Suggested Reading
ENR 090 and 095

The book list below has been compiled over the years by suggestions from developmental educators as well as students and is a work in progress. Books are chosen for their readability level, high interest content and representation of diverse points of view. Most of the descriptions come from www.amazon.com

Teachers have used these books in many ways: some offer students a choice in titles and have students give “book talks” or meet in groups to discuss their books. Some follow Nancy Atwell’s suggestion of using “literary letters” and set up their classroom like a “reading workshop.” Others assign a common book for the whole class as a supplement to textbook reading. If you would like to suggest additional titles or ways to use these books contact lisa.bosley@eku.edu.

Fiction

Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees—Taylor Greer grows up working class in eastern Kentucky, determined to avoid pregnancy and to escape the small town. She heads west in a ’55 Volkswagen, and “adopts” an abandoned Native American baby on the way to Tucson. A wise and beautiful and often funny book about love, family, responsibility, sacrifice and community.

Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese—A boy sets out on an old bike to find his father, 70 miles away. The boy is also questioned by a psychiatrist (or is he a spy?) Is the journey before or after the boy’s hospitalization? What is the secret past Adam can’t remember? Lots of suspense.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God— A classic of the Harlem Renaissance. A young black woman in Florida, wants romance and meaning but instead is forced to marry a man twice her age. Over time, Janie learns to stand up for herself and in the process finds the true meaning of love and mutual respect in her relationship with Tea Cake. Poetic writing.

John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil—A true crime story set in Savannah, Georgia. The cast of characters range from society ladies to a redneck gigolo to a black drag queen to an arrogant antiques dealer. Everyone in this book is an eccentric, and reading about them is almost as much fun as figuring out whether the crime was murder or self-defense. The city of Savannah now offers tours of the places mentioned in this best-selling book.

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood— Another true crime story, this one set on the plains of Kansas. Two young drifters murder a family of four for a few dollars. The manhunt, trial and eventual execution of the murderers will challenge what you think you know about right and wrong, life and death. Also a great movie with Robert Blake. In Cold Blood is a classic of the true crime genre and probably the best of its kind.

Bebe Moore Campbell, Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine— This novel spans thirty years in the life of a small Southern town. The murder of a black youth for talking to a white woman set the story in motion. Campbell shows how racism affects both whites and how poverty, sexism and racism all work together to take away people’s dignity and choices. Memorable characters.

Russel Banks, Rule of the Bone— Fourteen-year-old Chappie is kicked out of his parents’ trailer for stealing his mother’s coin collection. Chappie has to learn to survive on the streets, meeting Hell’s Angels, a child pornographer and a Jamaican refugee who becomes his mentor. Chappie is a modern-day Huckleberry Finn.

Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina— Young Bone comes from a family the rest of the county looks down on—beer-guzzling, pick-up truck driving uncles and hardened aunts who pick up the pieces. Bone feels safe in her wild but loving family until her mother marries a man who sexually abuses Bone. A powerful story of love, loyalty, and survival.

Rosellen Brown, Before and After— The Reisers are a happy, small-town family—until the teenage son’s girlfriend is discovered bludgeoned to death. Did their son commit murder? Can parents believe this of their child? And if they believe, what must they do? A recent movie with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird— Told through the eyes of 7 year-old Scout, who learns about prejudice and racial hatred in spite of the protection and wisdom of her gentle lawyer father, Atticus Finch. A terrific classic movie starring Gregory Peck.

S.E. Hinton, That was Then This is Now. A story of the friendship between two teenage boys.

S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders. A story of rival cliques in a high school…and murder.

Sue Miller, The Good Mother—When Anna divorces, she gains custody of her child Molly. But when Anna falls passionately in love with Leo, her ex-husband doubts her ability to protect her child’s innocence and starts an ugly custody battle. Although the book is fiction, it could happen.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple—Celie is raped as a child and forced to have the baby, which is taken away from her. She is separated from her sister, the only person who loves her, and forced to marry a man who beats her. Celie learns survival and love with the help of Shug. Written in the form of letters to God (the only person the lonely Celie has to talk to) the novel traces her spiritual development. The movie version is a pale lavender compared to the rich depth of the book.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. This acclaimed first novel by Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo, an Ibo tribesman in Nigeria, before and after the coming of colonialism.

