Outstanding Books in School Libraries
Curriculum Connections and Readers’ Advisory
Priscille Dando
A comprehensive list like Outstanding Books for the College Bound and Lifelong Learners is a natural tool for school librarians to use in a variety of ways. The title itself implies an inherent connection to high school and is an efficient avenue to help achieve both the instructional and literary roles of the school library. In her Booklist article “Loose Canon,” Hazel Rochman poses essential questions: What should be on the shelves in a high school library? What is the appropriate balance between classics, YA literature, and resources to support the curriculum? It is necessary to consider “subject, genre, format and reading level” in collection development to determine the composition that will meet the needs of students.1 The OBCB list is an excellent tool—with so many titles to choose from, school librarians have a treasure trove at their fingertips to make curriculum connections and excel at readers’ advisory.
Why Focus on a List?
The ongoing debate about required reading illustrates the dilemma many teachers face. Although there is an assumption that giving students free choice in titles results in more enthusiasm for reading, teachers have an obligation to ensure that the reading relates to their curriculum and is substantial enough to merit study and analysis. Andrea Cohen’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch article “Move Over, Gatsby, the High School Reading List Has Expanded” makes the point that the best books included on lists are not there because they fill a niche, but simply because they are “good literature.”2 The shift over the years in the OBCB list creates more of a balance, combining literary quality with teen appeal. In fact, some adults will be surprised to see contemporary best sellers and modern young adult literature (not to mention nonfiction) on this list. Students may also be surprised to see some of their favorite titles such as John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes among the recommended reading. The appeal goes hand in hand with literary quality, and with one of the stated criteria being readability, it is likely that students will have an enjoyable experience delving into these titles. Gone is the impression that reading for college-bound students is limited to dusty old classics, and there is a happy medium to be found between lightweight reading and AP texts.
Summer Reading
Mention a recommended reading list, and one of the first things to come to mind is summer reading requirements. Libby Gorman, in the Teacher Librarian article “Purposes behind Summer Reading Lists,” conducted an extensive study of summer reading lists. She surveyed librarians regarding why and how they used them. Her findings concluded that lists serve a multitude of educational objectives, including the desire to provide examples of high-quality reading, an outlet for independent study and lifelong learning habits, and challenging reads. She found it surprising that even parents depend on the lists, as they expect their children to read outside of school and especially during the summer whether or not it is required.3 Certainly, OBCB list excels at all of these objectives, and is an excellent source of summer reading choices for older students. Susan Whittaker, media specialist at The Villages High School in Florida, uses the list to identify titles for summer reading; students complete a variety of assignments based on their reading, including writing “book briefs” and holding online discussions on Moodle (a closed-access course management system). Her juniors and seniors often choose a book from the OBCB list to help complete their independent study in the spring.
Curriculum Connections
School librarians have always depended on book lists for inspiration in collection development. The current and previous OBCB lists are a critical tool for keeping the collection relevant to students both in what they study and for general knowledge and literature purposes. Because of the lists’ multicultural and multigenre nature, every library could benefit from obtaining all titles on the lists. Of course it is convenient that the current list is already categorized by discipline: arts and humanities, history and cultures, literature and language arts, science and technology, and social sciences. The first step in leveraging this organization is to share the lists with faculty. Consider holding an open house and putting the titles on display along with handouts of corresponding online databases or other relevant sources. A teacher workday or one of the days before the school year begins is a prime time to offer coffee and a chance to browse through the displays that relate directly to each teacher’s subject area. Teachers may want to check out the books for their own reading, but it is also an opportunity to spark conversation about their courses and what supplemental materials might be appropriate as outside reading.
One of the most valuable uses of the OBCB list is as a resource when a teacher is looking for a book recommendation. Bonnie Prouty, librarian at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia, turns to the list when a teacher catches her off guard and needs an appealing but substantial read quickly. Her colleague Vicki Emery, media coordinator at Lake Braddock, made a powerful curriculum connection when a teacher approached her for help.
