Book Selections:
High School
Teacher & Administrator Picks
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The choice of what to read is up to the student.
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These are simply books some WW-P teachers and administrators have read and enjoyed!
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Students may choose books from this list but do not have to read books listed here.
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Note - parents or guardians should be involved in the process of choosing books if they have any concerns about appropriateness and suitability of their child's choices of reading material.
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Click on the title for further information from Goodreads.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius tells the story of how Dave Eggers’ parents died of cancer within five weeks of each other and left Dave and his siblings in the custody of their seven year old brother, Toph. Dave tells his story with his trademark satire dripping from every word, allowing the reader to follow him on the ride from total irresponsibility to maturity and acceptance. This memoir is heartbreaking, leaving the reader touched and yet strangely amused.
Alice in Wonderland
by Lewis Carol
A girl named Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world filled with peculiar creatures. An exciting journey of a child in a strange land and a classic of fantasy literature.
Lexile 980L
Animal Farm
by George Orwell
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A novella which reflects the events of the Russian Revolution, written in 1945 as political satire by George Orwell. When the animals of Manor Farm take over the farm and run it themselves, they soon find that power corrupts and that some of the animals are no better than the humans who had previously enslaved them. A classic of American Literature.
Lexile 1170L
Suggested by Ms. Glassband
by Jacqueline Woodson
In vivid poems, Woodson shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 60s and 70s living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
Lexile 990L
Suggested by Ms. Hoyt
by Leslie Marmon Silko
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Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him.
Lexile 890L
Suggested by Ms. Fevola
Emma
by Jane Austen
Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégé Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.
Feed
by M.T. Anderson
Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now. This brilliantly ironic satire is set in a future world where television and computers are connected directly into people's brains when they are babies. The result is a chillingly recognizable consumer society where empty-headed kids are driven by fashion and shopping and the avid pursuit of silly entertainment--even on trips to Mars and the moon--and by constant customized murmurs in their brains of encouragement to buy, buy, buy. Although there is a danger that at first teens may see the idea of brain-computers as cool, ultimately they will recognize this as a fascinating novel that says something important about their world.
Girl in Translation
by Jean Kwok
An exciting new voice, an inspiring debut about a Chinese immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures. When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. She wrestles with constantly hiding the truth of her family’s poverty and pursuing the love of a boy that will not please her parents.
Suggested by Ms. Tessein
Lexile 840L
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
In its sweep, Guns, Germs, and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying and intriguing theory of human history.
Holy the Firm
by Annie Dillard
A beautifully written reflection on life by a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Dillard’s use of imagery is gorgeous, haunting, and profound. Students who are lovers of poetry will love this book as it is reads like a 76 page poem.
Suggested by Ms. Cathy Reilly
In Sunshine and in Shadow: We Remember Them: A Memoir
by Dr. Vera H. Goodkin
A Holocaust survivor herself, Dr. Goodkin honors the memories and reflections of the victims of this horrific period in world history.
In the Time of the Butterflies
by Julia Alvarez
The story of the four Mirabel sisters and their efforts to overthrow the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. In the Time of the Butterflies is inspired by the true story of the three Mirabal sisters who, in 1960, were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government.
Lexile 910L
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
The lives of four sisters on a journey out of adolescence, in a Post-Civil War America. These four young women with distinct personalities must grapple with the gender roles that are in place at that time. A classic of American Literature with enduring and memorable characters.
Lexile 750L
Lord of the Rings Series
by J.R.R. Tolkien
The epic-fantasy journey of Frodo the hobbit and his journey throughout Middle Earth. Tolkien's craft is renowned for its ability to create an expansive fantasy universe.
Lexile 860L
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
by Ransom Riggs
Told through narrative and photography, Ms. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a compelling mystery that explores the life of Jacob following a family tragedy.
Lexile 890L
Not My Father's Son: A Memoir
by Alan Cumming
In his unique and engaging voice, the acclaimed actor of stage and screen shares the emotional story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career.
Suggested by Mr. Smith
Passing
by Nella Larsen
Larsen wrote this novel in 1929. It follows Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, two light-skinned black women who try to escape racism. Kendry chooses to sever all ties with her background and passes herself off as white, while Redfield simply denies that racism exists. Both, however, eventually are forced to face the awful truth.
