Kindergarten
What is How to Eat Fried Worms?
This novel either inspires disgust or admiration as we follow a young boy who survives a plane crash.
What is Hatchet?
This book teaches numerous lessons like, "walk a mile in somebody's shoes," "court isn't fair," "drunks aren't always drunks, "and it's a crime" to do this titular action.
What is To Kill a Mockingbird?
In Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, the titular I is the mother, declared by Vardaman to be this animal.
Americanah
This popular chapter book series does not feature a magic vehicle, but rather this magical location.
What is a Magic Treehouse?
This series of 19 graphic novels are wildly relatable to elementary schoolers, despite featuring characters in middle school.
Many English teachers taught this story to tie into The Hunger Games mania. When the story was banned in apartheid era South Africa, the author, Shirley Jackson famous said, "good. That means they understood it."
What is "The Lottery?"
Joseph Brodsky said "there are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them," which is often misattributed to this standby of 9th grade dystopian literature.
What is Fahrenheit 451?
Salome THE PLAY.
Who is Oscar Wilde?
Come learn the alphabet through this picture book with a repetitive title.
What is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom?
The Watsons are headed to this city, but thankfully they manage to survive a tragic bombing and the specter of Wool Pooh (Winnie the Pooh's evil twin).
What is Birmingham?
This children's novel by Avi won the Newberry prize in 2003 and follows the titular peasant boy in 1300s England
What is Crispin: The Cross of Lead?
Many high schoolers are introduced to existentialism through this text by Albert Camus, an interpretation of a classic Greek tale.
What is "The Myth of Sisyphus?"
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
Who is Entozake Shange?
This man authored the iconic picture books Shrek, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and Pete's a Pizza.
Who is William Steig?
Where the Red Fern Grows traumatized scores of children with the deaths of TWO amazing dogs: Old Dan & Little ______.
Who is Ann?
The Giver is a standard 7th grade novel written by this icon of Young Adult Literature.
Who is Lois Lowry?
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, "God" refers to this disaster.
What is a hurricane?
Fun Home: A Graphic Memoir.
Who is Alison Bechdel (of the Bechdel Test)?
This man, the director of Her, directed the controversial adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.
Who is Spike Jonze?
Many fifth graders learned the hand in warm water trick to make their friend wet the bed from this almost alliterative novel.
What is Bud, Not Buddy?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an example of this kind of novel, featuring a roughish hero surviving by his wits in a series of episodic adventures.
What is a picaresque?
This 1800s serialized novel asks the age old question: what would happen if you got really drunk and sold your wife and baby daughter to a sailor for 5 guineas?
What is The Mayor of Casterbridge?
"Recitatif"
Later published as a book in 2022
Who is Toni Morrison?
This college in Maryland and Arizona is famous for its "Great Books" curriculum where students spend all day reading Great Books and partaking in Socratic Seminars. Even science is learned by recreating classic experiments from great science texts from classic days.