Elementary/Middle School/ High School-
Children’s Literature:
Green Eggs and Ham- Dr. Seuss
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish- Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat – Dr. Seuss
The Lorax – Dr. Seuss
Oh! The Places You Will go!- Dr. Seuss
How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Dr. Seuss
Horton! Hears a Who!- Dr. Seuss
Hop on Pop – Dr. Seuss
If I Ran the Zoo- Dr. Seuss
Fox in Socks – Dr. Seuss
The Foot Book- Dr. Seuss
A Bad Case of Stripes- David Shannon
No, David- David Shannon
David Gets in Trouble- David Shannon
The Very Hungry Caterpillar -Eric Carle
Brown Bear, Brown Bear Where Do You Live? – Bill Martin Jr.
Flat Stanley- Jeff Brown
Frindle- Andrew Clements
Corduroy- Don Freeman
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly- Lucille Colandro
Pippi Longstocking- Astrid Lingdren
Stuart Little- E.B. White
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs- Judi Barrett
Amelia Bedielia – Peggy Parish
Eloise- Kay Thompson
The Complete Adventures of Curious George- Margaret and H.A. Rey
Series:
Ramona the Pest- Beverley Cleary
Captain Underpants- Dav Pilkey
Black Lagoon Series-Mike Thaler
Scooby Doo series- James Gelsey
The Babysitters club – Ann M. Martin
Junie B. Jones- Barbara Park
Diary of a Wimpy Kid- Jeff Kinney
Fancy Nancy- Jane O’Connor
Goosebumps- R.L. Stein
Mystery:
The Bad Beginning (#1)- Lemony Snicket
The Reptile Room (#2) -Lemony Snicket
The Wide Window (#3) -Lemony Snicket
The Miserable Mill (#4) -Lemony Snicket
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3) – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (#2) – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (#1) – J.K. Rowling
Romance:
Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (#1) – Louise Rennison
On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (#2)- – Louise Rennison
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (#1) – Ann Brashares
The Notebook (#1) – Nicholas Sparks
Satire:
Holes (#1)- Louis Sachar
Poetry:
A Light in the Attic- Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends- Shel Silverstein
Biography:
A Child Called “It” (#1)- Dave Pelzer
The Lost Boy (#2) – Dave Pelzer
A Man Named Dave ( #3) – Dave Pelzer
The Diary of a Young Girl- Anne Frank
Drama:
Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck
The Outsiders- S.E. Hinton
The Secret Life of Bees- Sue Monk Kidd
To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee
Cut- Patricia McCormick
Hatchet (#1)- Gary Paulsen
The Giver- Louis Lowry
The Borrowers- Mark Norton
Little House on the Prairie-Laura Ingalls Wilder
Fantasy:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl
James and the Giant Peach- Roald Dahl
Matilda- Roald Dahl
The Witches- Roald Dahl
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe- C.S. Lewis
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll
Madeline- Ludwig Bemelmans
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz- L. Frank Baum
Ella Enchanted- Gail Carson Levine
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (#1)- Gregory Maguire
Charlotte’s Web- E.B. White
Adult-
Thriller:
Slade House- Dave Mitchell
The Vanishing Year- Kate Moretti
The Woman in Cabin 10- Ruth Ware
Little Girl Gone (Afton Tangler Thriller #1) – Gerry Schmitt
Sharp Objects- Gillian Flynn
Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn
Girl, Stolen – April Henry (#1)
Little Boy Blue (#5)- M.J. Arlidge
Liar Liar (#4)- M.J. Arlidge
The Doll’s House- – M.J. Arlidge
Pop Goes the Weasel (#2) – M.J. Arlidge
Eeny Meeny (#1)- M.J. Arlidge
Love Bomb- Lisa Zeidner
The Leaving- Tara Altebrando
The Dispatcher- Ryan David Jahn
Big Little Lies- Liane Moriarty
Into the Water- Paula Hawkins
The Ice Twins – S.K. Tremayne
This is Where it Ends- Marieke Nijkamp
The Girl on the Train- Paula Hawkins
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter- Seth Grahame- Smith
Fantasy:
King’s Cage – Victoria Aveyard (#3)
Glass Sword- Victoria Aveyard (#2)
Red Queen- Victoria Aveyard (#1)
Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked – Serena Valentino
Spelled- Betsy Schow
Legend (#1)- Marie Lu
Dorothy Must Die (#1)- Danielle Page
Historical Fiction:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part- Time Indian- Sherman Alexie
The Ransom of Mercy Carter- Caroline B. Cooney
Chains (#1) – Laurie Halse Anderson
Orphan Train- Christina Baker Kline
Burial Rites- Hannah Kent
Out of the Easy- Ruta Sepetys
The Help- Kathryn Stockett
Mrs. Poe- Lynn Cullen
Amherst- William Nicholson
Salt to the Sea- Ruta Sepetys
Inspirational:
Walking on Water (#5) – Richard Paul Evans
A Step of Faith (#4) – Richard Paul Evans
The Road to Grace (#3) – Richard Paul Evans
Miles to Go (#2) – Richard Paul Evans
The Walk (#1) – Richard Paul Evans
Tuesdays with Morrie- Mitch Albom
The Five People you Meet in Heaven- Mitch Albom
Biography:
Dibs in Search of Self- Virginia M. Axline
The Danish Girl- David Ebershoff
The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus- Richard Preston
Novel:
Room- Emma Donoghue
A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman
The Bookseller- Cynthia Swanson