Ragtime
by E.L. Doctorow
Peek inside the heads of Houdini, Freud, J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Henry Ford and others. Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & the First World War.
Lexile 930L
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
by Michael Moss
Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese and seventy pounds of sugar. Every day, we ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt, double the recommended amount, almost none of which comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food, an industry that hauls in $1 trillion in annual sales. In Salt Sugar Fats, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Michael Moss shows how we ended up here.
Suggested by Ms. Fevola
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Station Eleven follows an acting troupe and goes back and forth in time to the point at which one of the characters slumps over and dies during a production of King Lear. After a virus wipes out musch of America, this group of troubadours attempts to preserve some of what was lost.
Suggested by Ms. Sheller
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Samuel Klayman--self-described “little man, city boy, and Jew”--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship.
Lexile 1170L
Suggested by Ms. Fevola
The Big Over Easy
by Jasper Fforde
Fforde takes a break from classic literature and tumbles into the seedy underbelly of crime writing. Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division. He's investigating the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those brittle pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play.
The Circle
by Dave Eggers
When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
Suggested by Mr. Brack
The Crystal Cave
by Mary Stewart
Fifth century Britain is a country of chaos and division after the Roman withdrawal. Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess who will not reveal to her son his father's true identity, Merlin leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents and visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son.
Lexile 960L
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larsen
Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
by Mitch Albom
When Eddie dies at 83, he learns in the afterlife that five people explain your life to you. One by one, each person answers the question for Eddie of why his life mattered.
Lexile 780L
Suggested by Ms. Kathleen Reilly
The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
Theo Decker, a thirteen year old boy in NYC survives an accident that kills his mother. Deeply mourning his loss, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her, a painting that pulls him into the dangerous underworld of art. A modern day Dickensian tale.
Suggested by Ms. Glassband
The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
The History of Love spans over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love.
Suggested by Ms. Fevola
The Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
The Keeping Corner
by Kashmira Sheth
Set in British occupied India, twelve year old Leela's life changes when her husband dies. As she learns about Gandhi and the work he’s been doing, she realizes there is hope for her people's liberation and her own.
Lexile 760L
The Notebook, The Proof, the Third Lie
by Agota Kristof
This trilogy tells the story of twin brothers, Claus and Lucas, as they battle the forces that have divided them.
Suggested by Mr. Loveland
This I Believe
by Jay Allison, Dan Gediman and Studs Terkel
Based on the NPR series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty Americans--from the famous to the unknown--completing the thought that the book's title begins. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs--and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them--reveal the American spirit at its best.
Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation. Life is hell for all of the slaves but especially bad for Cora because she is an outcast. A recent arrival tells her about the Underground Railroad and they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. In this work of fiction, Whitehead imagines the safe houses we know as the Underground Railroad to be an actual working transit system.
Lexile 890L
When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi
This is the true story of an amazing and brilliant young neurosurgeon who finds out that he has terminal cancer and decides to write this memoir. While it is a profoundly sad story, it is also a beautiful testament to how Kalanithi chose to live out his final days. Ultimately, this is a story about how to live life.
Suggested by Ms. Cathy Reilly
Zone One
by Colson Whitehead
A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. After the worst of the plague is over, armed forces stationed in Chinatown’s Fort Wonton have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the three-person civilian sweeper units tasked with clearing lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies. Zone One unfolds over three surreal days in which Spitz is occupied with the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), and the impossible task of coming to terms with a fallen world. And then things start to go terribly wrong…
Magnificent Minds: 16 Pioneering Women in Science and Medicine
by Pendred Noyce
Did you know that Florence Nightingale pioneered the use of statistics in public health? That Marie Curie is still the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in both physics and chemistry—and the only winner whose daughter also won a Nobel Prize? That in the 17th century, the most accomplished scholar in mathematical astronomy was a Polish woman, Maria Cunitz? That the pysicist who first explained nuclear fission was a woman, Lise Meitner?That two of the pioneers of computer science were women, Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper? For centuries, women have risen above their traditional roles to pursue new understanding of the natural world. This book, which grows out of an exhibit at the Grolier Club in New York, introduces the lives, sayings, and dreams of sixteen women over four centuries and chronicles their contributions to mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, computer science, and medicine. Sweeping and inspirational, this book should be read by all girls and young women who share curiosity about the world and the dream of making a difference.
by Ernest Gaines
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Set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision of whether or not to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting, and defying, the expected and learn life-lessons about human dignity and honor.
