I’m tutoring a tenth-grade student right now. We’re almost finished reading The Woman in White, an abridged novel in the Oxford Bookworms series. It’s level 6, which is the highest level, so it’s time to move on. She’s a good student and has no problems preparing for class by looking up the new words. There are some grammar patterns she’s not familiar with, but we go through them together and she can either figure it out herself or just needs a quick explanation.
I’d like to choose a non-abridged novel for our next read. She’s a high-school student, but her reading level isn’t at a high-school level in an English-speaking country. She has The Great Gatsby, but there were just too many new words on the first two pages, so I’m thinking maybe a junior-high/middle school level. I don’t want anything Science Fiction or Fantasy just yet because there would be too many made-up words specific to that world. She may be okay with a Mystery, but the novel we’re just finishing up is a Mystery. I also think she’d be okay with an adventure story or just General Fiction. I do know she’s not interested in anything Horror or with ghosts. And, the final requirement I have is nothing making an overt political or social statement. I’m hesitant to suggest anything to her which has been published in the last decade specifically for this reason.
What novels have you found useful for teaching your private students that would fall within these requirements?
I’ve had good results with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, using that with university students. It’s a mystery, but more importantly, the narrator has … um … autism? Aspergers? Anyway, the result is a “simple” narrative voice - a stylistic choice that works well for English learners.
It may be the only novel I’ve ever taught in Taiwan where I felt like it actually worked as an interesting book, rather than just a language task.
Re: sci-fi and fantasy: yeah, back when Harry Potter was absolutely huge, I had so many students who thought “Hey, it’s a children’s book! It’ll be easy!” Nope. It is not.
The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanesebento factory. All four women live hard lives. Masako, the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from her estranged husband and teenage son. Kuniko, a plump and rather vain girl, has recently been ditched by her boyfriend after the couple were driven into debt, leaving Kuniko to fend off a loan shark. Yoshie is a single mother and reluctant caretaker of her mother-in-law, who was left partly paralyzed after a stroke. Yayoi is a thirty-four-year-old mother of two small boys who she is forced to leave home alone, where they are abused by their drunken, gambling father, Kenji.
When Yayoi returns home one night, Kenji tells her that he has gambled all their savings away in a baccarat game. Yayoi becomes upset and questions Kenji about Anna, a hostess of the club where Kenji gambles, with whom she suspects he’s having an affair. Earlier that night the club owner, Satake, ordered Kenji to stop stalking Anna. Kenji became belligerent and started assailing Satake, forcing him to kick Kenji down some stairs in the club. Nonetheless, Kenji, furious after Yayoi mentions Anna, begins hitting her. Yayoi snaps and strangles Kenji to death.
Yayoi desperately persuades Masako, with the eventual aid of Yoshie and Kuniko, to help her dispose of Kenji’s body. The body is dismembered, secured in many black garbage bags, and hidden all over Tokyo. It isn’t long before one carelessly hidden bag is discovered and the police begin to ask questions. As if things weren’t bad enough, the women begin to blackmail each other, the loan shark is requiring their services, and a criminal who has lost everything because of their antics has begun to hunt the women down.
Wayside School series by Louis Sachar. English is not too difficult but contains a lot of subtle youth humour. It really helped me use more variety in English.
It uses a lot of double-meaning and other subtle English tricks but are easy enough for youths to understand.
Problem is the beginning contains a lot of phonetic spelling and (deliberate) bad grammar- though that may be useful for teaching. The two entries where he learns about punctuation come to mind.
The Stranger
Mice and Men
Flowers For Algernon
Blade Runner
Catcher in the Rye
The Fire Next Time
Huckleberry Finn
Diary of a Young Girl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Maybe something non-fiction can help with the issues you are describing. A historical biography or a classical Roman work (Tacitus? Plutarch?). I find that the Roman classical authors write in a style that, when translated, is fairly straight to the point and simple to understand.
As for a fairly simple novel, i remember reading Across Five Aprils around about middle school (maybe 6th grade?). Writing style again is pretty straightforward with interspersed vocabulary. From what you described it sounds like a good level for her.
If you’ve only done 1, try a level 6 reader again, but at a faster pace. Then let her pick one or give her a choice among several. I’m not sure where you’d find a suitable list of titles for grade ~7, but try looking for titles from a junior high website.
A lot of the books suggested so far are either written too long ago, are too childish, or are Science Fiction. Has anyone used something from the '90s or the '00s?
I’d like to put together a list for her to choose from, but I’d also like it to not have anything her parents might feel is inappropriate. I’d like them to feel comfortable recommending me to other parents down the road, so I have to play it safe with political and social issues. She can read whatever she wants to on her own time.
This could be interesting. I took a look at the first couple of pages. It actually looks too simple, but I think it may just seem deceptive in that regard. Anything else you can say about it or any similar books you could recommend?
Although I’m sure some Forumosans teach the right age or have have daughters the right age, perhaps @Hapadoge is a good poster to weigh in as I recall she is a teenager from the US
I thought maybe Pride and Prejudice, which I have never read or taught, might be a good choice for a teenage girl but your criteria that books not be too old pops up.
It looks like everything on this list might work:
Also lots of goodies here (many I read at a young age, like Harriet the Spy), but plenty of oldies/sci-fi/fantasy that you would need to cross off:
The good thing about classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, even though they are old, is that there are lots of teaching materials available.
