
Women)
Carter, Forest. The Education of Little Tree. 1976. (8-12) A tender reminiscence depicts Carter’s relationship with his
Cherokee grandparents, who taught him not only their ethics and customs but also a deep regard for nature and their respect for
humankind. (ALA1)
Cather, Willa. Shadows on the Rock. 1931. (10-12) While the setting is 17th century Quebec, the perceptive description of a
stalwart little girl and the waif she befriends is highly modern. (Bank Street)
Chernin, Kim. In My Mother’s House. 1994. (8-12) The triumphant story of Rose Chernin, Russian immigrant and Old Left
activist, is narrated by her daughter in this riveting memoir of conflict and reconciliation between generations. (500 Great
Books by Women)
Choi, Sook Nyui. Year of Impossible Goodbyes. 1991. (8-10) In 1945 the courageous ten-year-old Sookan and her family
must endure the cruelties of the Japanese military occupying Korea, and later the Russian Communist troops. Here is an
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incredible story of one family’s love for each other and their determination to risk everything to find freedom. (ALA YA Best
Book)
Cisneros, Sandra. House on Mango Street. 1991. (9-12) Told in a series of eloquent vignettes, this is the story of a young
girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, a desolate landscape of run-down tenements, who rises above the
hopelessness of her surroundings and creates a rich life for herself. (SLJ, CWIS)
Cheong, Fiona. The Scent of the Gods. 1991. (9-12) Set in the mysterious, sometimes terrifying Singapore of the 1960s, the
novel deals with Singapore struggling for national freedom while Su Yen and her cousins, Li Yuen and Li Shin (all orphans),
struggle for independence from their matriarchical China-born grandmother. (CWIS)
Comer, James. Maggie’s American Dream. 1988. Nonfiction. (9-12) Told first through Maggie’s own words, then through
those of her son James, this is an unforgettable chronicle of courage and resourcefulness, of pride and achievement, of daring to
dream despite the odds in the move from the segregated rural South to the North. (FTCB)
Conway, Jill Ker. Road from Coorain. 1989. (8-12) Australian outbacker Jill Ker Conway fights for an education and,
against the odds, becomes the first woman president of Smith College.
Cook, Karin. What Girls Learn. 1997. (8-12) In a poignant story, the lives of two sisters are forever changed when their
beloved mother falls in love and remarries, only to be stricken with breast cancer. (ALA Best Book)
Crew, Linda. Children of the River. 1991. (8-10) Having fled Cambodia with her aunt’s family to escape the Khmer Rouge
army, Sundara, 13, struggles to adjust to a new culture without knowledge of the fate of her immediate family. (SLJ, CWIS)
Criddle, Joan D. and Teeda Butt Mam. To Destroy You Is No Loss. 1989. Nonfiction. (10-12) Teeda, a 15-year-old
schoolgirl during the Khmer Rouge overthrow of the Cambodian government, tells of four years of forced labor and escape to
Thailand. (SLJ, CWIS)
Delany, Elizabeth, Sarah Delany, and Amy Hill Hearth. Having Our Say. 1993. Nonfiction. (8-12) Two daughters of
former slaves tell their stories of fighting racial and gender prejudice during the twentieth century.
Dillard, Annie. An American Childhood. Nonfiction. 1987. (10-12) That rare thing in literature (if not in “real life”) of an
exciting, joyous, intellectually exciting childhood. An autobiography of life in an upper middle class, emotionally supportive
family in the 1950s. (Bank Street, CWIS, FTCB)
Dorris, Michael. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. 1987. (10-12) The spirited voice of 15-year-old half-Indian, half-black
Rayona is but one of several alternating voices in a novel depicting three generations of contemporary Indian women struggling
to find lives for themselves on and off the reservation (ALA YA Editors’ Choice)
Emecheta, Buchi. The Bride Price. 1976. (10-12) Aku-nna, a young Ibo girl, and Chike, her teacher and the son of a
prosperous former slave, fall in love despite tribal custom forbidding their romance. (SLJ, FTCB)
Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. 1992. As the youngest of three daughters in a turn of the century Mexican
family, Tita may not marry but must remain at home to care for her mother. (FCTB)
Fine, Anne. Tulip Touch. 1997. (8-12) Natalie's exclusive friendship with the thrillingly reckless Tulip becomes increasingly
dangerous, and she must decide to save herself even as she acknowledges her troubled friend's terrible desperation. Fine cuts
to the emotional bone in this novel of friendship, truth, and the uneasy weight of human responsibility.
