Summary of Text: This novel offered a vision of a totalitarian society where the government controls individual thought and even reality. It presents a variety of issues regarding human nature. 1984 is a great modern classic of “Negative Utopia” – a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary work that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. 
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian , which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he was destined to live. 
Sensitive Content: discrimination, language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: Heroes, monsters, gods, battles, and kings - the legend of Ulysses is brought to life in this classic retelling of The Odyssey.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: Bunny and Nasir have been best friends forever, but when Bunny accepts an athletic scholarship across town, Nasir feels betrayed. While Bunny tries to fit in with his new, privileged peers, Nasir spends more time with his cousin, Wallace, who is being evicted. Nasir can’t help but wonder why the neighborhood is falling over itself to help Bunny when Wallace is in trouble.
When Wallace makes a bet against Bunny, Nasir faces an impossible decision—maybe a dangerous one.Told from alternating perspectives, this is a heart-pounding story about the responsibilities of great talent and the importance of compassion.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: Rashad Butler and Quinn Collins are two young men, one black and one white, whose lives are forever changed by an act of brutality. The story is told in Rashad and Quinn’s alternating perspectives (Reynolds pens the voice of Rashad, and Kiely has taken the voice of Quinn), as they grapple with the complications of this moment which seep into their families, school, and town. Eventually, the two narratives weave back together, and begin the first step for healing and understanding racial injustice.  
Sensitive Content: language, stereotypes, violence

Summary of Text: All Jin Wang wants is to fit in. When his family moves to a new neighborhood, he suddenly finds that he's the only Chinese American student at his school. Jocks and bullies pick on him constantly, and he has hardly any friends. Then, to make matters worse, he falls in love with an all-American girl…
Sensitive Content: language, stereotypes, violence

Summary of text (from Random House): A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun. Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, stereotypes

Summary of Text:  Mary Oliver’s most acclaimed volume of poetry, American Primitive contains fifty visionary poems about nature, the humanity in love, and the wilderness of America, both within us and outside.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: The author shares the story of his challenging upbringing in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. The memoir includes references to stories from Irish folklore, traditional Irish ballads, English poetry, and popular Irish films and actors. There are also many references to historical events in Ireland, such as the English conquest and the Potato Famine.
Sensitive Content: language, sex

Summary of Text:  Klaus, a powwow trader, sees the four elusive and beautiful antelope women (descendants of Mathilda Roy) who come to the powwow. He is instantly enchanted with them and abducts one away with him to Minneapolis, despite warnings to leave the antelope women alone and to bring back the one he stole.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text: Sophocles' story about the individual’s duty to the gods versus government. Antigone must deal with the question whether or not to disobey a law she feels is unjust.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text:  A woman named Cosima "Codi" Noline returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona to help her aging father, who is slowly losing his struggle with Alzheimer's disease. She takes a biology teacher position at the local high school and lives with her old high school friend, Emelina.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: With a narrative that combines heart-stopping martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs with life lessons that speak to all of us, "The Art of Learning" takes readers through Waitzkin's unique journey to excellence. He explains in clear detail how a well-thought-out, principled approach to learning is what separates success from failure. Waitzkin believes that achievement, even at the championship level, is a function of a lifestyle that fuels a creative, resilient growth process. Rather than focusing on climactic wins, Waitzkin reveals the inner workings of his everyday method, from systematically triggering intuitive breakthroughs, to honing techniques into states of remarkable potency, to mastering the art of performance psychology.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Edna Pontellier, the heroine of The Awakening, shocked readers in 1899 and the scandal created by the book haunted Kate Chopin for the rest of her life. The Awakening begins at a crisis point in twenty-eight year-old Edna Pontellier's life. Edna is a passionate and artistic woman who finds few acceptable outlets for her desires in her role as wife and mother of two sons living in conventional Creole society. Unlike the married women around her, whose sensuality seems to flow naturally into maternity, Edna finds herself wanting her own emotional and sexual identity.
During one summer while her husband is out of town, her frustrations find an outlet in an affair with a younger man. Energized and filled with a desire to define her own life, she sends her children to the country and removes herself to a small house of her own: "Every step she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to 'feed upon the opinion' when her own soul had invited her." Her triumph is short-lived, however, destroyed by a society that has no place for a self-determined, unattached woman. Her story is a tragedy and one of many clarion calls in its day to examine the institution of marriage and a woman's opportunities in an oppressive world. 
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: In this enchanting tale about the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening, two hapless city boys are exiled to a remote mountain village for reeducation during China's infamous Cultural Revolution. There they meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, they find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. One night Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina hopes her messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles.
Sensitive Content: language, stereotypes, violence