The Bachelor Girl’s Guide to Murder – Rachel McMillan (#1)
Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan (#1)
Mafia Chic- Erica Orloff
The Fiction Class- Susan Breen
Ugly Love- Colleen Hoover
The Aviary- Kathleen O’Dell
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter- Kim Edwards
The Minister’s Black Veil- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Confess- Colleen Hoover
Whisper Hollow- Chris Cander
Fallen Beauty- Erika Robuck
The World We Found- Thrity Umrigar
Romance:
Fifty Shades of Grey (#1)- E. L. James
Me Before You (#1) – Jojo Moyes
After You (#2)- Jojo Moyes
A Little Ray of Sunshine – Lani Diane Rich
All the Bright Places- Jennifer Nieven
The Time Traveler’s Wife- Audrey Niffenegger
A Heart’s Disguise (#1)- Colleen Coble
Young Adult:
The Haters- Jesser Andrews
Jackaby (#1)- William Ritter
Wink Poppy Midnight- April Genevieve Tucholke
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl- Jesse Andrews
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (#1) – Ransom Riggs
Hollow City (#2)- Ransom Riggs
The Fault in our Stars- John Green
Eleanor and Park- Rainbow Rowell
Fangirl- Rainbow Rowell
Where She Went (#2)- Gayle Forman
If I Stay (#1)- Gayle Forman
Nocte (#1)- Courtney Cole
Ink and Ashes- Valynne E. Maetani
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (#1)- Benjamin Alire Saenz
Defy the Night- Heather Munn
Reflection:
When it comes to my reading style, one word keeps popping into my head over and over again: Obsessed. I am the type of person who, if given the opportunity, would give up all my adult responsibilities and curl up with a new book for the rest of my life. I get so drawn into the storylines that I cannot pull myself away. In the end, I have learned that I cannot even trust myself with personal reading during a school semester. Being as in love with books as I am, one would understandably believe that I was always this way. Truth be told, however, I ABSOLUTELY dreaded reading as a child and a few times in my life I have taken a series of brief hiatuses in my relationship with books. So how have I gotten to this point? There are a few books that lended a helping hand in gripping me up into my wonderful obsession with books.
Most notably the first book that had made any type of difference in my reading was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. For those who do not know, The Wizard of Oz is a popular fantasy children’s literature. It is about a young girl named Dorothy, who along with her dog TOTO, is whisked away to a far away land. The story focuses on the people she meets and the experiences she has during her mission of getting home. I truly could not even estimate how many times I borrowed this book from my elementary school library. My librarian would beg me to at least pick one book, any book, and this was always my go to. I think I was first drawn to this particular novel because of the familiarity of the storyline. The Wizard of Oz movie was one of my favorites as a child; my father even took me to see the on ice version. Because I struggled with reading and I already knew the premise of this story, I was able to focus on the words and the structure of the book. I also benefited from reading this book across a few grade levels because as my vocabulary developed, I could understand more of the content than the previous year. I was no longer reading for mimetic register, I was finally able to start reading for the synthetic register. This book aided in my transition into more complex and age- appropriate styles of writing.
Another Book that ultimately shaped the way that I read today is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I am most likely one of a few limited people who did not like Harry Potter as a child. Okay so maybe I am being a bit overdramatic but I attempted to read this series more times than I would care to admit. Each and every time I made it almost halfway through the first chapter and quit. So what’s the issue with the book? The Harry Potter fantasy based series follows a young wizard during his years at wizarding school. The issue that I had, as a child who was still developing as a reader, was to understand some of the content in the book. Because it is all fantasy based, I found it very difficult to understand what was going on most of the time. The struggles paid off in the end, because I learned that taking notes while reading something that is a bit more challenging was lifesaving. As a senior in college I still find myself grabbing a scrap piece of paper to jot down notes if a text is a bit more complex. It is almost embarrassing to admit that I was finally able to make it through the first few Harry Potter books just last year. I still relied heavily on note taking at first but by the second book I was familiar enough with this new world to finish without them. In the end, I was so ecstatic to finally be able to enjoy such a popular story. It was like accomplishing a goal I never realized that I had. By establishing the skills to get through this text I was able to move onto similar books and give books of all types of genres a chance.
