YA Lit

Comrades, I need your assistance.

I am trying to start a project that links FA to my true love, YA lit (young adult literature, that is). I'm curious to find out how literature affects teenagers as they prepare for college. I want to ask students what books they read in high school that they viewed as significant. This, of course, also lends insight into how they define "significance." I want to pose the same question to y'all here:

What books did you read in high school? Which of those books did you find significant? Why were they significant?

Feel free to respond in the form of a comment to this post or a post itself. I will start:

I kept a long list of books I read in high school, and they ranged from children's chapter books to Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell. I read books that were on BBC's list of the 100 best books of all time, and I also exhausted the local library's young adult collection. The ones that I found the most significant were the tragic ones where characters suffered and/or died. I also read a lot of "escapist literature," though I really hate that term, about princesses and imaginary kingdoms. I remember specific titles well, because I frequently return to these books: The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, For Freedom by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley, The Immortals series by Tamora Pierce, among others. They were significant to me because I longed to relate to such people. I wanted to be like the noble women who made a difference in their worlds, or the French spy who sacrificed herself for freedom during World War II, or the little boy who learned about life despite or because of the death of his dogs. Also important to me were a few of the books that I read as required reading. Most of my classmates loathed these books, but I thought they were gems and thanked my teachers profusely for introducing me to them (Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Shakespeare's King Henry IV, etc, etc). I loved finding the symbols in these books and connecting them to things I recognized in life. I discovered that my conflicts, however small, related well to the conflicts in literature. I was not at war, but I had tough classes that I felt were like battles. I was not being forcefully stripped of my identity, but I was trying to identify myself as unique among cookie-cutters. These books helped me see options for solutions and gave me the hope, the confidence, that I can do hard things.

Anyway, I hope this gives you an idea of what we're looking for. Have a go at it! You know how much FA loves reflections...