Crickhowell

English

Department

Recommended Reading

A Guide to Reading

This booklet is intended to be a guide of books suitable for students from KS3 to KS5. The list, covering a range of genres, is drawn from a number of sources including teacher and student recommendations; the National Literacy Strategy’s recommended texts; reading lists suggested by other schools and the National Literacy Trust’s website. Some of the texts are more challenging than others but every book in this list has been enjoyed by someone else.

Year 7 Recommended Texts

Author

Title

Adventure Anthony Horrowitz Stormbreaker Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons Zouzou Carter Lion Boy Sally Prue Cold Tom

Adele Geras Troy Cornelia Funke The Thief Lord Theresa Tomlinson The Moon Riders

Brian Jacques Castaways of the Flying

Dutchman Chris Ryan Alpha Force Series

Classics Louisa May Alcott Little Women Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Johanna Spyri Heidi Nina Bawden Carrie’s War Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol

Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World Elizabeth Nesbit The Railway Children J R R Tolkein The Hobbit Charles Kingsley The Water Babies

Anna Sewell Black Beauty

Noel Streatfield Ballet Shoes

Frank Baum The Wizard of OZ Eleanor H. Porter Polyanna

L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables

Laura Ingalls Wilder The Little House on the

Prairie J.M.Barrie Peter Pan

Real Life/Teenage Meg Cabot The Princess Diaries Malorie Blackman Noughts and Crosses Benjamin Zephaniah Refugee Boy Anne Fine Madame Doubtfire

Step by Wiked Step Jane Ure Plague 99 Nina Bawden Granny the Pag Rosie Rushton Just Don’t Make a Scene

Mum! Cathy Hopkins The Game; Enchanted

Glass Hilary McKay Saffy’s Angel Louis Sachar Holes Jacqueline Wilson The Story of Tracey

Beaker Jaclyn Moriarty Feeling Sorry for Celia

Fantasy Teresa Tomlinson Moon Riders

Phillip Pullman Northern Lights

Stewart and Riddell Stormchasers; The Edge

Chronicles

Brian Jacques Redwall NESS, Patrick. A Monster Calls

J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit Ursula Le Guin The Earthsea Quartet Joan Aiken The Wolves of Willoughby

Chases Mary Hoffman Stravaganza: City of Masks Cornelia Funke Inkheart Eoin Coifer Artemis Fowl Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate

Events Tony Di Terlizzi & Holly Black

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Stuart Hill Cry of the Icemark; The Blade of Fire

William Nicholson The Wind of Fire Trilogy J. K. Rowling Harry Potter C.S. Lewis Narnia Richard Adams Watership Down Marianne Curley The Named

Biography/Autobiography Anne Frank The Diary of Anne Frank Judith Kerr When Hitler Stole Pink

Rabbit Adeline Yen Mah Chinese Cinderlla Gerald Durrell My Family & Other Animals James Herriot All Creatures Great &

Small Science Fiction

John Wyndham The Day of the Triffids

Jean Ure Plague 99 History

Michelle Magorian Goodnight Mr Tom (WWII)

Jamilia Gavin The Wheel of Surya (Indian Independence)

Elizabeth Laird Kiss the Dust (Kurdish refugees)

Phillip Pullman The Ruby in the Smoke (first of the Sally Lockhart trilogy set in Victorian London)

Caroline Lawrence Roman Mysteries James Riordan Sweet Clarinet (WWII) Ian Serraillier The Silver Sword Nina Bawden Carrie’s War Sally Gardner I Coriander

Life Issues Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons Jacqueline Wilson Vicky Angel (a girl coping

with the death of a friend) Mary Hendry Chandra (arranged

marriage) Prize Winners

Sharon Creech Ruby Holler Alan Gibbons The Edge Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of

the Dog in the Night-Time Frank Cottrell Boyce Millions

Funny Sue Townsend The Secret Diary of Adrian

Mole Karen McCombie Ally’s World (series) Lauren Child Utterly Me, Clarice Bean Steward and Riddell The Edge Chronicles Gerald Durrell My Family & Other Animals Roald Dahl

Other Cultures Elizabeth Laird The Garbage King

Beverley Naidoo The Other Side of Truth Benjamin Zephaniah Refugee Boy Eva Ibbotson Journey to the River Adeline Yen Mah Chinese Cinderella

Film/T.V Tie-Ins Gail Carson Levine Ella Enchanted Mary Rogers Freaky Friday Lemony Snickett A Series of Unfortunate