Summary of Text:  This novel is a letter that details the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son,Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. 
Sensitive Content: stereotypes, violence

Summary of Text: A heat wave causes a blackout in New York City, and leaves six teen couples stranded across the city, with plenty of time to strengthen their respective relationships. This novel is constructed of chapters about each couple, and their stories continue throughout the book. As their stories progress, readers will start to see the connections between each couple.
Sensitive Content:  none

Summary of Text: Black Panther returns to Wakanda to find his country under terrorist attack by a group of supernatural beings. Needless to say, the government is in turmoil and his people are struggling to survive.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  The book follows a family of immigrants who have come to the United States to get treatment for their daughter, Maribel, who sustained a brain injury in Mexico. The story follows their family as they encounter the challenges of being immigrants trying to realize their hopes and dreams in a country that is unfamiliar.
Sensitive Content:  language, sex

Summary of Text: In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah shares his earnest, wholehearted experiences growing up in South Africa. A series of conflicts on race, culture, and values teach Trevor how to live and adapt to the modern world around him.  
Sensitive Content: violence 

Summary of Text:  Finley’s love for basketball started just around the time his grandfather (Pops) lost his legs and his mom died and it is the central part of his life, the focus of his future and the connection to his girlfriend, Erin. Entering his senior year, Finley looks forward to being the captain of his team and putting together his best season as a point guard, so when Coach asks him to befriend and look after Russ, a star basketball player from California whose parents were murdered, Finely feels conflicted. He wants to obey his coach but he also wants to protect his starting spot from the new kid who calls himself Boy 21.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text:  Throughout history and across the globe, one characteristic connects the daring women of Brazen: their indomitable spirit. Bagieu profiles the lives of feisty female role models, some world famous, some little known. From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are inspiring.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: The book shares the story of Oscar Wao, a Dominican American who never fits in with his communities, as he tries to find his own identity and find love in the process. Told by Oscar’s college roommate, the book also includes flashbacks into the lives of Oscar’s mother and his grandfather, as they suffered during the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic and finally came to America.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Bright Dead Things uses poetry to examine the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.
Sensitive Content: racism

Summary of Text: In vivid poems, Woodson shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. 
Sensitive Content: none.

Summary of Text: In the final days of the Viet Nam War, Hang takes her little brother, Linh, to the airport, determined to find a way to safety in America. In a split second, Linh is ripped from her arms—and Hang is left behind in the war-torn country. Six years later, Hang has made the brutal journey from Viet Nam and is now in Texas as a refugee. She doesn’t know how she will find the little brother who was taken from her until she meets LeeRoy, a city boy with big rodeo dreams, who decides to help her.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: Written in Middle English, this is a collection of stories written in the fourteenth century and told by a crowd of pilgrims on their way to visit a shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. The tales are considered one of the most influential works in Western literature.
Sensitive Content:  sex

Summary of Text: Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." However, the novel is really a tender story of coming of age in a world juxtaposed by family life and the world outside.
Sensitive Content:  language

Summary of Text: Rankine’s book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV—everywhere, all the time. 
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text:  This is a novel-in-verse that is about grief, love, loss, forgiveness, and bonds that shape our lives. In this story, Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people. In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash. The two girls face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South. Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years. Now this novel brings their stories to life.
Possible Concerns: violence

