A while back, a friend with a blazing smart and fast-reading niece complained that she couldn’t think of books to recommend for her to read, since young miss read so fast.

I made a list of some of my favorite. Enjoy!

By M.E. Kerr
I stay near you

Fell Down

Book of Fell

Fell Back

by Francesca Block.
Weetzie Bat,
Witch Baby,
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys,
Missing Angel Juan,
The Hanged Man,
Baby Be-Bop,
Girl Goddess #9,
Echo.

Louise Erdrich ANYTHING by HER

by Robin McKinley.
Beauty,
The Blue Sword, T
he Hero and the Crown,
A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories,
Rose Daughter,
Deerskin

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by Katherine Paterson.
Jacob Have I Loved,
Lyddie,
The Same Stuff As Stars,
Bridge to Trerabinthia

Graphic novels (aka comic books) Art Spiegelman.
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale;
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale II.

· Cynthia Voigt.
Dicey’s Song,
Izzy Willy-nilly,
Wings of a Falcon,
Orfe,
When She Hollers,
Bad Girls,
Bad, Badder, Baddest.

The Lovely Bones: a Novel Alice Sebold

Achebe, Chinua.
Things Fall Apart

by Austen, Jane.
Pride and Prejudice,
Emma (anything by her, really)

by
Charles Dickens
Bleak House, (if you like him, there are tons more)

by Bronte, Emily.
Wuthering Heights

by Buck, Pearl.
The Good Earth

by Cather, Willa.
My Antonia,
Death Comes for the Archbishop (anything by her)

by Defoe, Daniel.
Robinson Crusoe

By Dreiser, Theodore.
Sister Carrie(not an easy read, but good…sad)

by Eliot, George.
The Mill on the Floss,
Middlemarch (also not easy, but very good)

by Ellison, Ralph.
The Invisible Man

by Flaubert, Gustave.
Madame Bovary( not an easy read)

by Grahame, Kenneth.
Wind in the Willows

by Hammett, Dashiell.
The Maltese Falcon,
The Glass Key (these are mysteries, not hard to read and very good)

by Hurston, Zora Neale.
Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Keys, Daniel.
Flowers for Algernon (this will blow your mind, and it’s good)

by Lee, Harper.
To Kill a Mockingbird

by Marlow, Christopher.
Dr. Faustus (if you like Shakespeare)

by Morrison, Toni.
The Song of Solomon (anything by this author, but they are strong stuff…these can be pretty vivid stories about slavery in America)

by Munro, Alice K.
Selected Stories( these are the only short stories I know that read like a novel)

by Orwell, George.
1984,
Animal Farm(the granddaddy of science fiction…well, except maybe Jules Verne)

by Salinger, J. D.
The Catcher in the Rye (a favorite of serial killers…but why?)

by Shelley, Mary.
Frankenstein (the original is way good, and way less scary than I would have thought)

by Sophocles.
Oedipus the King,
Antigone(ancient greek plays that could kick shakespeare’s Butt)

by Steinbeck, John.
The Grapes of Wrath,
East of Eden,
Cannery Row

by Swift, Jonathan.
Gulliver’s Travels

by Thurber, James.
The Thurber Carnival (this guy has the quirkiest sense of humor…AWESOME!)

by Wilde, Oscar.
The Importance of Being Ernest (also, anything by this guy)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by betty smith

Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Amy Tan (anything by her!) The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, A Hundred Secret Senses

by Madeleine L’Engle
A wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and a Wind at the Door
And ALSO:
The Arm of the Starfish, House like a Lotus,