[The list is a] good source for finding nonfiction books to pair with assigned reading for English classes. For example, an English teacher came in and said that she thought that she would resume assigning The Grapes of Wrath. She hadn’t assigned it for awhile. I suggested that she pair it with The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. Egan’s book is a National Book Award winner and it comprises first person accounts through interviews and diaries of those who actually lived through the very trying times in the 1930s. I believe that this book also shows how well Steinbeck understood the time and place and was able to develop his characters realistically. Many links and discussion points can be made by comparing the two books.4
This experience simply confirmed for the teacher that her school library staff has expertise in literature, resources, and instruction, and she will be even more likely to approach them when she needs recommendations in the future.
Using the OBCB List as a Teacher
Teachers are likely to look to the list for ideas on classroom novels or nonfiction works. Whether students have the freedom to choose something from the list that appeals to them, or the teacher determines one work for the whole class to study, there are many books that support the high school curriculum in addition to providing exposure to a topic in preparation for college work. The list is also a boon to teachers organizing literature circles, as it allows students to group themselves by the book they choose to study and discuss. Giving students some selection choice, but ensuring that the choices are meaty enough to sustain discussion, enriches their interpretation of literature. Teachers who use the list to guide student choices will not have to be concerned with the quality of the works. The books on the most recent list that lend themselves to analysis in a particular course are as follows:
Social Studies
Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War by David Williams
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists by Joel Best
Daniel Half-Human and the Good Nazi by David Chotjewitz
Forgotten Fire: A Novel by Adam Bagdasarian
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
New Found Land: Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery by Allan Wolf
The Night Birds by Thomas Maltman
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle
The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang
Shooting under Fire: The World of the War Photographer by Peter Howe
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights by Russell Freedman
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained by John Bowker
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
English and Literature
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor
Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art edited by Jan Greenberg
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Rotten English: A Literary Anthology edited by Dohra Ahmad
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara? The Fascinating Stories behind 50 of the World’s Best-Loved Books by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy
Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill
Sciences
American Earth: Environmental Writing since Thoreau edited by Bill McKibben
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
The Genomics Age: How DNA Technology Is Transforming the Way We Live and Who We Are by Gina Smith
Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future by Greg Melville
The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen
Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science—From the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi
The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip M. Hoose
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery
The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
Electives
The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern by Carol Strickland
Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design by Deborah Nadoolman Landis
Frida: Viva la Vida! Long Live Life! by Carmen Bernier-Grand
My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey through Silicon Valley by Ben Casnocha
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan
Our Movie Heritage by Tom McGreevey and Joanne Yeck
Photography: An Illustrated History by Martin Sandler
Teachers know their students best, and in advanced classes or even when an individual student is a more mature reader, the list is a great place to identify supplementary reading. Cohen describes the advantage that students who read challenging books have over others on standardized tests. The vocabulary and reading comprehension skills required on such tests is more easily honed when students regularly read high-quality texts. Several studies support her assertions. Richard Anderson et al., in their 1985 report from the U.S. Department of Education, Becoming a Nation of Readers, make several recommendations, one of which is to ensure opportunities for independent reading. The report states that “children’s reading should include classic and modern works of fiction and nonfiction that represent the core of our national heritage.”5 Stephen Krashen’s Knowledge Quest article, “Anything but Reading,” may provide the most convincing evidence of the potential the OBCB list has for improving performance. The article synthesizes a number of studies, all of which conclude that students who are high achievers in reading read more than their counterparts. “Self-selected, voluntary reading” has a direct relationship to improving literacy, and while some adults lament a lack of motivation among students to read, Krashen notes that the most successful motivator is providing access to “interesting, comprehensible reading material,” the very criteria for inclusion on the OBCB list.6 The value of supplementary reading is not only proven for those who are high-achieving readers. Steve Metz notes in “Closing the Gap with Summer Reading,” published in The Science Teacher, that more than a decade of research at Johns Hopkins concluded that “two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be attributed to unequal access to summer learning opportunities.” Based on that information, Metz believes that recreational summer reading is a must for everyone.7
Displays and Marketing
Once the titles are available in the collection, the OBCB list becomes a tremendous resource for readers’ advisory. Thomas Kaun of the Bessie Chin Library at Redwood High School in Larkspur, California, has a quick tip. He recommends keeping copies of the list at the circulation desk. Students frequently pick up the list, and parents see it and take a copy themselves during back-to-school nights, open houses, and tours of the building. If the list is too bulky to keep at the desk, it would be easy to create jazzy bookmarks by discipline. Susan Whittaker takes it one step further by linking to the list on her school’s website and promoting it in her library’s newsletter to parents. Because it is such a broad list, there is something to appeal to everyone.
