Some of the Greatest Hits in Required Reading

The Great Gatsby. Rebecca. Beloved. The Devil’s Arithmetic.  1984. Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. Guys, we could continue listing like this ALL DAY LONG. Is it because we’re book nerds that we can still rattle off the stories we were “forced” to read as kids, and yet still can’t tell you what a calculus is besides “You + Me = Us“? Maybe. Or is it just that, being the impressionable children we were, the books we read at an early age simply lodged themselves into our brains for all of eternity? Double maybe. But it’s more likely that we’re just book nerds.

So, let’s compare notes!

Truth, this list is not even close to being a comprehensive account of the books we’ve been assigned to read in school (we’d break the internet if we tried to compile them all), but it’s got a lot of good ones all the same. Get your flux capacitors out, because we’re going baaaaack in time.

Elementary School

The Monster at the End of This Book, by Jon Stone
Narrated by Grover (of Sesame Street fame and fortune), who is extremely terrified about “the monster at the end of this book,” he begs and pleads with you to not turn the pages. But you will. They always do. Plus, it’s got a twist ending! Read this to a little kid and act all scared. It’s fun. There will be squealing.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst
If you wake up with gum in your hair, at least you know it’ll all be uphill from there…except when it isn’t. Everything bad happens to Alexander all day long. It makes him want to move to Australia! But then he doesn’t, because “Some days are just like that,” right?

Amelia Bedelia, by Peggy Parish
The one and only, the hottest of messes, the maid who can’t get anything right but she’s so charming! Ms. Bedelia takes figures of speech literally—with hilarious results—and wears an awesome hat while doing it. It’s a winning combination.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary
She’s got spunk, she’s got spirit—she’s everyone’s favorite little sister! In this story, Ramona goes to a new school, cracks a raw egg on her head, and realizes how squeaky new sandals can be.

“A must-read! Five puffy stickers out of five!” –Every 8-year-old in the world. And then they go off and relentlessly out-cute their older siblings.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume
Peter Hatcher’s lived his whole life in the shadow of his bratty younger brother Fudge. He’s mad, and he’s not gonna take it anymore! No, but he continues to take it. And you thought your own little brother was bad…till you read the part where Fudge eats Peter’s pet. That’s right: Eats. His. PET. (No, it wasn’t a cat.)

Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli
Maniac is looking for a family, and ends up bringing together an entire town divided by intolerance. Not too shabby, Maniac.
Snaps if you remember this:

Maniac, maniac, he’s so cool.
Maniac, maniac, don’t go to school.
Runs all night
Runs all right
Maniac, maniac, kissed a bull!

Double snaps if you remember it should’ve been “kissed a buffalo” (but “bull” has a better flow).

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg
More runaways! Claudia and Jamie Kincaid leave home, take up refuge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and solve an art mystery. Typical kid stuff. It’s the book that made museums sound interesting when you were a kid—maybe because the kids in it weren’t forced to walk around the museum with clipboards, filling out dumb activity sheets.

Junior High

Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry
Set during the Holocaust, Number the Stars tells the story of Annamarie Johansen and her family’s rescue of their Jewish friends. Learning about how evil people can be is an earth-shattering thing. And really, what better time to learn about true horror than junior high?

Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
Sad kids with crappy home lives. A magical forest kingdom. OF COURSE someone dies. Oof, this one hurt you like when Thomas Jay got stung by bees in the movie My Girl. Remember? Like that.

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
The March sisters and their beloved Marmee, living, loving, and yearning. Oh, the yearning. So much yearning! Jo March is the stand-in for every willful teenager—because we’re all positive we’re destined for greatness, and we just wanna get to it already!

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor
The story of an African American family trying to get along in the post–Civil War era. This is another book where you get to learn how awful the world is, and you may as well do it in junior high because things are already pretty terrible, anyway.

The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton
Greasers. Socs. Cherry Valance (still the most glam name around). The haves fights the have-nots and things just keep getting worse. You might read it in junior high, but you’ll quote it when you get to college. “Stay gold!”

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
Told through the progress reports of a mentally challenged man as he receives surgeries to increase his intelligence (and they work!), this book has so much hope…and then, crushing darkness when he begins the slow decline back to where he was at the start, only now he realizes what he’s losing. Punch in the gut.

High School

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
The autobiography of Maya Angelou, written in her gorgeous, soulful prose. Once you read it, you understand why Maya Angelou is a national treasure.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Scout and Jem Finch watch their father stand up for what’s right in their racist town. There’s a reason why every child dressed cooler than you ever will be is named “Harper.” Because To Kill a Mockingbird gets into your soul’s crevices and lives there forever.

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
A bunch of kids crash onto an island and have to learn how to fend for themselves. Sound like a recipe for disaster? You’d be correct. But still, if you read this book and didn’t take the opportunity to say “sucks to your asthmar” to your friends every single day for months, well, then you missed out.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Everyone’s drugged up, putting the moves on each other and worshipping Henry Ford in a world that could be considered a utopia…or IS IT? Definitely one to reread as an adult after you have a wider worldview and a better understanding of how everything/one is insane.

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Time traveling. Tales of war. Alien zoos. This is one of Vonnegut’s most famous works for a reason, folks. And if you learned how to have a sense of humor from Kurt Vonnegut, you learned from a king.

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Gene and Finny become fast friends at prep school. But slowly, jealousy and rivalries start to unravel everything…and then things really get out of hand. Basically, life’s great until you deliberately cause a minor accident that snowballs into a horrible tragedy. #Lessons.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Our collective love of this book is probably why dudes who act like jerks still have a chance. Also, it features all the best classic novel stuff: ladies riding horses sidesaddle, prudish love letters, and misty English moors.

What were your favorite required reads?