Events Louis Sachar Holes Jacqueline Wilson The Story of Tracey

Beaker Allan Ahlberg Woof! E. Nesbit Five Children and It Mary Norton

The Borrowers

Roald Dahl Matilda; The Witches; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Frank Cottrell Boyce Millions C. S. Lewis The Lion, The Witch and

The Wardrobe J. K. Rowling Harry Potter

Animal Stories Richard Adams Watership Down Paul Gallico The Snowgoose; Jennie D. King-Smith The Sheep Pig Gerald Durrell My Family and Other

Animals Jeanne Willis Dumb Creatures Michael Morpurgo The Amazing Story of

Adolphus Tips

Year 8 Recommended Texts

Historical

Michael Morpurgo Private Peaceful James Riordan Sweet Clarinet Caroline Lawrence Roman Mysteries Lynne Reid Banks Tiger, Tiger Robert Harris Pompeii Mary Hooper Petals in the Ashes Sally Gardener I Coriander Ann Turnbull No Shame, No Fear

Teen Girl Dyan Sheldon Confessions of a Teenage

Drama Queen Hilary McKay Indigo’s Star; Saffy’s Angel Cathy Hopkins Mates, Dates… Jean Ure Skinny Melon & Me Rosie Rushston What a Week to Make a

Stand Jaclyn Moriarty Feeling Sorry for Celia;

Finding Cassie Crazy Narinder Dhami Bhangra Blues Mary Rogers Freaky Friday Meg Cabot The Princess Diaries;

Missing Series; The Mediator Series

Classics J. D. Weiss Swiss Family Robinson Mary Norton The Borrowers E. Nesbit Five Children and It L. M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables Louisa M. Alcott Little Women

Animals

Robin Jarvis Deptford Histories etc Terry Pratchett The Amazing Maurice and

his Educated Rodents Richard Adams Watership Down Zizou Carter Lion Boy Brian Jacques Redwall Series Gerald Durrell My Family and Other

Animals School

Jean Ure Skinny Melon & Me J. K. Rowling Harry Potter Biography/Personal Stories/Real Life/Other Cultures

Judith Kerr A Small Person Far Away; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

Adeline Yen Mah Chinese Cinderella Roald Dahl Boy Elizabeth Laird Garbage King David Almond Fire Eaters Kevin Brooks Martyn Pig Anne Holm I am David Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the

Dog in the Night-time Detective Stories

Agatha Christie The Body in the Library Phillip Pulman The Ruby in the Smoke Eleanor Updale Montmorency

Horror/Witchcraft Cate Tiernan Wicca Chris Wooding The Haunting of Alaizabel

Cray John Wyndham Day of the Triffids Darren Shan The Sago of Darren Shan

Other Worlds/Fantasy Teresa Tomlinson Moon Riders Stuart Hill Cry of the Icemark; The

Blade of Fire Mary Hoffman Stravanganza Series Phillip Pullman His Dark Materials Cornelia Funke Inkheart Stewart and Riddell The Edge Chronicles Shannon Hart The Goosegirl Christopher Paolini Eragon Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate

Events G. P. Taylor Shadowmancer Garth Nix Mr Monday; Sabriel Eoin Colfer The Supernaturalist

Funny Louis Sachar Holes Louisa Rennison Georgina Nicholson Series

Year 9 Recommended Texts

Biography

Jung Chang Wild Swans Frank McCourt Angela’s Ashes Arthur Golden Memoirs of a Geisha

Other Cultures Tanuja Desai Hidier Born Confused Rani & Sukh (Un)arranged Marriage;

Bali Rai; Garbage King; A Little Piece of Ground; Elizabeth Laird

Alice Walker The Color Purple Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses Jan Mark Useful Idiots

History Theresa Breslin Remembrance

Robert Harris Pompeii Tracy Chavalier The Girl with the Pearl

Earring Philippa Gregory The Other Boleyn Girl

Teen Girl Louise Rennison Georgia Nicholson series Cathy Hopkins Mates, Dates… Helen Fielding Bridget Jones’ Diary Jacqueline Wilson Lola Rose Julia Clarke Between You and Me Robin McKinley Beauty Meg Cabot The Mediator series

Issues Melvin Burgess Junk Anne Cassidy Looking for JJ Julie Bertagna The Opposite of Chocolate

Classics Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice;

Northanger Abbey Thomas Hardy The Mayor of Casterbridge;

Tess of the d’Urbervilles Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities; Great

Expectations Other Worlds/Fantasy

Lian Hearn Across the Nightingale Floor

Mary Hoffman City of Stars; City of Masks Philip Pullman His Dark Materials Terry Pratchett The Wee Free Men Garth Nix Sabriel Tamora Pierce Song of the Lioness Quartet Terry Brooks Tales of Shannara Terry Pratchett Discworld Isaac Asimov I Robot Alison Croggons The Gift JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings

Trilogy G.P. Taylor Shadowmancer;

Wormwood Adventure

Anthony Horowitz Alex Rider Novels (Stormbreaker etc)

Animals Jack London White Fang Paul Gallico Jennie Henry Williamson Tarka the Otter Yann Martel Life of Pi

Funny Helen Fielding Bridget Jones Diary

Terry Pratchett The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

Miscellaneous Meg Rosoff How I Live Now

Suggestions for Boys (11-14)

Jules Verne Around the World in Eighty Days

Milena Baisch Anton and Piranha Sarah Hammond The Night Sky in My Head Paul Dowswell

Eleven Eleven

James Dawson Being a Boy Julia Golding Young Knights of the Round

Table Pete Johnson The Vampire Fighters Rick Riordan The Throne of Fire Fletcher Moss The Poison Boy Garth Nix, Sean Williams The Mystery Alex Scarrow The Mayan Prophecy Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena Jeff Norton, Ryan Hunter The Fight for the Future Andrew Beasley The Claws of Evil Nigel McDowell Tall Tales from Pitch End Mark Lowery Socks Are Not Enough Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant:

Kingdom of the Wicked Anthony Horowitz Russian Roulette Marcus Sedgwick Revolver Keren David Another Life

KS4 Recommended Texts

Author Title Helen Dunmore My Polish Teacher’s Tie Claire Wigfall When the Wasps Drowned Elizabeth Baines Compass and Torch Haruki Murakami On Seeing the 100%

Perfect Girl Penelope Lively The Darkness Out There Ridjal Noor Anil Leila Aboulela Something Old, Something

New William Golding Lord of the Flies Kevin Brooks Martyn Pig Joe Simpson Touching the Void Susan Hill The Woman in Black Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood Arthur Miller The Crucible Diane Samuels Kindertransport J B Priestley An Inspector Calls Dennis Kelly Deoxyribonucleic Acid

(DNA) John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men Lloyd Jones Mister Pip Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Purple Hibiscus

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird William Shakespeare Macbeth William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing William Shakespeare Twelfth Night William Shakespeare Julius Caesar Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice

Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights Charles Dickens Great Expectations Thomas Hardy The Withered Arm and

other Wessex Tales George Orwel Animal Farm

In addition, the following writers come highly

recommended and any of their texts would represent

worthwhile reading:

Pre 20th Century 20th Century Other Cultures

Matthew Arnold Kingsley Amis Chinua Acheba Jane Austen WH Auden John Agard William Blake TS Eliot Monica Ali Charlotte Bronte EM Forster Moniza Alvi Emily Bronte Robert Frost Maya Angelou Robert Browning William Goulding Isaac Bashevis

Singer John Bunyan Graham Greene James Berry Lord Byron Seamus Heaney Edward

Braithwaite Geoffrey Chaucer

Ted Hughes Anita Desai

William Congreve

Aldous Huxley Emily Dickenson

John Clare Elizabeth Jennings

F Scott Fitzgerald

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

James Joyce Athol Fugard

Wilkie Collins Phillip Larkin Jamilia Gavin Joseph Conrad DH Lawrence Nadine Gordimer Daniel Defoe Katherine Doris Lessins

Mansfield Charles Dickens Sean O’Casey Arthur Miller John Donne George Orwell Les Murray John Dryden Wilfred Owen Beverley Naidoo George Eliot Harold Pinter RK Nurayan Henry Fielding Sylvia Plath Grace Nicholls Elizabeth Gaskell JB Priestley Ruth Prawer

Jhabvala Oliver Goldsmith Siegfried Sasson Bali Rai Thomas Hardy Peter Shaffer Wole Soyinka George Herbert George Bernard

Shaw Meera Syal

Robert Herrick RC Sherriff Mildred D Taylor Gerard Manley Hopkins

Stevie Smith Mark Twain

Henry James Muriel Spark Dereck Walcott John Keats Dylan Thomas Walt Whitman Christopher Marlowe

Edward Thomas Tennessee Williams

Andrew Marvell RS Thomas Adeline Yen Mah John Milton William Trevor Benjamin

Zephaniah Alexander Pope Evelyn Waugh William Shakespeare

Arnold Wesker

Mary Shelley John Wyndham Percy Bysshe Shelley

WB Yeats

RS Sheridan Edmund Spencer Robert Louis Stevenson

Jonathan Swift Alfred Lord Tennyson

Anthony Trollope Henry Vaughan HG Wells Oscar Wilde William Wordsworth

KS5 Recommended Texts

Author Title

Angelou, Maya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Atwood, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale Austen, Jane Emma

Pride and Prejudice Sense and Sensibility Persuasion Northanger Abbey

Barker, Pat The Regeneration Trilogy Burgess, Anthony A Clockwork Orange

A Dead Man in Deptford Nothing Like the Sun

Bronte, Anne The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights Camus, Albert The Outsider

The Plague Coe, Jonathan The Rotters’ Club

What a Carve Up!