Frank, Anne. Diary of a Young Girl. Nonfiction. (8-10) The autobiography of a 13-year-old Jewish girl hiding from the
Nazis with her family and friends in a secret room above a factory in Amsterdam. For two years, they are able to move around
and speak to each other only at night, and Anne’s diary becomes the best friend with whom she shares her dreams and hopes
and fears. (FTCB)
Franklin, Miles. My Brilliant Career. 1901. Nonfiction. (9-12) A story of a woman ahead of her time, it is the waning years
of the nineteenth century in the Australian bush, when the only respectable status for a woman is to be married. The heroine
refuses to marry the man in love with her because she can’t become part of someone else’s life without finding out about herself
first. (CWIS)
Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. 1994. (10-12) Sixteen-year-old Sophie
develops a sense of wonder and meaning as she searches for her father, herself, and the answers to the questions of the
mysterious Major.
Garden, Nancy. Annie on My Mind. 1982. (8-10) When Liza and Annie, two New York City high school seniors meet, they
are immediately drawn to each other. Although both young women face conflicts in accepting their feelings of attraction, the
story captures the magic and intensity of first love. (ALA YA Best Books 1970-1982)
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Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. 1972. (8-12) This fictional autobiography tells the story of a
remarkable black woman born in slavery on a Louisiana plantation who is freed after the Civil War and lives another 100 years
to see the second emancipation. (FTCB)
Godwin, Gail. Father Melancholy’s Daughter. 1992. (10-12) This insightful novel is an emotionally tangled, subtle tale
about the mysteries of family relationships, loss, forgiveness, and redemption told from the point of view of Father
Melancholy’s Daughter. (SLJ)
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. 1954. (8-12) Innocence ends and savagery begins when English schoolboys are
marooned on an island and attempt to set up a society of their own. (FTCB, HTR)
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Wait Till Next Year. 1997. (8-12) Set in the suburbs of New York, where neighborhoods were
divided between Dodger, Giant and Yankee fans, this book recreates the postwar era when owning a home on a tree-lined street
meant the realization of a dream and memories for a lifetime. It is the story of a seemingly more innocent time, yet one that saw
the convergence of McCarthyism, A-bomb drills and racism that came to Goodwin's hometown. Through it all, though, she
could count on two constants--the Dodgers and her father.
Hillman, Tim and Craig Thorn IV, Editors. Second Home: Life in a Boarding School. 1996. Nonfiction. (8-12) A
compilation of essays written by boarding school students, educators, and houseparents. Sprinkled throughout the book are
exercises designed to help a student prepare for the boarding school experience.
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki, and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar. 1983. Nonfiction. (8-12) Personal reflection
of growing up in Manzanar, a Japanese-American internment camp, during World War II. This account details the tragedies,
the injustice of it, and yet human dignity, courage, warmth and sense of survival. (ALA YA Best Book)
Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm. 1997. Nonfiction. (8-12) A tale of a doomed ship caught in the middle of what
meteorologists have called the storm of the century. At its heart is a gripping narrative about struggling for survival in a
tempest of ferocious winds and 100-ft. waves.
Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. 1994. (10-12) At the age of 18, Kaysen was sent to McLean Hospital, where she spent
the next two years in a psychiatric ward for teenage girls. This brilliant work gives lasting and specific dimension to the
definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
Kercheval, Jesse Lee. Space: A Memoir. (8-12) A sweetly honest memoir of a girl growing up amid the glare of the rocket
launches from Cape Canaveral. Weaving personal and public concerns inextricably, this brilliant rendering of an era tells the
story of a nation's love affair with its space program and one girl's search for herself. (ALA Best Book, ALEX Award)
Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Dreams: A Novel. 1990. (10-12) Codi Noline learns secrets about her past that change her
future when she returns home to care for ailing father and to teach high school biology. (FCTB)
Lamb, Wally. She’s Come Undone. 1996. (9-12) An extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, this novel tells the story of
Dolores Price, a dysfunctional, heartbreakingly comical young heroine, and her wild journey to love, pain, and renewal.
LeGuin, Ursula. Left Hand of Darkness. 1969. (9-12) First envoy to the technologically primitive world of Winter, Al must
deal with a hostile climate; a suspicious, bickering government; and his own conventional sexual mores. (FCTB)
Levitin, Sonia. The Return. 1987. (8-12) Desta, an Ethiopian Jewish girl, dares to make a courageous and tragic journey to
the Sudan, then Israel, as she and her brother and sister escape their country’s anti-Semitism with the help of Operation Moses.
