Ms. Coons

1.     First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers  by Ung, Loung Book Level: 6.0, AR Pts: 15.0, This is the story of Loung Ung, a survivor of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime.

2.     Kaffir Boy by Mathabane, Mark. Book Level: 7.1, AR Pts: 24.0. The true story of a black youth’s coming of age in apartheid South Africa.

3.     A Raisin in the Sun by Hansberry, Lorraine. Book Level: 5.5, AR Pts: 5.0. This play is a drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class, black family living on the South Side of Chicago.

4.     Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Jiang, Ji-li. Book Level: 5.0, AR Pts: 8.0. This book is an engrossing memoir of a Chinese girl, her family, and how their lives became a nightmare during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s.

5.     Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust by Rogasky, Barbara. Book Level: 7.9, AR Pts: 10.0. This book tells the history of the Holocaust, discussing Nazi anti-Semitism and the development of plans for the extermination of the Jews, as well as the deportations, ghettos and camps. Also covered are stories of the resistance and rescuers.

6.     To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee, Harper. Book Level: 5.6, AR Pts: 15.0. Two children witness the effects of racial prejudice, as their father courageously defends an innocent black man who has been accused of raping a white woman.

7.     All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque, Erich Maria. Book Level: 6.0, AR Pts: 10.0. Bewildered German soldiers fight and suffer through the chaos of World War I.

8.     Nightjohn by Paulsen, Gary. Book Level: 3.8, AR Pts: 1.0. Sarny is a slave who wants to read and write, and Nightjohn is a slave who returned from freedom in the North to educate his friends.

9.     Night by Wiesel, Elie. Book Level: 4.8, AR Pts: 4.0.  This book chronicles the true and terrifying story of the author and his life as a Jew under the Nazis.

10.  Zlata’s Diary by Filipovic, Zlata. Book Level: 4.3, AR Pts: 5.0.  This book presents the diary of a thirteen-year-old girl living in Sarajevo, begun just before her eleventh birthday when there was still peace in her homeland.

11.  Farewell to Manzanar by Houston, Jeanne . Book Level: 6.7, AR Pts: 7.0.  This is the true story of one Japanese American family and their attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention.

12.  Hiroshima by Hersey, John . Book Level: 8.4, AR Pts: 9.0. This book is an account of the ruin of a city and the wreck of human lives by one atomic bomb. The report focuses on six individuals who survived in that city.

13.  The Clay Marble by Ho, Minfong . Book Level: 5.4, AR Pts: 6.0. Twelve-year-old Dara joins a refugee camp in war-torn Cambodia and becomes separated from her family.

14.  Glory Field by Myers, Walter Dean. Book Level: 5.0, AR Pts: 12.0. This story follows a family’s 250-year history from the capture of an African boy in the 1750s through the lives of his descendants.

15.  Tunes for Bears to Dance To by Cormier, Robert. Book Level: 5.2, AR Pts: 3.0.  Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family’s problems by watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor; but when Henry is manipulated into betraying his friend, he comes to know true evil.

16.  The Giver by Lowry, Lois. Book Level: 5.7, AR Pts: 7.0.  The Elders of the Committee choose Jonas to be the person responsible for receiving and keeping all the memories of the past–a huge task for this exceptional boy.

17.  Out of the Dust by Hesse, Karen. Book Level: 5.3, AR Pts: 3.0. In a series of poems, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family’s wheat farm.

18.  Number the Stars by Lowry, Lois. Book Level: 4.5, AR Pts: 4.0.  In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.

19.  Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Taylor, Mildred D. Book Level: 5.7, AR Pts: 10.0. Warmth, humor and hard times prevail as a black family struggles to maintain dignity and independence in Depression-era Mississippi.

20.  Things Fall Apart by Achebe, Chinua. Book Level: 6.2, AR Pts: 8.0. Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, this novel recreates pre-Christian tribal life and shows how the coming of the white man led to the breaking up of the old ways.

21.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. Book Level: 5.5, AR Pts: 8.0. One man struggles to maintain his dignity as a man in a Russian concentration camp.

22.  The Cure by Levitin, Sonia. Book Level: 4.7, AR Pts: 9.0. A sixteen-year-old boy living in 2407 collides with the past when he finds himself in Strasbourg in 1348 confronting the anti-Semitism that sweeps through Europe.

23.  Annie’s Promise by Levitin, Sonia. Book Level: 4.3, AR Pts: 7.0. Her experiences at a summer camp in the California mountains in 1945 give Annie Platt new insight into her overprotective family of German-Jewish immigrants.

24.  Clem’s Chances by Levitin, Sonia. Book Level: 5.2, AR Pts: 10.0. In 1860, fourteen-year-old Clem Fontayne learns from fellow travelers about important topics of the day, including the Mormon migration, slavery, and the Pony Express, as he journeys from Missouri to California in search of his father.

25.  Dream Freedom by Levitin, Sonia. Book Level: 5.0, AR Pts: 6.0. Marcus and his classmates learn about the terrible problem of slavery in present-day Sudan and raise money to help buy the freedom of some of the slaves. Alternate chapters tell the stories of the slaves.

26.  Journey to America by Levitin, Sonia. Book Level: 4.7, AR Pts: 5.0. Lisa and her family try to escape from Nazi Germany to join her father in America.