Coupland, Douglas Hey, Nostradamus! Girlfriend in a Coma Eleanor Rigby

Conan Doyle, Arthur The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Sign of Four

Dickens, Charles

A Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations Hard Times Oliver Twist The Pickwick Papers

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment

Faulks, Sebastian Birdsong Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby

Garland, Alex

The Beach

Golding, William Lord of the Flies Hardy, Thomas Tess of the D’Urbevilles

Jude the Obscure Heller, Joseph Catch 22 Hornby, Nick About a Boy

Fever Pitch Huxley, Aldous Brave New World Joyce, James Dubliners

Portrait of the Artist… Ulysses

Lawrence, D.H. Sons and Lovers Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird Morisson, Toni Beloved

Paradise Nabokov, Vladimir Bend Sinister

Despair

Lolita Pnin

Orwell, George Animal Farm The Clergyman’s Daughter Inside the Whale and other Essays Nineteen Eighty-Four

Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allen

Tales of Mystery and Imagination The Raven

Remarque, Erich Marian

All Quiet on the Western Front

Salinger, J.D The Catcher in the Rye

Shelley, Mary Frankenstein

Steinbeck, John Cannery Row East of Eden The Grapes of Wrath Of Mice and Men Tortilla Flat

Stoker, Bram Dracula Swift, Jonathan Gulliver’s Travels Syal, Meera Anita and Me Tokein, JRR Lord of the Rings Walker, Alice The Colour Purple Wells, H.G The Time Machine

War of the world Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Grey Winterson, Jeanette Oranges are Not the Only

Fruit The Passion

Quick Reads

These recommendations are ideal for dyslexic students.

Author Title Bradford, Chris Ninja: First Mission Chambers, Beth Petrify Childs, Rob Moving the Goal Posts Cross, Vince Bighead Don, Lari Drawing a Veil Gardner, Sally Various titles-dyslexia

friendly Johnson, Catherine The Nightmare Card McGowan, Anthony The Fall Rooney, Anne Grim, Gross, and Grisly

Disgusting Facts About People

Wooding, Chris Pale

For more information about dyslexia and reading please

visit the following sites:

http://www. barringstoke.co.uk

http:www.booktrust.org.uk/books/teenagers

British Dyslexia Association

Dyslexia Action

Being Dyslexia

Writers’ Recommended Reads

for Parents or Guardians

Teens are more likely to read if they are surrounded by

reading role models, so make sure they’ve got a chance to

talk to you about your reading choices and the reasons

behind them. Talk about everything: why there are some

books you didn’t finish, why you re-read certain books,

how you go about choosing a new read, etc.

William Boyd recommends:

Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig

Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook

Bill Bryson recommends:

The Compatibility Gene by Daniel M Davis

London: Hidden Interiors (English Heritage)

Eleanor Catton recommends:

A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (Galley Beggar Press)

Colin McAdam's A Beautiful Truth (Granta)

Elizabeth Knox's sly and ingenious Mortal Fire

(Farrar Straus Giroux)

Roddy Doyle recommends:

George Saunders's collection of stories, Tenth of

December

Reading Strategies

Good readers always have strategies that help them to

read. Here are some useful strategies that can help your

reading:

De-coding:

Chunk it up and sound it out.

Can you work it out by breaking it into

prefix/stem/suffix?

Comprehending:

Go back and read the sentence again.

Look up any words you don’t understand in a

dictionary.

Read it out loud.

Use a reading ruler.

Take your time, pause to process.

Is there a clue in the title?

Start with the bits you do understand and see if

you can work the rest out from there.

Highlight important sections for later reference.

Useful Websites

Fan-fiction sites:

http://hungergamesfanfiction.com/ http://www.twilighted.net/ http://www.squidoo.com/fanfictionsites

Malorie Blackman’s Top 10 graphic novels for

teens:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/19/

malorie-blackman-top-10-graphic-novels

The Teenage Book Forum: http://theteenagebookforum.proboards.com/

The Spark (competitions, reviews, blogs, and

more) - www.facebook.com/thesparkpage

More reading lists:

http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/

For further adult recommendations try visiting:

http://www.theguardian.com/books