(SLJ, ALA2, VOYA)
Lord, Bette B. Spring Moon: A Novel of China. 1981. (9-12) A heart wrenching cultural and personal history of Twentiethcentury China in transition. History unfolds through the experiences five generations of an upper-class family with special
focus on Spring Moon, who though intelligent and educated, suffers the bound feet and other traditional bonds of Chinese
women, and whose rebellious daughter takes part in the Long March of 1934-35. (FTCB)
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. 1993. (8-12) In simple yet powerful prose, Lowry creates an anti-Utopian world where the lack of
hardship, war, and poverty only covers the citizens’ lack of freedom.
Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve. 1954. (9-12) Married at the age of 12 to a tenant farmer she has never seen but
comes to love, a simple peasant girl, Rukmani, struggles quietly and courageously against poverty and natural disasters in a
changing rural India. (SLJ, CWIS, FTCB)
Marsden, John. Letters from the Inside. 1994. (8-10) Mandy and Tracey become penpals after Tracey places an ad for such
in an Australian teen magazine. At first the missives are friendly and chatty . . . but gradually darker truths are revealed: Tracey
is in prison, Mandy is becoming increasingly frightened of her older brother. (VOYA)
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Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. 1959. (9-12) Set in Brooklyn during the Depression and World War II, this is
the fiercely told story of Barbadian immigrants striving to surmount poverty and racism and make their new country
home.(CWIS)
Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country. 1985. (8-12) Kentucky teenager Sam wants to know the truth about Vietnam War. She also
yearns to find out about her father, who was killed in Vietnam before she was even born. (ALA YA Editors’ Choice, SLJ,
CWIS, EJ)
Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa. 1986.
Nonfiction. (9-12) A harrowing portrait of growing up black in South Africa and the true story of one man’s struggle to leave
behind its seething turmoil. (ALA, FTCB)
McCullers, Carson. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. 1958. (9-12) An awkward, teenaged girl, a bitter black doctor, a drunken
radical, and the owner of an all-night bar share an aching loneliness and seek out the friendship and understanding of a deaf
mute. (SLJ, FTCB)
McCullers, Carson. A Member of the Wedding. 1966. (8-12) A young southern girl is determined to be the third party on a
honeymoon, despite advice to the contrary from friends and family. (SLJ)
Menchu, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. 1984. Born in Guatemala into abject poverty
marked by violence and lack of education, this Nobel Prize winner has become one of the world’s foremost fighters for human
rights. (FCTB)
Mishima, Yukia. The Sound of Waves.1954. (9-12) Delicately traces the lives of two young lovers on a small Japanese island
untouched by modern civilization. (FTCB)
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi: An Autobiography. 1968. (8-12) Living in two-room shacks in rural
Mississippi and forced into menial jobs for little pay, Anne Moody learned at an early age the degradation of being African
American. (FCTB)
Morpugo, Michael. The War of Jenkins’ Ear. 1995. (8-12) Set in a British boarding school in the early 1950s, this is the
thought-provoking story of Toby Jenkins. He’s astonished to find himself the disciple of the new boy, Christopher, who
believes himself to the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. (ALA YA Editors’ Choice, VOYA)
Napoli, Donna Jo. Song of the Magdalene. (8-12) Napoli tells a haunting story of Mary Magdalene’s youth and the tragic
romance that may have led to her biblical downfall. (ALA YA Best Book 1996)
Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. 1982. (9-12) In a series of interrelated vignettes, the focus is on seven black
women who take different roads to Brewster Place, a street that once meant hope and upward mobility to white immigrants but
is now a dead end for blacks. (ALA2, CWIS, )
Nolan, Han. Dancing on the Edge. 1997. (8-10) Elaborately drawn characters will surprise readers at every turn in this
compelling story of a girl’s descent into madness. (ALA Best Book, National Book Award)
Palwyck, Susan. Flying in Place. 1993. Emma, a twelve year old child escapes from the subtle horrors of her life by learning
to walk on the ceiling and to fly away from herself.
Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. 1991. (8-12) Paterson vividly re-creates nineteenth-century mill life, using it as a backdrop for
the life of a 13-year-old Lyddie Worthern, “plain as sod,” but a hard worker who is able to enrich her mind and exercise her
will. (ALA YA Best Book)
Quindlen, Ana. Object Lessons. 1992. (10-12) The suburban childhood of Maggie Scanlon changes over one summer in the
1960s, when she begins to view her parents and large Irish/Italian family from an outsider’s perspective that develops as she
grows up. (SLJ)
Rinaldi, Ann. An Acquaintance with Darkness. 1997. (8-12) Chaos reigns in Washington, D.C. President Lincoln has just
been assassinated and the city is reeling with fear and suspicion. But to Emily Bransby Pigbush, the turmoil is nothing
compared to the personal struggle she faces when she suspects that her uncle, a respected physician, is involved in body
snatching.