27.  The Color of Water by McBride, James. Book Level: 6.1, AR Pts: 11.0. A Black man’s tribute to his white mother.

28.  Schindler’s List  by Keneally, Thomas. Book Level: 8.6, AR Pts: 25.0. A German businessman tries to save his Jewish employees from the Nazi Holocaust.

29.  Postcards from No Man’s Land by Chambers, Aidan. Book Level: 5.4, AR Pts: 16.0. This book alternates between two stories – contemporarily, Jacob visits Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother – and historically, Geertrui relates her experience of British soldiers’ attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation.

30.  My Forbidden Face: Growing up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s Story by Latifa/Hachemi/Coverdale,. Book Level: 7.1, AR Pts: 8.0. Latifa, who was sixteen when the Taliban came to power, tells about her family’s experiences under the regime, focusing on the lives of women who were abruptly denied the freedom to work, go to school, or even leave their home without an escort.

31.  In the Time of the Butterflies by Alvarez, Julia. Book Level: 5.8, AR Pts: 18.0. The story of three sisters murdered in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s because of their religious and political beliefs.

32.  Forgotten Fire by Bagdasarian, Adam. Book Level: 5.7, AR Pts: 9.0. Set during the Armenian Holocaust, this is the story of a boy who becomes an orphan, a prisoner, a beggar, a servant, and a stowaway in order to survive.

33.  The Fixer by Malamud, Bernard. Book Level: 7.0, AR Pts: 17.0. This winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award is the story of Yakov Bok, who is accused of murder as part of an anti-Semitic movement, but later becomes a hero.

34.  The Chosen by Potok, Chaim. Book Level: 6.6, AR Pts: 15.0. This story of Jewish family life reveals optimism and good humor.

35.  Caucasia by Senna, Danzy. Book Level: 6.1, AR Pts: 23.0. Birdie, who takes after her white mother, and Cole, who takes after her black father, become separated when the seventies black-power politics divide their parents.

36.  Briar Rose by Yolen, Jane. Book Level: 5.0, AR Pts: 8.0. Linking a fairy tale with the Holocaust, Yolen creates a powerful novel about a young woman’s discovery of her grandmother’s past.

37.  Black Boy (American Hunger) by Wright, Richard. Book Level: 7.4, AR Pts: 22.0. This is the autobiography of a Southern Negro who yearned for intellectual and physical freedom. It contains Part One: Southern Night and Part Two: The Horror and the Glory.

38.  Angela’s Ashes by McCourt, Frank. Book Level: 5.9, AR Pts: 23.0. Frank McCourt and his siblings grow up in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, with an alcoholic father and a mother who wishes she could just feed her children.

39.  An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 by Doyle, William. Book Level: 9.6, AR Pts: 23.0. This book chronicles the events behind a white uprising that occurred when Air Force veteran James Meredith tried to become the first African-American student to register at the University of Mississippi in 1962.

40.  Rite of Passage by Wright, Richard. Book Level: 4.8, AR Pts: 3.0. When fifteen-year-old Johnny Gibbs is told that he is really a foster child, he runs off into the streets of Harlem and meets a gang that wants him to participate in a mugging.

41.  So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Watkins, Yoko Kawashima. Book Level: 4.7, AR Pts: 6.0. In this autobiography of survival, eight-year-old Yoko escapes from Korea to Japan with her mother and sister at the end of World War II.

42.  Sojourner Truth and the Struggle for Freedom by Claflin, Edward Beecher. Book Level: 6.8, AR Pts: 5.0. This book is a biography of the black woman who was born a slave and dedicated her life to the abolition of slavery and to improving the living conditions of blacks following the Civil War.

43.  Summer of My German Soldier by Greene, Bette. Book Level: 5.2, AR Pts: 9.0. This extraordinary novel is about an unlikely friendship between a Jewish girl and a young German soldier during World War II.

44.  Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust byBachrach, Susan. Book Level: 8.7, AR Pts: 2.0. An informative book about the holocaust based on exhibits at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

45.  Through My Eyes by Bridges, Ruby. Book Level: 5.9, AR Pts: 2.0. Ruby Bridges recounts the story of her involvement, as a six-year-old, in the integration of her school in New Orleans in 1960.

46.  The Voices of Silence by Mooney, Bel. Book Level: 4.9, AR Pts: 5.0. A young girl struggles to understand the bitter taste of life under communist rule of Romania.

47.  When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Kerr, Judith. Book Level: 5.7, AR Pts: 9.0. For nine-year-old Anna, being a German Jew in 1933 did not mean anything until her father disappeared and the rest of her family had to flee the country.

48.  Why Do They Hate Me? by Holliday, Laurel. Book Level: 6.8, AR Pts: 12.0. From the centuries-old enmities of Northern Ireland, to the Holocaust and World War II, to the Israel-Palestine conflict, young people share their innermost secrets of growing up.

49.  No More Strangers Now: Young Voices from a New South Africa by McKee, Tim. Book Level: 6.1, AR Pts: 3.0. In their own words, a variety of teenagers from South Africa talk about their years growing up under apartheid, and about the changes now occurring in their country.

50.  No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War by Lobel, Anita. Book Level: 5.0, AR Pts: 8.0. The author, known as an illustrator of children’s books, describes her experiences as a Polish Jew during World War II and her life in Sweden after the war.