Julia Alvarez, How the Girls Lost Their Accents. Yolanda and her three sisters tell their family’s story after they emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the United States.

Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me Ultima. This book is a classic Chicano coming-of-age novel about a young boy who faces the conflicts in his life with the help of Ultima, a magic healer.

Octavia Butler, Kindred. This is a story of time travel. A woman from the twentieth century is repeatedly pulled back in time by her slave owning ancestor Rufus when his life is endangered. She chooses to save him, because she discovers that one of his slaves will eventually become her own grandmother.

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower. This science fiction tale is about a teenage girl’s life in a barricaded village in Southern California amid the rapid socioeconomic decay of the early twenty-first century.

Robin Cook, Contagion. Cooks’s novel is a medical thriller about three different extremely rare diseases that start killing patients at a New York hospital; a pathologist suspects that the deaths may be deliberately caused.

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions. This is the story of Tambu, a young African who faces oppression as a woman in her native Zimbabwe as well as the colonial British school where she seeks an education.

Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate. Esquivel’s popular novel intersperses recipes with a story of thwarted love in Mexico at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’ Diary. The hilarious life and loves of a young woman and her journey toward self-improvement.

Kaye Gibbons, Ellen Foster. A young girl’s courageous story of survival. Funny and heartbreaking.

Janice Holt Giles, Hannah Fowler. A young woman’s life during the pioneer days in Kentucky.

Giardina, Denise. Storming Heaven. Four strong, entirely different voices evoke the passion and the pain of unionizing the coal mines of Kentucky and West Virginia in the early 20th century. The canvas is broad, the action complex but even minor characters quicken to life in this memorable, beautifully written novel. As fast paced and compulsively readable as a thriller, this novel never overlooks the gentler pleasure of living on the land, falling in love, raising a family. Stunning sensory images sear scenes on the mind's eye.

John Grisham. Anything by John Grisham…the best selling author of lawyerly suspense.

David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars. Fighting the distrust and prejudice of his neighbors on a remote island in Puget Sound, a Japanese-American man who spent time in an interment camp during World War II finds himself on trial for murder.

Torey Hayden, Murphy’s Boy. Hayden tells the moving story of a young boy who must struggle to overcome his disabilities.

Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic. Two sisters and their family of witches struggle with life, love, loyalty and murder. A major film starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

Silas House, Clays Quilt. A story of family love and loyalty in Appalachian Kentucky. All his books are good!

Louanne Johnson, Dangerous Minds. A feisty female ex-Marine teaches a class of inner-city high school students about self-respect, courage, and success.

Stephen King, Anything by the best selling king of horror.

Dean Koontz. Anything by the best selling horror, crime and mystery writer.

Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country. A Young girl living in rural Kentucky comes to terms with losing her father to the Vietnam War.

Terry MacMillan, Disappearing Acts. Presents a fresh, insightful look at the many stages of a modern relationship.

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. A young girl growing up in turn-of-the century Brooklyn. A poignant classic.

Lee Smith, Saving Grace. Florida Grace Shepard, named for the state in which she was born and for the grace of God, is the daughter of a charismatic serpent-handling preacher. She is content with her early life in Scrabble Creek, North Carolina? no easy task when her family moves whenever her father is arrested for conducting services with live snakes? and she even finds a friend. With Southern style, Smith takes Grace from a young girl struggling with her own identity, though marriage, motherhood, and an adulterous affair that changes her very way of life. Readers go along on a journey of wonders, miracles, and tragedy with all the people Grace meets. This is not a tale of adventure but rather of Southern life and spiritual searching

James Still, River of Earth. A boy’s growing up in Appalachia.

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones. A murder mystery, but also a sometimes funny novel about love, family, and heaven.

James Alexander Thom, Follow the River. The story of a pioneer woman captured by Shawnee Indians who escapes and finds her way back home.

Mary Higgins Clark ---the queen of suspense. Check out any and all of her novels.

