12th Grade Reading List

In 1981, the height of Ireland's Troubles, eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.

Eighteen-year-old Finn, an outsider in his quiet Midwestern town, is the only witness to the abduction of town favorite Roza, but his inability to distinguish between faces makes it difficult for him to help with the investigation, and subjects him to even more ridicule and bullying.

Hannah Ward, nineteen, revels in the competition, intense rehearsals, and dazzling performances that come with being a member of Manhattan Ballet Company's corps de ballet, but after meeting handsome musician Jacob she begins to realize there could be more to her life.

During the summer of 1977 when New York City is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam, seventeen-year-old Nora must also face her family's financial woes, her father's absence, and her brother's growing violence.

A high school student uses his artistic talents to document his imaginary voyage to the world's most southern point while his friends observe his increasingly unbalanced behavior.

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France, and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, espionage, and great courage.

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.

Teenaged soldier Noemi and robot Abel set out on an interstellar quest to save her home planet, Earth colony Genesis.

Spanning two centuries and two continents, Dream Country is the story of five generations of young people caught in a spiral of death and exile between Liberia and the United States

Hazel has accepted her diagnosis until she meets Augustus at a cancer support group, forcing her to reexamine her life.

Recounts the November 1942 crash of a U.S. cargo plane into the Greenland Ice Cap and the loss of two different rescue planes sent to find it.

The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing.

As a young man working in East Africa for the Shell Company, Roald Dahl recounts his adventures living in the jungle and later flying a fighter plane in World War II.

Steinbeck depicts the Depression-era Joads, an Oklahoman family forced to move to California following the Dust Bowl. (1962)

When the scary, magical world in her grandmother's book of dark fairy tales becomes real, Alice must enter the world to rescue her mother.

Followed by Grandpa Ed in his RV and backed by her brother and friends, Annabelle, runs from Seattle to Washington, D.C., becoming a reluctant activist as people connect her journey to her recent trauma.

This graphic memoir discusses the author’s life growing up with a drug-addicted mother, a missing father, and two opinionated grandparents.

This account covers the previously unheralded but pivotal contributions of NASA's African American women mathematicians to America's space program.

In 1980s East Germany, Lena’s uncle disappears and all traces of his existence are erased by the secret service police.