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I
Hate To Read
…Or... in other words
I'd rather be playing video games, watching sports or going
to a movie…
But, I could not put this book down.
LHS students recommend the following books as great reads!
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F
CRI
Airframe - Michael Crichton
Following a series of plane crashes and passenger deaths a
frenzied high pressure investigation is ordered with some
surprising results. |
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355.02
Sun
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
Presents sixth-century philosopher Sun Tzu's thoughts on war,
in which he discusses the laying of plans, the actual waging
of war, and the value of negotiation. |
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F
Kar
The Boxer - Kathleen Karr
Having learned how to box while in prison, fifteen-year-old
Johnny sets out to discover if he can make a decent living
as a fighter in late nineteenth-century New York City. |
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F
Lip
The Brave - Robert Lipsyte
Having left the Indian reservation for the streets of New
York, seventeen-year-old boxer Sonny Bear tries to harness
his inner rage by training with Alfred Brooks, who has left
the sport to become a policeman. |
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F
SOT
Buried Onions - Gary Soto
When nineteen-year-old Eddie drops out of college, he struggles
to find a place for himself as a Mexican American living in
a violence-infested neighborhood of Fresno, California. |
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F
Cru
Chinese Handcuffs - Chris Crutcher
Still troubled by his older brother's violent suicide, eighteen-year-old
Dillon becomes deeply involved in the terrible secret of his
friend Jennifer, who feels she can tell no one what her stepfather
is doing to her. |
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F
Bur
Cold Sassy Tree - Oliver Ann Burns
Grandpa Blakeslee marries a young milliner just three weeks
after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward. Young Will
is boggled by this act but becomes the newlyweds' conspirator
and confidant; meanwhile he does some growing up on his own. |
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F
Row
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- J.K. Rowling
When the Chamber of Secrets is opened again at the Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, second-year student Harry
Potter finds himself in danger from a dark power that has
once more been released on the school. |
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F Ren
Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas - Louise
Rennison
The saga of fourteen-year-old Georgia Nicolson continues as
she travels to Scotland on a nightmarish family vacation,
confesses her anxiety over being the girlfriend of a sex god,
and tests the limits of true friendship. |
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F
LYO
Letters from a Slave Girl : the story
of Harriet Jacobs - Mary E. Lyons
A fictionalized version of the life of Harriet Jacobs, told
in the form of letters that she might have written during
her slavery in North Carolina. |
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F
Wal
Playing Without the Ball : a novel in
four Quarters - Rich Wallace
Feeling abandoned by his parents, who have gone their separate
ways and left him behind in a small Pennsylvania town, seventeen-year-old
Jay finds hope for the future in a church- sponsored basketball
team and a female friend. |
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F
Mac
Sarah, Plain and Tall - Patricia MacLachlan
When their father invites a mail-order bride to come to live
with them in their prairie home, Caleb and Anna are captivated
by her and hope that she will stay. |
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F
Bur
Smack - Melvin Burgess
After running away from their troubled homes, two English
teenagers move in with a group of squatters in the port city
of Bristol and try to find ways to support their growing addiction
to heroin. |
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F
Dun
Summer of Fear - Lois Duncan
Soon after the arrival of cousin Julia, insidious occurences
begin that convince Rachel she is a witch and must be stopped
before her total monstrous plan can be effected. |
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F
Sto
World of Pies - Karen Stolz
This coming-of-age novel follows a young girl, in a small
Texas town, as she struggles with love, family, death, nail
polish and baking. |
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Yadon
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Books
For Reluctant Readers
Chosen by Mrs Yadon
A Project for Emporia State University
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F
MAT
After the War - Carol Matas
After being released from Buchenwald at the end of World War
II, fifteen-year-old Ruth risks her life to lead a group of
children across Europe to Palestine. |
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F
Pec
Amanda/Miranda - Richard Peck
In 1911 in England, eighteen-year-old Mary Cooke is hired
as personal maid to the willful and arrogant Amanda Whitwell
and is astonished to find that her new employer is her near-double,
a coincidence that has lasting consequences for Mary, especially
when she accompanies Amanda on the Titanic's fateful voyage. |
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B
GRE
Autobiography of a Face - Lucy Grealy
Lucy Grealy describes her journey to find physical beauty
after surgery left her face disfigured. |
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F
Har
Bang the Drum Slowly - Mark Harris
Story of baseball player Henry Wiggen throwing a baseball
for the sake of his pocket, his family, his teammates, and
dying friend. |
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F
KLA
Blood and Chocolate - Annette Curtis
Klause
Having fallen for a human boy, a beautiful teenage werewolf
must battle both her packmates and the fear of the townspeople
to decide where she belongs and with whom. |
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F
Mor
The Bluest Eye; a novel - Toni Morrison
Eleven-year-old Pecola prayed that she would be so pretty
that her parents would stop fighting, her father would stop
drinking, and her brother would stop running away. |
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F
Dic
A Bone From a Dry Sea - Peter Dickinson
An intelligent female member of a prehistoric tribe becomes
instrumental in advancing the lot of her people. |
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F
Pau
Canyons - Gary Paulsen
Finding a skull on a camping trip in the canyons outside El
Paso, Texas, Brennan becomes involved with the fate of a young
Apache Indian who lived in the late 1800s. |
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F
QUA
Close to a Killer - Marsha Qualey
Seventeen-year-old Barrie finds herself involved in a string
of murders that are somehow connected to her mother's hair
salon. |
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F
San
Clover : a novel - Doris Sanders
After her father dies within hours of being married to a
white woman, a ten-year-old black girl learns with her new
mother to overcome grief and to adjust to a new place in
their rural black South Carolina community.
