Exploring America - Literature
Explore America through classic literature—from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Lois Lowry's The Giver to Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery. Discover curated titles on American life, history, and fiction in this essential reading list.
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle
by Washington Irving
In the first of these stories from the Catskill Mountains, a superstitious schoolmaster encounters a headless horseman; in the second, a man sleeps for twenty years, waking to a much-changed world.
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Up from Slavery
by Booker T. Washington
The famous autobiography by the African American businessman, activist, and educator.
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In His Steps
by Charles M. Sheldon
This classic that has been inspiring and challenging readers to a spiritual adventure for over a century now gets an updated look for a new generation.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
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The Giver
by Lois Lowry
In a future society, young Jonas is given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
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Christy
by Catherine Marshall
In the year 1912, nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston leaves home to teach school in the Smoky Mountains -- and comes to know and love the resilient people of the region, with their fierce pride, their dark superstitions, their terrible poverty, and their yearning for beauty and truth. But her faith will be severely challenged by trial and tragedy, by the needs and unique strengths of two remarkable young men, and by a heart torn between true love and unwavering devotion. And don't miss another heart-soaring bestseller from Catherine Marshall: Julie
