Hopeful Books to Engage Students - What Can I Recommend to Students Right Now?

In this episode, we consider books that we'd recommend to students as great choices to read independently. As the world around us has drastically changed and continues changing, we decided on this topic and talked about some of our favorites, including R. J. Palacio's Wonder, Jenny Han's To All the Boys I've Loved Before series, Nicola Yoon's books, and anything by Jason Reynolds, as well as some other favorites. We focus our discussion on books we think students can access without teacher support and on books that are not extremely heavy but leave the reader with a sense of hope. (We shared our long list on our Bookish Faves post this past Monday.) Be sure to let us know ones you'd recommend on the comments here or on our Instagram posts.

 

Our Recommendations

R. J. Palacio’s Wonder

Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Ep 90)

Jason Reynolds’s Track series or When I Was the Greatest (or any of his other works) (Ep 34)

John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down

Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star (Ep 75 - book-to-film adaptation)

Victoria Jamieson’s Roller Girl

Cece Bell’s El Deafo

Raina Telgemeier’s Drama and Guts

Julie Murphy's Dumplin’  (Ep 63 about the book & Ep 64 about the adaptation)

David Yoon’s Frankly in Love

 

Other Mentions

Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman’s Dry

R. J. Palacio’s Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories (including The Julian Chapter), White Bird: A Wonder Story

Click here to view the discussion between Jason Reynolds and Laurie Halse Anderson from Virginia Festival of the Book 2019

 

Give Me One - Something that Makes Us Happy

Jen - flowering trees and spring

Sara - red wine

Ashley - roller coasters

 

Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.

 

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