Image Credit: Floyd Brooks @accuteach
Below is a book list for high school that the authors of the Common Core Standards have released as exemplars. I have added quick links so that you may quickly retrieve these books and articles. This list should be a very good guide for people who are either in high school, teaching in high school, or are parents or guardians of students in high school. Also, this list can act as a good reading list for the summer and a perfect place to start when deciding what to give high schoolers as a book gift. Not only will they thank you now, but they will also thank you at the end of the semester or school year.
High School Book List Common Core Text Exemplars: Stories
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury
de Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.”
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment
Jewett, Sarah Orne. “A White Heron.”
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Garden of Forking Paths.”
Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye.
Garcia, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban.
High School Book List Common Core Text Exemplars:Drama
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet.
Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. Tartuffe.
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilder, Thornton. Our Town: A Play in Three Acts
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun.
Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King’s Horseman: A Play.
High School Book List Common Core Text Exemplars:Poetry
Li Po. “A Poem of Changgan.”
Donne, John. “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”
Wheatley, Phyllis. “On Being Brought From Africa to America.”
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.”
Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.”
Tagore, Rabindranath. “Song VII.”
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Pound, Ezra. “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.”
Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall.”
Neruda, Pablo. “Ode to My Suit.”
Ortiz Cofer, Judith. “The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica.”
Dove, Rita. “Demeter’s Prayer to Hades.”
Collins, Billy. “Man Listening to Disc.”
Informational Texts For High School: English Language Arts
Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence
United States. The Bill of Rights (Amendments One through Ten of the United States Constitution).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Society and Solitude.”
Porter, Horace. “Lee Surrenders to Grant, April 9th, 1865.”
Chesterton, G. K. “The Fallacy of Success.”
Mencken, H. L. The American Language, 4th Edition
Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.”
Hofstadter, Richard. “Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth.” Read it for free here.
Anaya, Rudolfo. “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry.” Read it for free here.
Informational Texts For High School: History/Social Studies
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America
Declaration of Sentiments by the Seneca Falls Conference. a copy can be read here, or get the entire book.
An American Primer. Edited by Daniel J. Boorstin
Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. “Education.”
McPherson, James M. What They Fought For 1861–1865
The American Reader: Words that Moved a Nation, 2nd Edition
Amar, Akhil Reed. America’s Constitution: A Biography
Bell, Julian. Mirror of the World: A New History of Art
FedViews by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Informational Texts: Science, Mathematics, and Technical Subjects
Paulos, John Allen. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences.
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Tyson, Neil deGrasse. “Gravity in Reverse: The Tale of Albert Einstein’s ‘Greatest Blunder.’”
Calishain, Tara, and Rael Dornfest. Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, 2nd Edition
Kane, Gordon. “The Mysteries of Mass.”
Fischetti, Mark. “Working Knowledge: Electronic Stability Control.”
Kurzweil, Ray. “The Coming Merger of Mind and Machine.”
Gibbs, W. Wayt. “Untangling the Roots of Cancer.”
Gawande, Atul. “The Cost Conundrum: Health Care Costs in McAllen, Texas.”
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