Summer is a great time to catch up on reading, whether you are sitting by the pool, driving on a long road trip or relaxing on the beach.
Here are some reasons why reading is beneficial, especially during the summer when kids are not in school:
- Reading will help students succeed in high school.
- Reading will help students succeed in classes in college.
- Reading will help students build their vocabulary.
- Reading will help students improve their reading comprehension.
- Reading will help students improve their writing.
- Reading will help students delve deeper into their current interests or find new ones.
- Reading will help students with their college application essays.
- Reading is a way for freshmen and sophomores to begin preparing for college without obsessing over college from the first day of high school.
- Reading can be done anywhere.
- Reading is relaxing and fun.
Here are some recommendations from the Galin team for what to read this summer.
For Anyone:
- The Art of Losing by Alice Zenter
- Hamnet by Maggie O’ Farrell
- How to be an Anti Racist by Ibram Kendi
- W;t (Wit) – a Pulitzer Prize winning play by Margaret Edson
- The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros
- The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Lord of the Flies – William Golding
- Grendel – John Gardner
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead – Another play here by Tom Stoppard
- Siddartha – Herman Hess
- Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
- Between The World and Me by Tah-Nehisi Coates
- God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
- Agatha Christie Mysteries
- Election and Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Quiet by Susan Cain
- A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold – a classic, and he discusses ecology local to the Madison area
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Evicted by Matthew Desmond
- Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Beloved – Toni Morrison
- Native Son – Richard Wright
- No-No Boy – John Okada
- Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
- Othello – William Shakespeare
- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
- Night – Elie Wiesel
- The Woman Warrior – Maxine Hong Kingston
- The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
- WILD by Benito Cereno
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Aimee Leduc Mysteries
- Lessons from the Hearland by Barbara Miner
- Educating Milwaukee by James Nelson
- Story of Edgar Sawtelle
- Paris: The Novel
- The Bluest Eye
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- They Were Liars
- Who Murdered Roger Acroid?
Specifically for Parents:
- Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary “Executive Skills” Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
- Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide by Britt Hawthorne
- Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey
- Social Justice Parenting by Traci Baxley