A Tale for the Time Being
by Ruth L. Ozeki
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Narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese American writer living on an island off British Columbia who finds the diary washed up on shore as a result of the 2011 tsunami.
Suggested by Ms. Sheller
From the author by Ready Player One, a thrilling adventure and an alien invasion tale like nothing you've ever read before.
Lexile 1110L
by Julie Otsuka
Tells about a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides" nearly a century ago. Their harrowing journey takes them through countless trials along with the births of their children, who will ultimately reject their mothers’ fate.
by Victor Villasenor
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Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villaseñor coped with an untreated learning disability (he was finally diagnosed, at the age of forty-four, with extreme dyslexia) and the frustration of growing up Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s. Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villaseñor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer. He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time.
Suggested by Mr. Wray
by Miguel de Cervantes
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Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances, that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray - he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants - Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together, and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly 400 years.
Lexile 1410L
Everything I Never Told You
by Celeste Ng
A haunting debut novel about a mixed-race family living in 1970s Ohio and the tragedy that will either be their undoing or their salvation: Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet ... So begins the story in this exquisite debut novel. Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
Lexile 870L
Suggested by Ms. Pandolpho
Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes
The beloved, classic story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In poignant diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life.
Lexile 910L
Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
A spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she’s left in at the end of the Civil War. A beloved classic of American Literature and a best seller since its publication.
Lexile 1100L
Heft
by Liz Moore
Arthur Opp, weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his apartment in years. Seventeen year old Kel Keller is a poor kid with a difficult home life in a rich school, hoping baseball will win him a ticket to a bright future. The link between these two is Kel's mother and their beautiful and heartbreaking stories are told alternatively by Arthur and Kel.
Suggested by Ms. Glassband
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyassi
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
A stunning, eyewitness perspective of William E. Dodd as he becomes embroiled in Hitler's plan and as he slowly realizes its true extent.
Lexile 1050L-1335L
Suggested by Ms. Hannon
Life on the Color Line: the True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black
by Gregory Howard Williams
As a child in 1950s segregated Virginia, Gregory Howard Williams grew up believing he was white. But when the family business failed and his parents’ marriage fell apart, Williams discovered that his dark-skinned father, who had been passing as Italian-American, was half black. The family split up, and Greg, his younger brother, and their father moved to Muncie, Indiana, where the young boys learned the truth about their heritage. Overnight, Greg Williams became black.
Mythology
by Edith Hamilton
Mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present. This classic and seminal work by Edith Hamilton establishes a strong foundation for the study of Greek mythology.
My Name is Asher Lev
by Chaim Potok
Torn between his piety and creativity, Asher Lev strives to understand his purpose as an artist and a young man of devout faith in this classic novel.
Lexile 640L
Suggested by Ms. Goodkin
Papillon
by Henri Charrière
A memoir that chronicles the incarceration and escape of Henri Cherriere from the French penal system.
Suggested by Ms. Goodkin
Phantom of the Opera
by Gaston Leroux
Christine Daaé's father, a famous musician, dies, and she is raised in the Paris Opera House with his promise of a protective angel of music to guide her. A gothic novel that inspired one of the longest running musicals on Broadway.
Lexile 730L
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society. In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.
Suggested by Ms. Wong
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
by Ana Brashares
The story of four girls and one magical pair of pants. Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena are four very different yet inseparable friends. This novel chronicles their individual travels and self-discovery while remaining connected through the "traveling pants".
Lexile 600L
That was Then, This is Now
by S.E. Hinton
If you loved The Outsiders, you will love this book, too. Same author, S.E. Hinton.
