but…so many of these books don’t “speak” to the children you might be trying to reach.
When was the last time anyone here picked up some Shakespeare for leisure reading?
If the kid isn’t engaged or invested in the story, they won’t care.
definitely don’t push anything onto her! No Shakespeare, or Keats/Yeats/Sassoon etc.
Now is not the time to teach literature, but to get her reading fun novels.
Swiss Family Robinson? totally not her culture, and maybe good because of that. Some of the language is a bit old but there are some updated and abridged version.
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Shot in the dark, but …?
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Great movie, awful book.
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Doesn’t the book go on and on about how well-endowed Sonny is? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like to discuss that with a high school student.
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I have to admit it’s been a minute. If so, yeah maybe scratch that from the record.
The Body (stand by me) stephen king
As a book for a younger level student, “Mary Anning’s Treasures” is a good one aimed at around 5th graders. I don’t know if it’s available as an ebook. It’s about the paleontologist who revolutionized that whole dinosaur bone thing in England in the first half of the 1800s.
Why not a book of short stories? Raymond Carver is easy enough to read.
This one has The Body and the Shawshank Redemption (and Apt Pupil); all of them were movies, though maybe not a great choice for a teenage Taiwanese girl (SK tends to write adult subject matter)
The OP said they didn’t want profanity. And imagine a Taiwanese teenager trying to figure out what the fuck the characters are actually saying! May as well give her Ulysses!
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Well, those words aren’t profanity in Scotland, are they? They’re more like conjunctions or pronouns or something. It’d be cultural awareness for the student.
Going by long-ago memories: I read Ulysses and Trainspotting around the same time. I’m reasonably sure Trainspotting’s dialogue was harder, but Ulysses did have ample footnotes helping out. Plus with Ulysses I could at least mostly sound out the words - always useful for dialect dialogue - without being whatever the 1990s equivalent of “cancelled” was; doing the same with Trainspotting would have led to unfortunate results in Canadian suburbia!
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Well, good luck convincing a Taiwanese teenager that “fucking filthy cunt” is acceptable parlance and that they’re being ethnocentric by not agreeing. 
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Oh, that’s easy. It’s 1000% in the same department as many hip-hop songs. “Look, singers can say what they want in their songs - but you cannot say that!!!”
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No recommendations from me I’m afraid, but I must be honest, I would love a Taiwanese kid to rock up to my classroom and engage in a bit of gentle banter by throwing out a gentle “ya fuckin’ doss cunt” in my direction. I have always wondered how the person who bought a copy of James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late from Page One in Taipei 101 back in the day got on with it.
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Yeah, we all say that.
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Hey, @lostinasia. I’m not sure if it got lost in all the banter, but how much swearing is in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time? Someone elsewhere said it might be a bit much for parents.
Also, I think there’s a misunderstanding. A lot of the recommendations are either too high level (well, the ones I’m assuming are serious, anyway) or too low level. When I say junior high school, I’m talking after elementary school and before high school. The Great Gatsby is supposedly taught in some American high school curriculums, but the vocabulary is too much for her at present. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would be too easy. It would need to be between those two somewhere.
The young adult category is literally aimed right at that age range.
Some good suggestions. but high school here and back in a native englienglish country is likely different unless the student is in an english immersion type school.
The Chrysalids was one of my favorites in school, but cant remember how tough the writing was, seemed easy enough.
The author has some other good ones, but as a kid i liked this one best.
Also enjoyed those short stories where you you choose the path and.figure out crimes. the sseries i read in.grade 5 i think was called You be the Jury. It was light but thought provoking and the English couldnt of been insanely difficult at that age but also dont remember it being childish. 1 book had 6 or so mysteries so would be easier in a class to discuss one by one.
I have a very bright student (12 years old) who is devouring A.C. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (albeit in Chinese). I remember them being fun when I was younger.