Shange, Ntozake. Betsey Brown. 1986. (8-12) Betsey, full of dreams about changing the world, struggles with her loving but
conflict-torn family in this portrait of three generations of black women living in newly integrated St. Louis of 1959. (SLJ,
CWIS, FTCB)
Sobel, Dava. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. 1995.
Nonfiction. (9-12) The thorniest scientific problem of the eighteenth century was how to determine longitude. Many
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thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the
engrossing story of John Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only
half the promised rich reward. It is a tale of beauty and ugliness, greatness and weakness—a very human story.
Sparks, Beatrice. Editor. It Happened to Nancy. 1994. Nonfiction. (8-12) Nancy’s own story taken from the pages of her
diary reveals her deepest feelings—from the wonderful romantic fantasies of first love to the nightmare of facing the cruel
reality of AIDS. With the disease progressing, death near, and youthful dreams destroyed, she reveals her most private thoughts
and experiences in the hope of saving others. (VOYA)
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. 1989. (9-12) In quietly elegant prose, Tan weaves the memories of four Chinese women who
fled their homeland and came to San Francisco into a moving narrative that becomes a revelation for the women’s Chinese
American. (ALA YA Editors’ Choice, CWIS)
Thesman, Jean. Molly Donnelly. 1994 (8-10) Twelve-year-old Molly, who lives next door to a Japanese American family and
whose cousin is a nurse in the Philippines, experiences many changes in her life when World War II breaks out. Interspersed
with entries from her diary, this novel demonstrates, with warmth and sincerity, the effect of the war on a young American girl
and her family as she comes of age.
Townsend, Sue. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4. 1986. (8-12) The messy, inconsistent world of adulthood is
seen through the eyes of British teen and aspiring intellectual Adrian Mole, whose pithy observations on adolescence are totally
captivating. (ALA YA Editors’ Choice)
Voigt, Cynthia. Homecoming. 1987. (8-12) Abandoned by their mentally ill mother, the four Tillerman children travel to the
eastern shore of Maryland, hoping that a grandmother whom they’ve never met will give them shelter. (SLJ, HTR)
Welty, Eudora. One Writer’s Beginnings . 1983. Nonfiction. (8-12) An exceedingly distilled and focused autobiography, yet
packed full of early sensory and auditory, as well as social experiences and wit. (Bank Street)
Zemser, Amy Bronwen. Beyond the Mango Tree. 1998. (8-12) In this moving contimporary novel about a 12-year-old
American white girl in Liberia, the first-person narrative captures the loneliness—and the blindness—of the privileged
expatriate in a world apart. (ALA YA Editors' Choice)
Zindel, Paul. The Pigman. 1968. (8-12) Two troubled teenagers with problems at home become friendly with an elderly
widower who welcomes them into his home and shares with them his simple pleasures, including his collection of ceramic pigs,
of which he is proud. When the Pigman goes to the hospital after a heart attack, they take advantage of his house for a party
that becomes destructive. The consequences are tragic and propel the two young friends into more responsible behavior. (ALA
YA Best Book)
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ALA1— “Growing up Native American” Booklist. 1 November 1987. p. 468.
ALA2— “The Black Experience for Young Adults.” Booklist. 1 December 1989. p. 737.
ALA YA Editors’ Choice—American Library Association. Best of the Year Choices 1980-1990 Adult Books for Young
Adults. Booklist. 15 January 1997.
Bank Street—Bank Street College of Education. “Child Development Through Literature and Autobiography.”
CWIS—National Association of Independent Schools/Council for Women in Independent Schools. ”Many Women’s Voices:
A Bibliography of Authentic Women’s Voices.” 1992.
EJ—”Best Books of the 1980s” English Journal. September 1990.
FTCB—American Library Association. “For the College Bound: Outstanding Books”
HTR—American Library Association. “Books to Read When You Hate to Read: Recommended by Young Reluctant Readers
YA Readers in Grades 7-12.” Booklist. 15 February 1992.
SLJ—Smith, Alice Casey. “A Few Good Books: Women Authors in English Classes.” School Library Journal. February
1993. pp. 33-34.
VOYA—Selected and reviewed in Voices of Youth Advocates.
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