Lexile 780L
Suggested by Ms. Goodkin
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
by James Weldon Johnson
A work of fiction about an American of mixed ethnicity whose appearance allow him unusual social mobility because he is able to "pass for white".
Lexile 1100L
Suggested by Mr. Bossio
The Boys on the Boat
by Daniel James Brown
Out of the depths of the Depression, an irresistible story of nine working class boys who show the world during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really is.
The Chosen
by Chaim Potok
The spiritual journey of two sons and two fathers that seek the find the balance of life and religion in mid-twentieth century Brooklyn.
Lexile 970L
Suggested by Ms. Goodkin
The Counte of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas
The story of Edmund Dantes, self-styled Count of Monte Cristo, is told with consummate skill. The victim of a miscarriage of justice, Dantes is fired by a desire for retribution and empowered by a stroke of providence. In his campaign of vengeance, he becomes an anonymous agent of fate. The sensational narrative of intrigue, betrayal, escape, and triumphant revenge moves at a cracking pace. Dumas' novel presents a powerful conflict between good and evil embodied in an epic saga of rich diversity that is complicated by the hero's ultimate discomfort with the hubristic implication of his own actions.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
Following the murder of his neighbor's dog, Christopher Boone - a self-described "mathematician with some behavioral difficulties" narrates his experiences of independence and his quest to solve a mystery..
Lexile 1180L
The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde
Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality, and literature is taken very seriously. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë's novel, Special Operative "Thursday Next" must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of “literary homicide”.
The Girl with a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier
The fictitious historical account of Johannes Vermeer's The Girl with the Pearl Earring painting that chronicles the life of Griet as she becomes entangled with Vermeer's artistic genius.
Lexile 770L
Suggested by Ms. Goodkin
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the Hero’s Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world’s mythic traditions.
The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who rarely travels until the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep to whisk him away on an adventure.
Lexile 1000L
Suggested by Mr. Bailey-Yavonditte
The Keeper
by Tim Howard
Memoir: Tim Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from NJ with Tourettes who defied the odds to become a premier goalkeeper.
Lexile 700L
The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss
This is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows up to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.
The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
Set in South Carolina in 1964, Lily Owens and her guardian, on the run for insulting three vicious racists, are taken in by an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters.
Lexile 840L
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins
A gene's eye view of evolution bringing imaginative, powerful, and brilliant insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience.
Suggested by Mr. Spero
Three Little Words
by Ashley Rhodes-Courter
A true story of the nine years the author spent in the foster care system, and how she triumphed to find her own voice.
Lexile 810L
Suggested by Ms. Zarodnansky
Weetzie Bat Series
by Francesca Lia Block
Listed among NPR's 100 Best Ever Teen Novels, these fairy tales are set in Los Angeles, filled with mystery, magical realism, and a search for love. There are five books in the series.
Lexile 960L
When the Emperor was Divine
by Julie Otsuka
This is the true story of an amazing and brilliant young neurosurgeon who finds out that he has terminal cancer and decides to write this memoir. While it is a profoundly sad story, it is also a beautiful testament to how Kalanithi chose to live out his final days. Ultimately, this is a story about how to live life.
The Invisible Wall
by Harry Bernstein
A wonderfully charming memoir written when the author was ninety-three, The Invisible Wall vibrantly brings to life an all-but-forgotten time and place. It is a moving tale of working-class life, and of the boundaries that can be overcome by love.
Suggested by Ms. Cathy Reilly
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Lexile HL610L
Suggested by Ms. Levine
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Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
Remarkable Minds
by Pendred Noyce
For centuries, women have risen above their traditional roles to pursue a new understanding of the natural world. This book, which grows out of an exhibit at the Grolier Club in New York, introduces the lives, sayings, and dreams of 16 women over four centuries and chronicles their contributions to mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine. Some of the notable women portrayed in the book include French mathematician Marie-Sophie Germain, known for her work in Elasticity theory, differential geometry, and number theory; Scottish chemist Elizabeth Fulhame, best known for her 1794 work An Essay on Combustion; and Rita Levi-Montalcini, who, with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of nerve growth factor. A companion volume to Magnificent Minds by the same author, this book offers inspiration to all girls and young women considering a life in the sciences.