Summary of Text: This omnibus covers Nikki Giovanni's complete work of poetry from 1967–1983. The Collected Poetry Of Nikki Giovanni will include the complete volumes of five adult books of poetry: Black Feeling Black Talk/Black Judgement, My House, The Women and the Men, Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, and Those Who Ride the Night Winds.
Possible Concerns: none

Summary of Text:  A prequel story to The Hate U Give, the novel follows the story of Maverick, a young man who deals with various situations in his everyday teenage life. The story follows him as he has to grow up fast to deal with taking care of a child, balancing being a teen and dealing with gangs.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: This collection of poetry explores Smith’s family and issues facing people today.
Sensitive Content: racism

Summary of Text: Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."
Possible Concerns: none

Summary of Text: This is Edmond Rostand's immortal play in which chivalry and wit, bravery and love are forever captured in the timeless spirit of romance. Set in Louis XIII's reign, it is the moving and exciting drama of one of the finest swordsmen in France, gallant soldier, brilliant wit, tragic poet-lover with the face of a clown. Rostand's extraordinary lyric powers gave birth to a universal hero--Cyrano De Bergerac--and ensured his own reputation as author of one of the best-loved plays in the literature of the stage.
Possible Concerns: none

Summary of Text: The stories speak of life among the Ojibwe tribes in and around Duluth and Minneapolis from the 1900-1970’s. It describes the world of the northern Minnesota Ojibwe in their sorrows and joys. The other gives examples of life, love, and how to get by in a hostile world.
Possible Concerns: abuse, alcoholism

Summary of Text:  Darius the Great Is Not Okay follows the personal journey of Darius Kellner, an Iranian–American teenager with clinical depression, as he makes a best friend for life, reconnects with his grandparents, and repairs his relationship with his father. 
Sensitive Content: bullying

Summary of Text: Justyce McAllister attends an exclusive private school with mostly white students. He's on the debate team, has some of the best grades in his class, and is certain he's headed to Yale. Then one night, after being a victim of racial profiling, his life changes and puts him on a path that has him questioning why things happen and what he can do to change them. His Dear Martin project, in which he tries to live like Martin Luther King Jr., is put in jeopardy from the moment he's put in handcuffs. 
Sensitive Content: language, stereotypes, violence

Summary of Text: Today the world faces an enormous refugee crisis: 68.5 million people fleeing persecution and conflict from Myanmar to South Sudan and Syria, a figure worse than the flight of Jewish and other Europeans during World War II and beyond anything the world has seen in this generation. Nguyen brings together writers originally from Mexico, Bosnia, Iran, Afghanistan, Soviet Ukraine, Hungary, Chile, Ethiopia, and others to make their stories heard. These essays reveal moments of uncertainty, resilience in the face of trauma, and a reimagining of identity, forming a compelling look at what it means to be forced to leave home and find a place of refuge.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Nora Helmer, wife to Torvald and mother of three children, appears to enjoy living the life of a pampered, indulged child. But as her economic dependence becomes brutally clear, Nora's acceptance of the status quo undergoes a profound change. To the horror of the bewildered Torvald, himself caught in the tight web of a conservative society which demands that he exert strict control, Nora comes to see that the only possible true course of action is to leave the family home. 
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: In matter-of-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer gives a frank, funny, and sometimes personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway. White/Indian relations are often characterized by guilt and anger. Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask cuts through the emotion and builds a foundation for true understanding and positive action. 
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Saeed and Nadia meet and fall in love as their country breaks out in a civil war. After discovering that magic doors are popping up throughout their city that could transport them to a different country, the couple decide to leave their home and forge a new life together.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text:  Oskar, a young boy, embarks on a scavenger hunt through New York City, searching for connections to his father who died in the 9/11 attacks.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Irony and satire are Bradbury’s tools in this classic novel. 
Sensitive Concerns: language