Eli Weisel, Night. A fictional story of a Jewish teenager’s guilt at surviving the Holocaust in which the rest of his family dies. This story strongly parallels Weisel’s own experiences in the death camps.

James Welch, Winter in the Blood. Welch’s novel is about a young Native American in Montana coming to terms with his heritage and his dreams.

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried. Short stories that work as a novel, based on O’Brien’s experience in Vietnam. O’Brien blurs the line between nonfiction and fiction. O’Brien is by far the best novelist writing about Vietnam. This book is not for the squeamish.

Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods—Tim O’Brien’s most recent novel. Although set in Minnesota, Vietnam is the backdrop to the novel about a politician whose career and marriage are destroyed by revelations about his past as a soldier. When his wife disappears, readers may think she deserted him—or that he murdered her. Experimental narrative technique.

Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon. This science fiction novel tells the story of a semi-literate young man with a limited IQ who undergoes experimental brain surgery and becomes a genius.

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club. Four mothers and four daughters tell their stories as Chinese immigrants living in San Francisco.

Anne Tyler, If Morning Ever Comes. A young man and his odd family. (All her books!)

Helena Maria Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus. This novel tells about the dangers and challenges Estrella and her Mexican-American migrant family face during a summer working in the fields.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five. The absurdist classic that ruminates on the horror of the bombing of Dresden during World War Two.

Victor Villasenor, Macho. In this story, Roberto Garcia, a seventeen-year-old, crosses the Mexican border into California, where he experiences considerable cultural shock and comes of age.

Fenton Johnson, Paper, Scissors, Rock. A tender, haunting account of a rural Appalachian family's demise as the parents sicken and die, the gay son contracts AIDS, and other siblings leave for greener urban pastures. Written in stories, each one dated, Johnson's second novel manages to be both intimate and panoramic.

General Non-fiction

Larry Colton, Counting Coup: A True Story of basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn

James Brady, Flags of Our Fathers. James Brady tells the story of his father and the other soldiers who raised the flag at the battle of Iwo Jima during WW II. Gripping battle scenes; moving stories of these men’s lives.

Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin’. The author describes his childhood of abject poverty in the south, and his courageous mother who made it possible for him to go the college and become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Rick Bragg, I am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story. Describes the ordeal of Private Jessica Lynch, a prisoner of War during the Iraq war.

Benjamin Carson, Think Big. Benjamin Carson, who is now director of pediatrics at John Hopkins University, tells how he overcame the obstacles of growing up in the inner city.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life. Former President and first lady describe their post-White House careers, including topics discussed such as their volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity.

Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street. This book describes Esperanza’s childhood among family, friends, and neighbors in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Chicago.

James Comer, Maggie’s American Dream. When Maggie Comer left a life of poverty in the rural South, she never dreamed she would become the mother of five children who share thirteen college degrees. Here is an inspiring family success story that illustrates how to find the grit to succeed, despite the odds stacked against one.

Jill Ker Conway, Road from Coorain: An Autobiography. Conway describes her life from her childhood in Australia until the age of twenty-three when she leaves home for graduate school at Harvard University.

Geoffrey Canada, Fist Stick Knife Gun. This is the author’s own story of growing up in a violent South Bronx neighborhood. Canada has spent most of his life working with young people and communities at risk..

Norma Cantu Canicula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera. Cantu tells the moving story of her family’s struggles on the U.S./Mexican border.

Sara and Elizabeth Delaney, Having Our Say. This is a best-selling inspirational memoir of two hundred-year-old sisters-Sadie and Bessie Delaney-who share their wisdom regarding education and breaking barriers for work in nontraditional jobs for black women.

Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness. Face with a long hospital stay, respected journalist and editor Norman Cousins figures out ways to use humor and creativity to regain his health.

Kenneth Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Universe. Basic information about the universe everyone should know. Written for a general audience in an entertaining style.

Kenneth Davis, Don’t Know Much About History. Basic information about history everyone should know. Written for a general audience in an entertaining style.

Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt, The Pact. As teenagers from a rough part of Newark, New Jersey, Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt, and George Jenkins had nothing special going for them except loving mothers (one of whom was a drug user) and above-average intelligence. Their first stroke of luck was testing into University High, one of Newark's three magnet high schools, and their second was finding each other. They were busy staying out of trouble (most of the time), and discovering the usual ways to skip class and do as little schoolwork as possible, when a recruitment presentation on Seton Hall University reignited George's childhood dream of becoming a dentist. The college was offering a tempting assistance package for minorities in its Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Plus Program. George convinced his two friends to go to college with him. They would help each other through. None of them would be allowed to drop out and be reabsorbed by the Newark streets.

Although this inspiring and easy-to-read book would be enjoyed by any teenager or educator, it seems perfect for minority youth, especially young men of junior high and high school age, who may lack more immediate role models. If the ordinary boys who made this pact could survive college and medical school by sticking together, then so can others. --Regina Marler

Homer Hickman, October Sky: a Memoir. The true story of some small town West Virginia boys with big dreams. This memoir was the inspiration for the recent movie “October Sky”.

Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank. The classic account of a young girl coming of age in hiding from the Nazis during WWII.

John Gray, Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. Provides insights into communication between women and men.

Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face. At age nine, Lucy Grealy had a third of her jaw removed because of bone cancer. She then underwent years of treatment and operations, as well as cruel taunts from her classmates because of her appearance.

David Lipsky, Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point

Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes. A memoir of the author’s desperately poor Irish childhood and his new life in America.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Farewell to Manzanar. This is a true story of one spirited Japanese-American family’s survival of the indignities of forced detention at Manzanar interment camp during World War II.

Barbara Jordan, Barbara Jordan: A Self-Portrait. This is Barbara Jordan’s own story of how she became a successful lawyer, African-American congresswoman, and one of the ten most influential women in Texas.

Michael Jordan, I Can’t Accept Not Trying. In this book, Michael Jordan briefly tells about events in his life that helped to inspire to become successful.

Helen Keller, The Story of My Life. Helen Keller became deaf and blind at 19 months due to scarlet fever. She learned to read (in several languages) and even speak, eventually graduating with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904. She wrote her autobiography, The Story of My Life, while she was a student.

Luis Rodriguez, Always Running. La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA. Always Running explores the motivation of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claims its participants. Rodriguez himself is a veteran of East LA. gang warfare, but he successfully broke free and became an award-winning Chicano poet.

James McBride, The Color of Water. A black man, McBride tells the story of his white mother’s remarkable battle against racism and poverty to raise twelve children.

Richard Preston, The Hot Zone. Nonfiction that reads like a thriller. The enemy: the Ebola virus. The suspense: can it be stopped or contained before it infects humans in the U.S.? Better than the movie Outbreak.

Salzman, Mark. True Notebooks. Salzman volunteered to teach creative writing at Central Juvenile Hall, a Los Angeles County detention facility for "high-risk" juvenile offenders. Most of these under-18 youths had been charged with murder or other serious crimes, and after trial and sentencing many would end up in a penitentiary, some for life. Salzman doesn't dwell on that, concluding that "a little good has got to be better than no good at all." Indeed, his account's power comes from keeping its focus squarely on these boys, their writing and their coming-to-terms with the mess their lives had become.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. In this fascinating sociocultural report, Schlosser digs into the deeper meaning of fast food in America. Frequently using McDonald's as a template, Schlosser, an Atlantic Monthly correspondent, explains how the development of fast-food restaurants has led to the standardization of American culture, widespread obesity, urban sprawl and more.

Dennis Waitley, Dennis, Psychology of Winning. Denis Waitley is one of this country’s best known and respected motivational psychologists. In this text he emphasizes that being a winner is an attitude, a way of life, a self-concept.

Aubrey Wallace, Eco Heroes. Eco Heroes presents the stories of courageous environmental activists who have each won the $60,000 Golman prize for their accomplishments.

Adeline Yenmah, Falling Leaves. Falling Leaves is the author’s own story of her life in China and Hong Kong. She suffers nonstop emotional abuse from her wealthy father and his beautiful, cruel second wife until she escapes to America, where she begins a medical career and enters a happy marriage.

Bill Gates, The Road Ahead. The founder of Microsoft discusses technological directions and changes for the future.