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F
Pau
The Crossing - Gary Paulsen
Thirteen-year-old Manny, a street kid fighting for survival
in a Mexican border town, develops a strange friendship with
an emotionally disturbed American soldier who decides to help
him get across the border. |
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F
Mey
Denny's Tapes - Carolyn Meyer
When seventeen-year-old Denny, who is black, falls in love
with his white stepsister and her father throws him out, he
drives cross-country to find his own father, whom he barely
knows. |
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F
Dun
Don't Look Behind You - Lois Duncan
Seventeen-year-old April finds her comfortable life changed
forever when death threats to her father, a witness in a federal
case, force her family to go into hiding under assumed names
and flee the pursuit of a hired killer. |
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F
Dun
Down a Dark Hall - Lois Duncan |
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F
Gib
Ellen Foster - Kaye Gibbons
Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life
gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster
children. |
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F
Wil
Every Time a Rainbow Dies - Rita
Williams-Garcia.
After seeing a girl raped and becoming obsessed with her,
sixteen-year-old Thulani finds motivation to move beyond his
interest in his pigeons and his grief over his mother's death. |
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F
WIL
Fast Talk On a Slow Track - Rita
Williams-Garcia
Black honors student Denzel Watson spends his last summer
before college selling candy door-to-door in New York, competing
on many levels with the charismatic Mello, and discovering
how to motivate and apply himself. |
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F
GEE
The Fat Man - Maurice Gee
In 1933, Herbert Muskie returns to his rundown hometown of
Loomis, New Zealand, and uses a combination of cunning and
psychological threats to take control of the lives of twelve-year-old
Colin Potter and his family as part of a plan to get even
for the mistreatment he suffered as a schoolboy. |
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979.4
Jac
Gold Dust - Donald Dale Jackson
An account of the California Gold Rush that started in 1848
with the discovery of gold in Sutter's mill and of the people
who took part in it. |
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B
Ali
The Greatest : Muhammad Ali -
Walter Dean Myers
A biography of the champion boxer and political activist,
Muhammad Ali. Details the life of boxer Muhammad Ali, including
his rise to athletic fame, the hazards of his sport which
permanently affected him, and his battle with Parkinson's
disease |
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F
WES
Gulf - Robert Westall.
Tom Higgins, a British schoolboy during the Persian Gulf War,
narrates his younger brother's struggle with an apparent mental
illness or "mystery of nature" which drives the
child to assume the role of an Iraqi. |
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F
Gra
Holding Up the Earth - Dianne
E. Gray .
Fourteen-year-old Hope visits her new foster mother's Nebraska
farm and, through old letters, a diary, and stories, gets
a vivid picture of the past in the voices of four girls her
age who lived there in 1869, 1900, 1936, and 1960. |
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F
Dun
I Know What You Did Last Summer -
Lois Duncan Four teen-agers who
have desperately tried to conceal their responsibility for
a hit-and-run accident are pursued by a mystery figure seeking
revenge. |
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F
Gan
Pigza Loses Control - Jack Gantos
Joey, who is still taking medication to keep him from getting
too wired, goes to spend the summer with the hard-drinking
father he has never known and tries to help the baseball team
he coaches win the championship. |
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F
Maz
The Last Mission - Harry Mazer
In 1944 a 15-year-old Jewish boy tells his family he will
travel in the West but instead, enlists in the United States
Air Corps and is subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans. |
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F
GAI
A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest
J. Gaines
The story of two young black men, one condemned to death for
a murder and the other a teacher, who form a bond in a small
Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s |
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F
She
The Man Who Ate the 747 - Ben Sherwood
When J.J. Smith interviews a man who is eating pieces of a
Boeing 747 to prove his love for a woman, Smith unexpectedly
falls in love with the same woman. |
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F
Las
Memoirs of a Bookbat - Kathryn
Lasky
Fourteen year-old Harper, an avid reader of fantasy who must
hide her books from her fundamentalist parents, comes to realize
that their public promotion of censorship threatens her freedom
to make her own choices. |
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F
Whi
Memories of Summer - Ruth White
In 1955, thirteen-year-old Lyric finds her whole life changing
when her family moves from the hills of Virginia to a town
in Michigan and her older sister Summer begins descending
into mental illness. |
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F
Guy
The Music of Summer - Rosa Guy
The attractive, sophisticated young African-Americans gathered
at Cape Cod have their own set of economic color prejudices;
but Sarah begins to see more clearly the duties and hope of
her ancestry. |
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F
Pau
Nightjohn - Gary Paulsen
Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even
more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach
her how to read. |
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F
Lip
One Fat Summer - Robert Lipsyte
An overweight fourteen-year-old boy experiences a turningpoint
summer in which he learns to stand up for himself. |
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F
Mcc
The Pirate's Son - Geraldine
McCaughrean.