Summary of Text: A coming-of-age tale for young adults set in the trenches of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, this is the story of Perry, a Harlem teenager who volunteers for the service when his dream of attending college falls through. Sent to the front lines, Perry and his platoon come face-to-face with the Vietcong and the real horror of warfare. But violence and death aren't the only hardships. As Perry struggles to find virtue in himself and his comrades, he questions why black troops are given the most dangerous assignments, and why the U.S. is even there at all.
Sensitive Concerns: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Hazel and Augustus meet in a cancer support group and fall in love and share their views on death, dying, and our relationship to each other.
Sensitive Concerns: language

Summary of Text: This play tells the story of Troy Maxson, an African American garbage collector and ex-convict who once had a promising future in baseball. His circumstances as a youth led him to prison, after which he settled down with Rose and made a family.
Sensitive Concerns: language, racial slurs

Summary of Text:  Daunis Fontaine is a half Ojibwe/half white teen living in Canada. She has just graduated high school and is preparing to say goodbye to her hockey career and begin college with her best friend Lily. However, Travis, Lily's tragic, meth-addicted ex, has other plans and commits a murder-suicide taking his own life and Lily's. Daunis is devastated and vows to make a difference in her native community. Daunis is not the only one dedicated to eradicating the new drug that has now permeated her community. She quickly learns that the FBI has been doing their own digging and is asked to become an informant to help the agents come closer to solving the drug problem.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: This book is a reimagining of fairytale classics and spellbinding original tales. The author dismantles the old-fashioned tropes that have been ingrained in our minds. In this book, gone are the docile women and male saviors. Instead, lines blur between heroes and villains. There are fearless princesses, a new kind of wolf lurking in the concrete jungle, and an independent Gretel who can bring down monsters on her own.
Sensitive Content: violence 

Summary of Text: Written in 1816 when she was only 19, in a horror-writing contest suggested by Byron, Mary Shelley's novel of "the modern Prometheus" chillingly dramatized the dangerous potential of life created in the laboratory. A frightening creation myth for our own time, Frankenstein remains one of the greatest horror stories ever written, and an undisputed classic.
Sensitive Content: stereotypes, violence

Summary of Text: Odessa, Texas is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the local high school football team helps keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business.In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires-and sometimes shatters-the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms. 
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: The Glass Castle details the story of Jeannette Walls and her family. Constantly short on cash and food, the family moves around the country frequently and tries to re-settle. Though the family is dysfunctional, the memoir communicates itself without condemning either of the Walls parents. Humor frequently imbues the work with a light-spirited tone.
Sensitive Content: abuse, language

Summary of Text: Serving a sentence in a prison in Mexico, Libertad González finds a clever way to pass the time with the weekly Library Club, reading to her fellow inmates from whatever books she can find in the prison’s meager supply. The story that emerges, though, has nothing to do with the words printed on the pages. She tells of a former literature professor and fugitive of the Mexican government who reinvents himself as a trucker in the United States. There he falls in love with a wild woman with whom he shares his truck and his life—that is until Joaquín González unexpectedly finds himself alone on the road with a baby girl and González & Daughter Trucking Co. is born. Joaquín and his daughter make the cab of an 18-wheeler their home, sharing everything—adventures, books, truck-stop chow, and memories of the girl’s mother—until one day the girl grows into a woman, and a chance encounter with one man causes her to rebel against another.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text:  Kim Leggit sets this thriller in the fictional Garner County where the society practices an annual rite of passage for girls in their 16th year, their grace year. Feared for their magical powers, powers that seduce men and cause jealousy and conflict in the community, the young girls travel into the hostile wilderness to live out their grace year in the community's compound. Here, the girls must work together to survive and to rid themselves of their magic before returning to society to become wives and mothers.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text: One of the greatest and most socially significant novels of the twentieth century, Steinbeck's controversial masterpiece indelibly captured America during the Great Depression through the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads. Intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is not only a landmark American novel, but it is as well an extraordinary moment in the history of our national conscience. 
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess captures the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream. 
Sensitive Content: adultery, stereotypes

