Rachel

Inventory

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss

The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff

Corduroy by Don Freeman

A sizable portion of the Berenstain Bears collection by Stan and Jan Berenstain

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgsen Burnett

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johan David Wyss

The Puppy Place series by Ellen Miles

Who knows how much of the Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osbourne

The Wayside School series by Louis Sachar

Holes by Louis Sachar

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary

The Borrowers by Mary Norton

Frindle by Andrew Clements

Elizabeth I, Red Rose of the House of Tutor by Kathryn Lasky

Marie Antoinette, Princess of Versaille by Kathryn Lasky

Cleopatra VII, Daughter of the Nile by Kristiana Gregory

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Baylor

The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

Sounder by William H. Reynolds

Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

White Fang by Jack London

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

The River by Gary Paulsen

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Danger.com series by Jordan Cray

All American Girl by Meg Cabot

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

Christine by Stephen King

Nightshift by Stephen King

Firestarter by Stephen King

Misery by Stephen King

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Hush, hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The whole Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan

You know, basically all the books by Rick Riordan

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough

Brave New World by Aldus Huxley

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Bible

Same As It Never Was by Claire Scovell LaZebnik

Knitting Under the Influence by Claire Scovell LaZebnik

Fluke, or, I know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore

The Rogue Hunter by Lynsay Sands

Single White Vampire by Lynsay Sands

The Accidental Vampire by Lynsay Sands

Vampire, Interrupted by Lynsay Sands

Tall, Dark, and Hungry by Lynsay Sands

Taming of the Highland Bride by Lynsay Sands

Code Name: Baby by Christina Skye

Code Name: Princess by Christina Skye

Code Name: Blondie by Christina Skye

Code Name: Bikini by Christina Skye

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Night by Elie Wiesel

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Beowulf

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence by Richard R. Beeman

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton

Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier by Ray Billington and Martin Ridge

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

MacBeth by William Shakespeare  

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Othello by William Shakespeare

Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Odyssey by Homer

The Iliad by Homer

The Aeneid by Virgil

Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton

Medea by Euripides

Antigone by Sophocles

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes

A People’s History of the United States by Howard ZInn

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

On Writing by Stephen King

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

We’ll Always Have Paris: Stories by Ray Bradbury  

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North

The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

Equus by Peter Shaffer

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane

The Girls by Emma Cline

The Lovely Bones by Anne Sebold

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

The Appetites of Girls by Pamela Moses

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Alice’s Adventures in WOnderland by Lewis Carrol

Peter Pan by JM Barrie

Cujo by Stephen King

Matilda by Roald Dahl

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Weathering by Lucy Wood

Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso

Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty

 

Reflection

Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster was not the first book I remember reading. However, it is the first one that I really remember falling in love with. I know about words and I knew that if you strung them together in some sort of order, they made sense. When I read Phantom Tollbooth, I saw that taken to a new level; I learned that language could be fun. Words were playful and clever. Sure, you could put them in order, but what happened when you twisted them around a little? Milo, convinced that he had exhausted every possibility of fun in his short life, uses a magic tollbooth to travel different lands and meets a variety of characters based in puns, allusion, and wordplay. Phantom Tollbooth changed my relationship with language going forward.

When I read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I was caught up in not only the characters, but also the ways that their interactions and relationships drove the drama and plot. It was, quite frankly, juicy.  The characters were each so realistic and flawed; each of the Bennets seemed like someone in my family and Darcy seemed like every man I had never dated, but imagined I had. I remember being surprised by finding myself caught up in the story. At this point, I was more familiar with fantasy and science fiction. I was accustomed to stories of beasts and wizards and magic and planets I had never been to.  And yet, here I was, flipping through the story of ordinary people doing ordinary things. I learned that these stories could be just as exciting.

When I was around nine or ten, I went through this weird phase. I read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone and then reread it a dozen times. From there I jumped into a plethora of his other books and even other works in horror as well. Then, I read The Dead Zone some more. Picture it, if you will: a pale little girl with long dark hair sitting in the corner at the family barbecue reading Stephen King. I loved the way King treated his characters. Ok, yes, he kills them in horrible ways, but he gives each and every character their story and their moment. With King, I realized something I had always felt: that every character deserved the spotlight.

When I was much too little, I read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed it, but because I had read it as a fun little ghost story. I came across it when I was packing to go to college and I gave it a read. I felt like I was reading an entirely different book. The ghost story that I had read as a child was now about leaving a home that I loved and moving on. During my freshman year, many members of my family died. Again, I found myself reading The Graveyard Book. Now, it was a ghost story again, but one about real-life loss and grief. The Graveyard Book, more than any other book, taught me that books can be — and even should be — different each time you read them.

In my English class, senior year we read Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. This section focused on works based in Africa, both from the perspective of indigenous people and colonial controllers. Poisonwood Bible was easily my favorite. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a woman and her four daughters as they travel to Africa as missionaries. Kingsolver writes each perspective so uniquely that I was dropped into each girl’s consciousness. I remember this example most of all as how I as a writer should understand my characters and be able to present them so well that my readers feel like they are them.