Left penniless in eighteenth century England, fourteen-year-old
Nathan Gull and his mousy sister Maud accompany Tamo, the
son of a notorious pirate, to his homeland of Madagascar where
they are all changed by their encounter with Tamo's dangerous
past. |
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F
BAU
Rules of the Road - Joan Bauer
Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner
of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas
to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire,
and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman
and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father. |
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F
Fle
Seek - Paul Fleischman
Rob becomes obsessed with searching the airwaves for his long-gone
father, a radio announcer. |
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F
Pau
Sentries - Gary Paulsen
The common theme of nuclear disaster and human vulnerability
interweaves the lives of four young people, an Ojibway Indian,
an illegal Mexican migrant worker, a rock musician, and a
sheep rancher's daughter, with the lives of three veterans
of past wars. |
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F
Lev
A Shadow Like a Leopard - Myron
Levoy
A street-punk poet and an old painter form a friendship and
confront their fears. |
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F
Hes
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
The hero, Siddhartha, endowed with all the virtues, goes through
the fire of various experiences to emerge to a state of wisdom. |
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F
Kon
Silent To the Bone - E.L. Konigsburg
When he is wrongly accused of gravely injuring his baby half-sister,
thirteen-year-old Branwell loses his power of speech and only
his friend Connor is able to reach him and uncover the truth
about what really happened. |
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F
Kla
The Silver Kiss - Annette Curtis
Klause
A mysterious teenage boy harboring a dark secret helps Zoë
come to terms with her mother's terminal illness. |
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F
Hol
Slake's Limbo - Felice Holman
Thirteen year-old Aremis Slake, hounded by his fears and misfortunes,
flees them into New York City's subway tunnels, never again--he
believes--to emerge. |
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F
Maz
The Solid Gold Kid : a novel
- Norma Fox Mazer
Derek Chapman hitches a ride and later realizes he has unwittingly
assisted in what he has dreaded and anticipated--his own kidnapping.
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F
Maz
The Solid Gold Kid : a novel
- Norma Fox Mazer
Derek Chapman hitches a ride and later realizes he has unwittingly
assisted in what he has dreaded and anticipated--his own kidnapping.
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F
Roy
Soul Daddy - Jacqueline Roy
Life for fifteen-year-old Hannah changes drastically when
her father and his daughter by a second marriage move into
their home. |
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F
Cru
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
- Chris Crutcher
The daily class discussions about contemporary issues serve
as a backdrop for a high-school senior's attempt to answer
a friend's dramatic cry for help. |
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F
NAP
Stones in Water - Donna Jo Napoli
After being taken by German soldiers from a local movie theater
along with other Italian boys including his Jewish friend,
Roberto is forced to work in Germany, escapes into the Ukrainian
winter, before desperately trying to make his way back home
to Venice. |
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F
Ale
Ten Little Indians : Stories
- Sherman Alexie
Ten Little Indians offers eleven poignant and emotionally
resonant new stories about Native Americans who, like all
Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads,
faced with heartrending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments
of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and
their notions of who they are and who they love. |
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F
Pau
Tracker - Gary Paulsen
Only thirteen, John must track a deer in the Minnesota woods
for his family's winter meat, and in doing so finds himself
drawn to the doe who leads him and hating his role as hunter. |
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F
Cru
Whale Talk - Chris Crutcher
Intellectually and athletically gifted, TJ, a multiracial,
adopted teenager, shuns organized sports and the gung-ho athletes
at his high school until he agrees to form a swimming team
and recruits some of the school's less popular students. |
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F
Ker
What Became of Her : a novel
- M.E. Kerr
Edgar Tobbit meets Neal Kraft at a group session arranged
by their psychotherapist and their friendship ends up thwarting
the plans of an eccentric widow to get revenge on the town
where she was mistreated as a young girl. |
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F
Son
What My Mother Doesn't Know -
Sonya Sones
Sophie describes her relationships with a series of boys as
she searches for Mr. Right. |
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F
Gan
What Would Joey Do? - Jack Gantos.
Joey tries to keep his life from degenerating into total chaos
when his mother sends him to be home-schooled with a hostile
blind girl, his divorced parents cannot stop fighting, and
his grandmother is dying of emphysema. |
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F
PET
White Water - P.J. Peterson
Greg confronts his own fears and assumes a leadership role
when his father is bitten by a rattlesnake during a white-water
rafting trip. |
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F KIN
The Woman in the Wall - Patrice Kindl.
Because she suffers from extreme shyness, Anna retreats into
herself and her secret rooms where she attempts to remain
hidden from the outside world. |
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