So this is our High School Reading List for the kids. These are the classic books and important books we think they should read for high school literature. It is a work in progress. I’d love to know what you think is missing!
Have you entered our Kindle Fire Giveaway yet? Click here to enter and you could win a Fire tablet, case and gift card to get started being these great books! And so many on this list are free for Kindle too!
Thankfully, now that we have the list started we can use our Book Inventory to figure out which books we own, which ones we will get free on Kindle (shown below!), and which ones we need to purchase.
Each of the children will be required to complete book reports on 10 books per year, and essays on 3 books per year with an increase to 15 book reports and 5 essays in their senior year. We have 82 books on the list so far, and still need to find a few good biographies and add some Tozer. We will have a few of these that are absolutely required, and the rest will be optional as long as they choose from this list.
What do you think of our High School Book List? Let us know in the comments!
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom (Biography)
For You They Signed by Marilyn Boyer (Biography)
(Free for Kindle!) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (Autobiography)
Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot (Biography)
A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot (Biography)
Excerpts from Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandburg (Biography)
Arsenic and Old Lace by Kesselring (Drama)
The Crucible by Arthur Miller (Drama)
Macbeth by Shakespeare (Drama)
Henry V by Shakespeare (Drama)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare (Drama)
Hamlet by Shakespeare (Drama)
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare (Drama)
(Free for Kindle!) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (Drama)
Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth (Drama)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Don Quixote by Cervantes (Fiction)
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Fiction)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Fiction)
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Fiction)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Fiction)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (Fiction)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (Fiction)
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving (Fiction)
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Fiction)
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Call of the Wild by Jack London (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Fiction)
Billy Budd by Herman Melville (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Animal Farm by George Orwell (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Fiction)
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriett Beecher Stowe (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Fiction)
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (Fiction)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Fiction)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (Fiction)
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Fiction)
A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (Fiction)
The Once and Future King by Terence White (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Beowolf (Fiction)
Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss (Fiction)
(Free for Kindle!) Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards (Sermon)
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (Historical)
(Free for Kindle!) Common Sense by Thomas Paine (Historical)
Everything labeled (Free for Kindle!) was free at the time of this posting.
Hi there,
I was curious, with all these fabulous free books, how you set up the kindle for multiple users. We each have separate tablets, should the adults have one account and the kids another? Trying to set it up the best way we can and separate adult and kids.
We have one Kindle account that we purchase books through, and I think you can share for up to 5 Kindle devices. The youngest child in my house with a Kindle is 13. I don’t have anything on the Kindle that I don’t want my 13 year old to read. I’ve been thinking about getting my 11 year old a Kindle, but I don’t know that I want her to have access to some of the more mature reading material (like The Picture of Dorian Grey for example!). This is a very timely question for me as I am thinking this through as well. I think my favorite solution so far is that I will be in charge of which books she downloads on her Kindle and I will keep track of it. I have a lot of great ebooks on my current Kindle account for her age group already and if I start her a “children’s” account on Amazon, she wouldn’t have access to those. What are you leaning towards?
At least on the HDX you can set up parental settings that limit what can be viewed without an additional security password. There are also Free Time settings for younger kids.
I collect all my kindle books on one account. When my child is old enough to read on her own, I’ll purchase an older model kindle and leave it unregistered. That way it can’t download any books from my account. The books I select for her to read with be downloaded onto my computer and transferred via USB.
Love these, Amy! We only have a middle schooler but some of these we’ve read (oh, how we loved “Cheaper by the Dozen”), some we plan to and some you’ve officially put on my list! We may look over “The Scarlet Pimpernel” for a read-aloud….I remember that as a rollicking, adventurous movie. And I always love to do the book first, then the movie!
For those titles that require reading of excerpts only, how do you choose which parts of the book to read?
I remembered reading “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Hind’s Feet in High Places” either at the end of middle school or high school and really enjoying them. This list is very helpful. Thank you!
I love the fact that you have Lewis, Tolkien, and Shakespeare all properly represented in here. And the titles you picked for Shakespeare are also quite well done. 🙂 I will have to read the few on this list that I haven’t yet.
How do you decide which ones are an absolute MUST versus letting them choose?
Thanks,
The absolute MUST books are those which may have a direct impact on our Child’s walk with the Lord. That being said, we chose 12 books from the list above for this year which fit well with our history studies of the Middle Ages, and we are having our daughter work her way down that list. We had originally intended to let her choose, but at some point realized that many of the books would fit nicely with the time period of history we are studying. Does that help?
This is such an awesome and refreshing book list! Do you happen to have a list for elementary and middle school as well? Thank you!
I do have a short list of 25 free living books for elementary and middle school here: https://encouragingmomsathome.com/homeschool-living-books-free-amazon-charlotte-mason/. I do not have a comprehensive reading list for elementary and middle school yet. 🙂
I may have missed it, but do you have a breakdown of books based on “grade/age” level? Which books would be most appropriate for someone who is 14 and “9th grade”?
I did not break these down by age level. When we went through and chose specific books for this year, we did agree that certain books like The Picture of Dorian Grey would be better to push off to the Senior year. However, my 14 year-old is reading a mix of easier and longer books each year to give her some variety. For instance, this year she is reading Don Quixote and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Two books on the opposite end of the spectrum as far as difficulty. I think it depends largely on the child and the family how you choose to divide the books by year level. This year we went through and chose 12 books that fit with the era of history my daughter is studying.
How about Where the Red Fern Grows, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Moby Dick?
I do not recommend Of Mice and Men or Lord of the Flies or require my children to read them. The remaining books on your list made our longer list, but did not make our final book list for our family for a variety of reasons.
Hi, Amy! I’m so glad to read your list of books for your children. So much fine literature there!
I think you are wise to limit what your children read for literature, like keeping Lord of the Flies off your list. So much of what our kids have to read in literature courses was never meant to be read by children or even by teens. Those novels were written for adults and contain adult issues, language, or situations. Why foist them on people who are too young to deal with those?
Thanks for sharing your great list.
Wuthering Heights is by Emily Brontë not Charlotte Brontë.
my youngest dtr home schools and I love your book list. Just had to comment on Beowolf…when I was in college lit class, my prof asked if any of us freshmen knew the story of Beowolf. I promptly raised my hand as my Dad and my uncle read this classic to us as children. My older sister read it to me many times as I was growing up. I was surprised that it was still on the college reading list! So glad to see book by C. S. Lewis also. God bless your ministry to home schooling parents!
I don’t like many of the classics recommended by schools, so I’m glad you left out The Lord of the Flies, etc.
Among those I really like you do have: Corrie Ten Boom; Cheaper By the Dozen (With Six You Get Eggrolls); Little Women; Pilgrims Progress; Animal Farm (because we have the problem); Gullivers Travels (looking at things from others viewpoints); The Hobbit (stepping out of your comfort zone when it’s important); 20,000 Leagues (seeing something new and unusual).
Under books I’d recommend: Swiss Family Robinson (ingenuity); I’ll Always Write Back (the results of a school letter project); Kisses From Katie (journal notes from a girl who went to help in Africa and created miracles); A Christmas Carol; Dr. Schwitzer,, a doctor who ran a foreign hospital and funded it by playing organ concerts; A Girl of the Limberlost (insisting on an education).
Thanks for the recommendations! We love Kisses from Katie – definitely a great book!
Hi. I love your book list. Do you have it in a printable form? Thank you so much.
Yes do you have it in printable form?