The OBCB list is a natural for displays. During the fall college application season, intersperse the titles with other books and resources for college readiness. Books on applying to and selecting a college, study guides, and choosing a major are complemented nicely by copies of the list and its books. In the spring, seniors might be interested in reading books like those on the list that are intended to help prepare students for encountering unfamiliar experiences, points of view, and challenges.
Booktalks
Booktalks are a classic promotional tool for a reason—students tend to read what librarians take the time to spotlight, probably because librarians’ enthusiasm for the titles shines through. When an advanced class has a free-choice independent reading assignment, booktalking from the list pays off with suggestions of out-of-the-ordinary titles. Books on the most recent list with a natural hook for booktalks include these:
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly
Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside by Katrina Firlik
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin
Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska by Michael D’Orso
From Clueless to Class Act: Manners for the Modern Man by Jodi R. R. Smith
John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth by Elizabeth Partridge
Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression edited by David Wallis
The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Anne Marie Fleming
The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor by Ken Silverstein
A Rare Breed of Love: The True Story of Baby and the Mission She Inspired to Help Dogs Everywhere by Jana Kohl
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Sunrise over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair with Our Favorite Treats by Joanne Chen
Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff
What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng; A Novel by Dave Eggers
Wheelchair Warrior: Gangs, Disability, and Basketball by Melvin Juette and Ronald J. Berger
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs
It is clear that booktalk ideas are available for virtually every class when examining the list by discipline. Extend this idea by providing students the opportunity to create podcasts promoting the books that can be shared with a wide audience. Collaborating on podcasts with an English teacher can satisfy several objectives. From the teacher’s point of view, writing for a specific audience and crafting an engaging style are skills that are suited for an oral presentation, and required by the podcast recording. It is an opportunity to incorporate technology in an authentic manner, and is an entertaining assessment of a student’s understanding of the book. The librarian can assist with the technology and give pointers for what makes a good book review. Creating book trailers through video production or Microsoft’s Photo Story program fulfills similar objectives. An added bonus to these projects is the end result of a pool of student-created advertisements for reading the OBCB list available online to the student body at large.
Book Groups
The most successful book group discussions revolve around titles that are substantial enough to spark a reaction or contain a compelling conflict. A quick review of the list reveals several books that have proven to be popular with adult book clubs.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Other excellent book club choices include:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Eagle Blue by Michael D’Orso
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Feed by M. T. Anderson
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Bottom Line
The Outstanding Books for the College Bound and Lifelong Learners list does not make the claim that all educated people have read these books. Rather, it is a modern collection of titles representing different points of view that provide insight into our world. Students seeking a challenge and who are curious about any number of topics will find something to enjoy and learn from on this list. Savvy school librarians will understand the value of these collected titles and strive to incorporate them into their programs.
Notes
1. Hazel Rochman, “Loose Canon,” Booklist, Sept. 1, 1996, 114.
2. Andrea Cohen, “Move Over, Gatsby, the High School Reading List Has Expanded,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 26, 2003.
3. Libby Gorman, “Purposes behind Summer Reading Lists,” Teacher Librarian 37, no. 5 (June 2010): 52.
4. Interview with the author, Sept. 1, 2010.
5. Richard C. Anderson et al., Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading, ERIC (ED253865).
6. Stephen Krashen, “Anything but Reading,” Knowledge Quest 37, no. 5 (May–June 2009): 18.
7. Steve Metz, “Closing the Gap with Summer Reading,” Science Teacher 76, no. 5 (Summer 2009): 8.