Summary of Text:  The story chronicles Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy, a young woman growing up in a devout, tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes.
Sensitive Content: none 

Summary of Text: This is a dystopian novel set in a version of the United States that has been overthrown by religious fundamentalists. In what was once most likely Massachusetts, under the militaristic regime of the Republic of Gilead, women no longer have civil rights or autonomy. 
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence 

Summary of Text: Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: The final play in Shakespeare's political tetralogy, this story concerns young Prince Hal, who is now King Henry V and has to adjust to his life and kingdom. To retain power, he finds he must lead his soldiers in battle to reclaim French lands. 
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text:  Just before her senior year, Mickey Catalan, softball standout, is involved in a car crash that destroys her hip. Determined to play her senior year, Mickey pushes her physical therapy and her doctor’s timeline by numbing her pain with OxyContin. Once the prescription runs out, Mickey is desperate to keep the pain away and keep playing catcher for her team.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text:  The author and illustrator, Jarrett Krosoczka, tells the story of being raised by his grandparents because of his mother's addiction to heroin and time in and out of jail. While growing up, Jarrett didn't play sports, but his grandparents supported his interest in art and illustration by signing him up for classes and purchasing supplies. His mother sporadically entered his life and disappeared again, and at age 17 his father reached out to him for the first time. The book deals with difficult subjects, but also highlights the things Krosoczka was grateful for including his neighbor and best friend Pat, his aunts and uncles, and most of all his grandparents for raising him. 
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text:  In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: This book is a webcomic and blog written and illustrated by Allie Brosh. Started in 2009, Brosh often mixes text and illustrations to tell stories from her childhood, discuss her thoughts, and describe the challenges she has faced, particularly with mental health

Sensitive Content: language 

Summary of Text: I Am Alfonso Jones provides young readers with a narrative that not only addresses the complexity and history of police brutality but also discusses climate change, gun control, the criminalization of Black males, the Black Lives Matter movement, youth activism, Afro Latinidad, and so much more.
Sensitive Content: violence 

Summary of Text:  Julia is a Mexican-American high school student leading a normal life in Chicago, when her sister Olga is killed by a semi-truck. Surrounded by comparisons, and queries of “why can’t you be more like your sister?”Julia sets out to determine who Olga really was, and what she was doing when she wasn’t at home. Through this journey, Julia fights with her mom, battles mental health issues, applies to colleges, and tries to hide a new relationship from her parents. Eventually, Julia is sent to stay with her mother’s family in Mexico, where she learns things about her mother that help her to see her mother in a different light.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence, attempted suicide

Summary of Text: Michael Oher reflects on his childhood and the steps he needed to take to persevere to help him succeed. He starts by discussing his childhood in which he and his brothers had been abandoned by their mother and taken into the foster system. He talks about the struggles he faced and his determination to succeed. He shares how he struggled with school due to moving, changing schools, spotty attendance, and no support. Then talks about what he did to make things happen to himself like finding the kind of people he knew were good role models and had connections to help him. His story was not controlled by fate as it appears in the movie "The Blind Side" but a rather calculated path that Oher mapped out for himself.  
Sensitive Content: addiction, violence

Summary of Text: I Was Their American Dream is at once a coming-of-age story and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: This collection of short stories is tied together by the mysterious, magical tattoos that cover the body of a stranger. The stranger tells the narrator not to look at the tattoos after dark as they come to life and tell their terrifying stories.  What follows are the stories from the tattoos.  Many of the stories have something to do with Mars and Martian invasion. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: In the Time of the Butterflies is historical fiction based on the lives of the four Mirabal sisters, who participated in underground efforts to topple Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's three-decade-long dictatorial regime in the Dominican Republic.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: Ha is an ordinary girl growing up in Saigon during the Vietnam War. She and her family are forced to immigrate to Alabama. The rest of the book is about her experiences as a refugee in Alabama. This coming-of-age debut novel told in verse has been celebrated for its touching child's-eye view of family and immigration.
Sensitive Content: bullying, violence

