The Book Nook: Books I Read at School for School

 Hey everyone! How were your weekends? Mine was nice and quiet. Today I'll be taking you into the Book Nook for a look at some of the books I had to read in school for school. There are seventeen of them and many of them are your typical school fare, but there are a few of them that are unique to me. I'm going to try and do this in the order of when I read them in. I also grabbed images of the specific editions that I read as well for this post as much as I could remember the covers. So let's get into it.

The first book on this list is the second book in the Bunnicula series, Howliday Inn by James Howe. I read this book in grade 4. After the first book in the series, Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery, Chester, the cat, and Harold, the dog, are taken to a kennel called Chateau Bow-Wow where they meet Howie and they have many adventures together. Horror was a pretty popular genre with children's literature as movies such as Halloween were coming out. This series was well on it's way before Scholastic started publishing Goosebumps, with this book being published in 1982, but this was THE era for children's horror. I liked this book but I don't remember too much about it, other than them meeting Howie, and Bunnicula not actually being in the story itself. I think I read Bunnicula at some point but I don't remember when and if it was before or after this book.

The next book on this list is The Other Elizabeth by Karleen Bradford, and was, oddly enough, also published in 1982. This book is actually the whole reason I'm doing this blog post in the first place. I couldn't remember the name of it or who the author was. All I could remember about it was that it took place at Upper Canada Village as a girl named Elizabeth Duncan somehow gets transported back to 1813, when the Battle of Crysler's Farm between the United States and England during the War of 1812, while visiting Cook's Tavern on a grade 7 field trip and trades places with Elizabeth Frobisher, who is from 1813. That's all I remember about this book because I haven't read it in about 25 or 26 years. I'm pretty sure I read it in grade 4, but it might've been grade 5. I had the same teacher for both grades, so it might've been grade 4 or it might've been grade 5.

The next book on my list is The War with Mr. Wizzle by Gordon Korman and was also published in...1982. Apparently my teacher for grades 4 and 5 really liked books published in 1982. I've talked about this book at length on my various blogs over the years because it was my favourite book of not just grade 5, but of the entire Bruno & Boots/Macdonald Hall series, so I won't talk too much about it here. What I will say is that I read it in grade 5, but I heard my teacher talking about it with the grade 5s in my class because I was in a grade 4/5 split class in grade 4 and from that alone I fell in love with it. I'll do a review of the book at a later time though. 

In grade six we read Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. Why did we read it? Because we were learning about bridges in class that year, and the book has the word Bridge in the title. Yeah, I think my teacher was really stretching thin on that one. She also showed us the 1985 PBS TV movie, which stars Annette O'Toole (Lana Lang in Superman III and Martha Kent on Smallville), on VHS, this was just as DVD was just starting to gain prominence, though the movie was never released on DVD. We read short stories and novel excerpts from our sixth grade reader, but this was the only novel that I remember reading in grade six.

Next is I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier. This was a read in grade seven. Except from what I remember we didn't read it as a whole class. We got broken up in two groups. One read this book and the other read something else. I don't remember what that something else was, but that's how my grade 7 teacher did things. The only thing I remember about this book is Amy Hertz, who is/was the friend/love interest of the book's main character, Adam Farmer. Just from the brief synopsis on Wikipedia there's more to unpack with this book than I have time to delve into in this post, so if I can get my hands on a copy I'll read it and then review it.

Next up is The Giver by Lois Lowry. I think we might've read this book before I Am the Cheese, but I don't remember for sure. This is another book that has alot to unpack so I won't go too deeply into it. I just remember reading it in grade 7 sometime in late 1999 or early 2000. You all know this book. In fact, chances are you might've all read this at some point during your school careers if you're in my generation or after (it was originally published in 1993).

The next book on the list, that I remember reading in grade 7, is The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. This is an interesting book to be reading in grade 7. It's not exactly something I expected to be reading for school, but it was something I still would've enjoyed had I read it on my own.

The next book I'm putting on my list is The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. I don't remember exactly what grade I read this in. It might've been grade 7, or grade 8, or grade 9, with grade 10 being the latest I would've read it in. I just remember that it was sometime between 1999 and 2002. I remember it was around Remembrance Day since we tended to do alot concerning World War I and World War II around that time. This isn't a book that I would've read on my own. Mainly because it isn't fiction or a fictionalized version of real events. It's literally Anne's diary during World War II. It's a good book, but it's not something I would've gravitated towards on my own.

We read Lord of the Flies by William Golding in grade 8. Or rather it was read to us by the teacher. It was disturbing, and I didn't like it. I mean, look at that cover. Thank goodness we didn't have to watch a movie version of it. 

I read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee in grade 9. Late in grade 9 in fact. I actually liked it quite a bit, which was rare for me with the books that we read in high school English. I think that's because I loved The Waltons when I was growing up and this book reminded me of an episode of that show. The book takes place between 1932 and 1935, which is around the time that the early seasons of The Waltons took place in. 

This was also the grade in which I was introduced to the works of William Shakespeare. We read Julius Caesar that year and I discovered that I had a knack for reading the old fashioned English written in the play. 

In grade 10 we read A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I don't remember a whole lot about this book other than we read it as our novel study for the semester, because in the 2002-2003 school year my high school adopted the semestered system where our eight classes of the year were split up into two four class semesters rather than the seven class rotation schedule that we were on when I was in grade 9. So that meant that the curriculum was condensed into half the school year rather than the full school year. And because we read and discussed a Shakespeare play every year, we only had time for one novel study and this is the book we read.

Speaking of Shakespeare, we read Romeo and Juliet in grade 10 English. I read it twice because I was in grade 10 English twice. Yes folks, I failed grade 10 English. Don't ask me why. It's a long story that I don't feel like getting into right now. We also watched the 1968 movie version directed by Franco Zeffirelli and the 1996 version directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Yes folks my teacher made us watch both versions. 

Next on the list is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I honestly don't have much to say about this book because it's been so long since I read it and I remember bits and pieces and that's it. There was also a movie version that we watched, but I don't remember which one it was that we watched.

This was also the year we read Hamlet, as you do in grade 11 English (I was behind on my English courses because I failed grade 10 English the first time so I took grade 11 English in grade 12). It's Hamlet guys, what do you want me to say? Lol. 

The final book on this list is In the Heat of the Night by John Ball. This one was probably my favourite of all the books we studied in high school. Simply because it was a murder mystery and those kinds of things are more my speed than the heavy material we'd previously covered. Not that we didn't get a decent discussion out of this book, because of the murdery mystery and the fact that Virgil Tibbs is a black detective in the 1960s. We also watched the 1967 film adaptation starring Sidney Poitier.

And finally, there was Macbeth. It's Shakespeare guys, I really don't have anything to say about it other than that. Though we did watch a movie version of Macbeth. I don't remember which one though. it was most likely the 1971 version, though it might've been the 1948 version. Not sure about that. Anyways we read one Shakespeare play a year throughout my life in high school. 

That my friends is my list of books that I remember reading at school for school. For novel studies anyways. I didn't count elementary school book reports on this list because I read those books on my own and there were alot of them. I hope you guys like this post. I tried to make it interesting though that's hard to do with school assigned books.

And that's it for me for tonight. I will be back tomorrow with another VHS Corner entry. Not sure exactly what I'm going to talk about tomorrow, but I'll figure it out in the morning. So until then have a wonderful night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.