After graduating high school, the amount of time that I spent reading declined drastically. Besides the occasional required reading for my college courses, I was hardly spending my free time cracking open a book. That is until my younger sister practically forced me to read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. At first I was skeptical about reading a thriller especially because up to this point my reading style was mostly fantasy based. In the end, I never knew that books could be so thrilling. The novel is about a husband who reports his wife missing on their 5 year wedding anniversary. As media and police become involved the image of their happy marriage begins to unravel. The whole reading adventure was filled with so many twists and turns that by the end I was left speechless. This book singlehandedly reignited my love of reading. In the past, I had attempted to start up reading again but it seemed as though no book could hold my attention for more than one chapter. Nothing was seeming to convince me that finishing the book was worth it, let alone giving me the mind blowing feeling that Gone Girl had succeeded in doing. After finishing the novel, I was on a new found mission, a treasure hunt in fact, to find a book that could compare, even if only a little to the beauty of Gone Girl.
Coming off of the euphoric high from Gone Girl, I was desperate to find another book that could produce a similar experience. During my search, I came across a book called Eeny Meeny by M.J. Arlidge, which is the first book of the Helen Grace mystery series. This thriller series follows the work of Helen Grace a female detective in a fashion comparable to the television hit Criminal Minds. Each chapter is only a few pages long and is written in different point of views of the characters. This set-up helped me conquer my fear of reading longer novels. Ever since I was a young reader, any novel that was over one hundred and fifty pages was enough to bring on a full blown panic attack for me. Having the chapters being broken up into different perspectives almost gave the illusion that I was reading a bunch of short stories. It was also beneficial that just about every chapter ended with a new plot twist that keeps the reader turning the pages. I was definitely engaged in the mimetic register and kept on my toes right to the very last page. After finishing the book, I found myself able to read books of varying lengths.
Even with all the reading I do, it is still a rare occasion to come across a book with such unique characters that I instantly fall in love. When I finally do I could read the same story a million times and never get bored. That was the case when I read both Jackaby by William Ritter and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Both books were successful in creating a relationship between the main characters and the readers. In the young adult series Jackaby, A young woman leaves her native country for America in order to find work. She becomes the assistant to a detective named Jackaby who deals with paranormal murders. William Ritter did a tremendous job at creating a unique character such as Jackaby. The quirky main character made the story both humorous and exciting for the reader. In A Man Called Ove, I was also introduced to an interesting character who stole the spotlight. The Novel is about an older grumpy man who has lost his wife and his willingness to live but killing himself is not as easy as he thought. By the end of this book I had managed to laugh, cry, and feel so much emotion that it felt like I knew Ove in real life. I was so invested in the storyline that it took me a few days to recover. After reading two amazing stories as
these, it really inspired me to do some more of my own writing. I have always struggled with characterization and I feel like seeing it done so flawlessly helped me out tremendously. I was able to focus on both the mimetic and synthetic reading experience during my time reading these books. I was not only able to establish a connection with the main characters, but also able to see the difference a novel with strong characterization can make.
When I come across a book that I am not exactly thrilled with I find myself adapting my techniques in order to finish it. At the community college I had attended before Rowan, I was required to read Dibs: In search of Self as one of my elementary education prerequisites. This biography follows the interactions between a small boy named Dibs and his psychologist over a year of play therapy. It becomes evident that Dibs is very intelligent and does not have a behavioral issue as his parents believed. The writing, in my opinion, was very bland and was very difficult to get into. At first I found myself reading and rereading chapters over and over again. I remember thinking that there was no possible way that I would get through it. Reflecting on it now I realize that it just was not something I was really interested in. Halfway through my struggle I decided it was time to change tactics and I began focusing on the thematic and trying to sum up each chapter into my own words. I began treating the text, as I would I would a textbook, by reading a few pages and jotting down main ideas. In the end, I was able to finish the book; still disliking it as much as I did when I started. Nonetheless, was able to work through it’s flaws and decipher the main ideas as if I were a detective deciphering clues.
The final book that helped change the way that I read is a romance novel by Lani Diane Rich, called A Little Ray of Sunshine. Again, the implementation of a relatable character who is going through struggles that I know all too well made reading this story an enjoyable mimetic experience. Emmy is a young woman who leaves home, loses all contact with her family, and moves across country in her trailer. She is working one of her odd end jobs when a woman who claims to be an angel appears, as well as an old childhood friend with news of her mother’s wedding, and before she knows it she is on her way back home. During my time reading this story I was also able to pick up on the thematic registers as well. The storyline is based off of the main character’s adventure of moving on in life and forgiving those who have wronged her in the past. Seeing how she was able to move past her fears and enjoy what life had in store for her really motivated me in many aspects of my life; one of those being my writing. I, like Emmy, was holding back because of my fears of not succeeding. With this new motivation I was able to push past my writer’s block and take risks in my writing.
Through the years I have transformed from a scared limited reader, who stuck to only what was in my comfort zone, to enjoying texts of a variety of different levels and genres. As a young developing reader I focused mostly on reading books that were more entertaining to me. Today I am able to enjoy longer, more complex level of texts that I never believed that I could. With the aid of certain strategies, such as note taking, I am now able to focus on the structure and meaning of what I am reading. I still, however, struggle at times with delving deeper into the literature and picking up on certain themes or underlying meanings. In the end, the more that I read the more benefits I am seeing in both my reading and writing. Overall, I have progressed from focusing on the mimetic register to the synthetic register and now working on the thematic.
How Writers Read 