# data[].attributes.body
John Green
Young Adult Mystery and Thriller

Weeks before graduating from their Orlando-area high school, Quentin Jacobsen's childhood best friend, Margo, reappears in his life, specifically at his window, commanding him to take her on an all-night, score-settling spree. Quentin has loved Margo from not so afar (she lives next door), years after she ditched him for a cooler crowd. Just as suddenly, she disappears again, and the plot's considerable tension derives from Quentin's mission to find out if she's run away or committed suicide. Margo's parents, inured to her extreme behavior, wash their hands, but Quentin thinks she's left him a clue in a highlighted volume of Leaves of Grass.

GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LINK: All English Classes

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mr. Gorski

# data[].attributes.body
Markus Zusak
Historical Fiction

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

GRADE LEVEL: 9-10
COURSE LINK: Survival and Perseverance

DISCUSSION LEADER: Ms. Aseltine

# data[].attributes.body
Colson Whitehead
Historical Fiction

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. However, events do not go as they planned.

GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LINK: US History, American Lit, America's Voices

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Pagano

# data[].attributes.body
Jandy Nelson
Young Adult Fiction

This contemporary young adult novel is a story of love – of falling in love, of growing up, and most of all family. It will break your heart one minute and warm it the next as you follow the story of twins “NoahandJude.”

GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LINK: Survival and Perseverance

DISCUSSION LEADER: Ms. White

# data[].attributes.body
Fill out one of these forms for each text you read and enter to win!

# data[].attributes.body
Richard Preston
Science Thriller

The book is a true story about the origins of Ebola virus and incidents that happened when Ebola and Marburg viruses were brought to the United States. An account of how “a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits had been organized to stop the outbreak of an exotic “hot” virus.”

GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LINK: Biology, Anatomy and Physiology, Medical Sciences

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Pratt

# data[].attributes.body
Sue Monk Kidd
Historical Fiction

Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.

GRADE LEVEL: 11-12
COURSE LINK: Multicultural Lit, America's Voices, Survival and Perseverance

DISCUSSION LEADER: Ms. White

# data[].attributes.body
Gae Polisner
Realistic Fiction

On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen-year-old Kyle Donohue watches the first Twin Tower come down from the window of Stuyvesant High School. Moments later, terrified and fleeing home to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge, he stumbles across a girl perched in the shadows, covered in ash, and wearing a pair of costume wings. With his mother and sister in California, and unable to reach his father, a New York City detective likely on his way to the disaster, Kyle makes the split-second decision to bring the girl home.

What follows is their story, told in alternating points of view, as Kyle tries to unravel the mystery of the girl so he can return her to her family. But what if the girl has forgotten everything, even her own name? And what if the more Kyle gets to know her, the less he wants her to go home?

GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LINK: Civics, History, Contemporary Issues, Survival and Perseverance, America's Voices, Heroes and Monsters

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Luby

# data[].attributes.headline
A Game of Thrones - A Song of Fire and Ice, Book 1

# data[].attributes.subject
A Game of Thrones - A Song of Fire and Ice, Book 1

# data[].attributes.body
George R.R. Martin
Fantasy

A Song of Ice and Fire takes place on the fictional continents Westeros and Essos. The point of view of each chapter in the story is a limited perspective of a range of characters growing from nine, in the first novel, to thirty-one by the fifth. Three main stories interweave a dynastic war among several families for control of Westeros, the rising threat of the supernatural Others in the northernmost reaches of Westeros, and the ambition of Daenerys Targaryen, the deposed king's exiled daughter, to assume the Iron Throne.

GRADE LEVEL:  11-12
COURSE LINK: Survival and Perseverance, Mythology, Heroes and Monsters

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Holtman

# data[].attributes.body
Chris Ballard
Sports Literature

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois

playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in modern Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ironmen would play a dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their lives forever.

GRADE LEVEL:  9-12
COURSE LINK: Sports Literature, Survival and Perseverance, American Lit

DISCUSSION LEADER: Ms. Ariola

# data[].attributes.body
Chandler Baker
Fiction

After years on the transplant waiting list, she's running out of hope that she'll ever see her eighteenth birthday. Then, miraculously, Stella receives the transplant she needs to survive.

