Best and Worst Books You Read in School

As I mentioned in my post a few months ago about school reading, I find it interesting that in my kids' school district, at least through middle school, there seem to be less specifically required texts that kids read and discuss as an entire class than there was in my day.  There are definite pros to being able to pick your own books, but my opinion is that there are also definite pros to being assigned to read certain texts - not just because you can get more out of a book when discussing it with teachers and fellow students, but also to expose you to books you might not otherwise pick up for yourself.

Some commonly assigned HS books

Anyway, it got me thinking about some of the most memorable books I read in my own school days, both those I loved and those I hated.

School Reading

It's been a little while since I posted - it has been a busy few weeks between adjusting to the back to school routine and the Jewish holidays.  And on top of that, I'm the coordinator for the school library volunteers for my son's elementary school, so a flurry of e-mails, organizing, scheduling, and training has been occupying a lot of my free time.  Still related to books, but a little less time for reading and even less for writing about reading!

Speaking of school, I'm interested to hear other people's opinions about reading for school.  One thing that seems to have changed since my own school days is a shift to letting students pick their own books rather than having assigned reading.  In my day, in elementary school we had a textbook for reading, and then in middle school and high school we read many books/plays as a class, as well as (I believe) still having a text book.