Wide Reading

Please click on the wide reading list of your choice.

Year 7
Year 8
Year 9
Year 10 

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Year 7

	The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas John Boyne A story of innocence existing within the most terrible evil, this is the fictional tale of two young boys caught up in events entirely beyond their control.
	Hanna’s Suitcase Karen Levine When Hana’s suitcase arrives from Germany at the small Holocaust education centre in Japan, all the children who visit want to know about Hana. Where did she come from? Where was she going? What did she pack? When Fumiko Ishioka, the centre’s curator, decides to find the answers, she embarks on a journey of discovery across Europe and North America, and seventy years of history.
	The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank Born on June 12, 1929, Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager who was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. She and her family, along with four others, spent 25 months during World War II in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
	Soldier Boy Anthony Hill The true story of Jim Martin, the youngest Anzac.
	Where The Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak Classic picture book about the imaginary adventures of a young boy named Max, who is angry after being sent to his room without supper. Max wears a distinctive wolf suit during his adventures and encounters various mythical creatures.

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Year 8

Book of Lies James Moloney Three children have been left mysteriously in an orphanage run by the kindly Mrs Timmins, but overseen by the fearsome wizard Lord Alwyn and his creature Termagant. They learn that the mysterious Book of Lies can tell falsehood from truth. But something’s not right. But who is friend and who is foe?

King of Shadows Susan Cooper Only in the world of theatre can Nat Field find an escape from the tragedies that have shadowed his young life. He is thrilled when he is chosen to join an American drama troupe travelling to London to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a new replica of the famous Globe. He goes to bed ill and awakens transported back in time four hundred years and finds the warm, nurturing ather figure missing from his life – in none other than William Shakespeare  himself. Does Nat have to remain trapped in the past forever, or give up the friendship he’s so longed for in his own time?

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Year 9

 

 

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Year 10

	Almost French Sarah Turnball Turnball tells her own story of moving from Australia to Paris on a whim. While traveling in Europe, she meets Frederic, a very interesting and charming Frenchman who invites her to come visit him in Paris sometime. Spurred on by a sense of adventure and opportunity, Sarah takes him up on the offer and changes her whole life to be with him.
	To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. Upon its release, it was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American fiction. The novel is loosely based on the author’s observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
	The Messenger Markus Zusak Ed Kennedy is pretty useless – he has a deadbeat job as a part-time taxi driver, is hopelessly in love with Audrey, a fellow taxi driver, spends his spare time playing cards with his buddies, and does nothing without his 17 year old dog, The Doorman.  His life changes one day when he accidentally stops a bank robbery, and soon finds his first message in the mail – the Ace of Diamonds with three addresses.  After he works out what message to send the three people, he gets another card, and so on until he finally completes his objective.
	Girl, Interrupted Susanna Kaysen “It’s 1967, and Susanna Kaysen in eighteen. After a short meeting with her psychiatrist she is shipped off to a mental hospital for her borderline personality disorder. She lands in the teenage girls ward. There she meets many interesting people. Lisa, the sociopath who is always trying to escape. Dais, who is in constant need of laxatives, and many others. Psychiatrists have the antagonistic role in her frank and funny commentaries on life on the ward, and while reading the stories you begin to wonder who is really crazy after all.” - Alexandra Kuykendall, Resident Scholar
	Animal Farm George Orwell A simple, tragic fable about what happens when a group of animals attempt to run the farm themselves.

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