Determined to embrace everything she came so close to losing, Stella throws herself into her new life. But her recovery is marred by strange side effects: Nightmares. Hallucinations. A recurring pain that flares every day at the exact same moment. Then Stella meets Levi Zin, the new boy on everyone's radar at her Seattle prep school. Stella has never felt more drawn to anyone in her life, and soon she and Levi are inseparable. Stella is convinced that Levi is her soul mate. Why else would she literally ache for him when they are apart?

GRADE LEVEL:  9-12
COURSE LINK:  Anatomy, Civics, Survival and Perseverance

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Riordan

# data[].attributes.body
Jodi Picoult
Fiction

Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene? With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn’t offer easy answers.

GRADE LEVEL:  11-12
COURSE LINK:  History, Heroes and Monsters

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Stone

# data[].attributes.body
Celeste Ng
Fiction

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another. (Amazon.com)

GRADE LEVEL:  11-12
COURSE LINK:  Survival and Perseverance, Multicultural Lit

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. Williams

# data[].attributes.body
Fill out one of these forms for each text that you read and enter to win

# data[].attributes.body
Martha Hall Kelly
Historical Fiction

The lives of three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

GRADE LEVEL: 9-12
COURSE LINK: All courses!

DISCUSSION LEADER: Ms. Fernandez

# data[].attributes.body
Christopher McDougall
Non-Fiction

The author sets out on a journey to discover the importance of running in human evolutionary history. He learns of the problems related to modern-day footwear and leg injuries. He discovers a tribe of bare-foot super-runners in the mountains of Mexico. A race is set up between the world’s top athletes and the tribe’s best runners. Along the journey of writing his book, McDougall uncovers remarkable information that explains how running is an integral part of being human by making scientific and social connections.

GRADE LEVEL: 11-12
COURSE LINK: America's Voices, Documentary

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mr. Michael

# data[].attributes.body
Dan Brown
Fictional Thriller

Famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon answers an unexpected summons to appear at the U.S. Capitol Building. His planned lecture is interrupted when a disturbing object—artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the building. Langdon recognizes in the find an ancient invitation into a lost world of esoteric, potentially dangerous wisdom. When his mentor Peter Solomon—a longstanding Mason and beloved philanthropist—is kidnapped, Langdon realizes that the only way to save Solomon is to accept the mystical invitation and plunge headlong into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and one inconceivable truth . . . all under the watchful eye of Dan Brown's most terrifying villain to date.

GRADE LEVEL: 9-10, 11-12
COURSE LINK:  Heroes and Monsters

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. McKay

# data[].attributes.body
Saroo Brierley
Memoir

At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia.

GRADE LEVEL: 9-10, 11-12
COURSE LINK: Survival and Perseverance, Multicultural Lit

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mrs. McKay

# data[].attributes.body
Fredrik Backman
Humor and Satire

Set in Sweden, A Man Called Ove highlights the danger in misconceptions and how anyone is capable changing for the better. Ove, a cantankerous elderly man, undergoes a transformation from neighborhood curmudgeon to something all together unexpected thanks to unlikely sources.

GRADE LEVEL: 11-12
COURSE LINK: Multicultural Lit.

DISCUSSION LEADER:  Mr. Gereg

# data[].attributes.headline
Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandries 

# data[].attributes.subject
Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandries 

# data[].attributes.body
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Science and Natural History

Dr. deGrasse Tyson frequently writes essays for Natural History, a monthly magazine from the American Museum of Natural History.  This is a collection of those essays (42 in all) that range from astronomy to particle physics.  The essays are written for the non-astrophysicist in simple understandable terms -  no equations, no indecipherable jargon.

GRADE LEVEL: 11-12, but 9-10 might be curious!
COURSE LINK: Physics

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mr. Terhaar

# data[].attributes.body
Philipp Meyer
Historical Fiction

This contemporary novel explores the struggle of those left behind by the Great Recession that crippled the early 21st century. Set in rural Pennsylvania, the novel explores the plight of those searching for a place in the world amidst a culture all but forgotten.

GRADE LEVEL:  11-12
COURSE LINK: Survival and Perseverance

DISCUSSION LEADER: Mr. Gereg