Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.
In high school, teens are made to read the classics - Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Bronte, Dickens - but there are a lot of books out there never taught in schools. So if you had the power to change school curricula, which books would you be sure high school students were required to read?
Okay... so i had to read some Shakespeare (in yr 12 we had to do a spelling test cos of the sheer number of us who spelled the playwright's name wrong) as well as some Grapes of Wrath and Great Gatsby kind of books. I'm probably giving myself away as a geek but I think reading some of the classics a teen would never pick up of their own accord isn't all bad. As long as they're interspersed with some modern lit. I'm thinking Harry Potter and Hunger Games and selected books by the teacher who knows which stories will speak to her/his class.
I had a few awesome teachers. One had us read 'Looking for Alibrandi' by Melinda Marchetta and I still love that book. Another had us read 'Tomorrow When the War Began' by John Marsden. Two aussie writers/stories that made sense to us then (and I still like now).
What would you have teens read?
