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Reading great literature gives children the opportunity to enter exciting worlds, to meet heroic characters, and to consider what could be. While studying the classics of yesterday and today, students not only improve their thinking and communication skills, but also learn important moral lessons, lessons they can use to guide their lives. Our students learn about independence from To Kill a Mockingbird, integrity from Antigone, and heroic perseverance from The Miracle Worker.

During literature class students will engage in a variety of activities: they will memorize and recite poetry; dramatize scenes from classic plays; summarize plots; and analyze the literary elements of theme, character, setting and style.

Grade Four

• D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths by Edgar and Ingrid D'Aulaire
• The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff
• Antigone by Sophocles
• The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth Speare
• Tales from Shakespeare: Julius Caesar by Charles and Mary Lamb
• King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
• The Mixed-up Tales of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by Kronigsberg
• The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O'Brien
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Poetry: Ogden Nash, Robert Frost, and others

Grade Five

• Canterbury Tales (retold by Geraldine McCaughrean)
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by R. L. Green
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli
• Of Nightingales that Weep by Katherine Paterson
• I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino
• The Trumpeter of Krakow by Erik P. Kelly
• Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry
• Dick Whittington and His Cat by Marcia Brown
• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford
• Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
• Poetry: Robert Browning, Longfellow, Tennyson, and others

Grade Six

• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
• Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
• My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
• The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh
• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth Speare
• Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates
• Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field
• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Poetry: Coleridge, Edward Lear, Wordsworth, and others

Grade Seven

• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Hound of the Baskervilles by Sherlock Holmes
• Admirable Crichton by J.M. Barrie
• Shane by Jack Schaeffer
• Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
• The Swiss Family Robinson by J. D. Wyss
• Hatchet by Gary Pualson
• The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
• Poetry: Emily Dickenson, John Keats, Joaquin Miller, and others

Grade Eight

• The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
• Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
• Inherit the Wind by Robert E. Lee
• Struggling Upward by Horatio Alger
• The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan
• Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
• Brave New World by Alduous Huxley
• Anthem by Ayn Rand
• Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Poetry: Langston Hughes, Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandburg, etc

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