Summary of Text: This chilling novel is set in the very near future: two-and-a-half years after an election that brought about a Muslim ban, Exclusion laws, and the internment of Muslims in a disturbing echo of the Japanese internments of the 1940s. Layla Amin, the rebellious 17-year-old Muslim narrator, is enraged by the changes that her small liberal California community accepts: curfews, book burnings, required viewing of the U.S. president’s weekly National Security Address. On a personal level, she was suspended from school for kissing her non-Muslim boyfriend in public, and her poet-professor father has lost his job. Still, her family’s abrupt nighttime “relocation” to a camp—during which each arrival is branded with ultraviolet identification encoding—is a shock. While her parents shrink into compliance, Layla quickly makes friends and allies who band together to bring public attention to internees’ treatment, and close down the camps. 
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters, and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning, he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn't made it back to their camp and were desperately struggling for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of them would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that his right hand would have to be amputated.
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: The Invention of Hugo Cabret is about a young boy named Hugo who lives in a Paris train station. He is working to repair an automaton, which he thinks will write him a secret message from his dead father. While stealing parts to repair the machine, Hugo gets caught.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: The Joy Luck Club consists of sixteen interlocking stories about the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their four American-born daughters. In 1949, the four mothers meet at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco and agree to continue to meet to play mahjong. They call their mahjong group the Joy Luck Club. The stories told in this novel revolve around the Joy Luck Club women and their daughters.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: This graphic novel tells the story of Dana, an African-American writer in the 1970s married to a white man who finds herself dragged through time to repeatedly save her White enslaver ancestor's life to preserve her own down the line.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: The book is centered around Shoko Komi, a high school girl who suffers from extreme social anxiety, and struggles to communicate with others. With the help of her classmate Hitohito Tadano, they embark on a mission to make 100 friends and improve Komi's communication skills.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: Rich with storytelling, history, and folklore, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and reveals the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Joseph Marshall is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Sioux and has dedicated his entire life to the wisdom he learned from his elders. Here he focuses on the twelve core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of life--bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion. Whether teaching a lesson on respect imparted by the mythical Deer Woman or the humility embodied by the legendary Lakota leader Crazy Horse, The Lakota Way offers a fresh outlook on spirituality and ethical living.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text:  In a country ripped apart by war, Tareq lives with his big and loving family . . . until the bombs strike. His city is in ruins. His life is destroyed. And those who have survived are left to figure out their uncertain future. Tareq's family knows that to continue to stay alive, they must leave. As they travel as refugees from Syria to Turkey to Greece, facing danger at every turn, Tareq must find the resilience and courage to complete his harrowing journey.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Set during the McCarthy Era in 1950s San Francisco, Last Night tells the story of a 17 year old Chinese American girl, Lily, who, after finding an advertisement depicting a male impersonator, begins to understand more about her sexual identity and feelings. To resolve these feelings, she begins to visit a lesbian bar called The Telegraph Club with a high school friend. In doing so, she must face the risks of being a queer Chinese girl in the 1950s and Lily must weigh her self-identity and desires with her duties as a daughter.
Sensitive Content: language, sex

Summary of Text:  This is a memoir that tells the story of Kao Kalia Yang's family's journey from war-torn Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand, and eventually to their new home in the United States.
Sensitive Content:  none

Summary of Text:  The poetry in Tracy K Smith's book, Life on Mars, examines the limitedness of the human species. The poetry speculates on the smallness of humankind, the incapacity of human intellectuality, and the irrationality of human emotions.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Marcus aka “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, his injured best friend Darryl does not come out. The city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: "M1k3y" will take down the DHS himself.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Fifteen-year-old Will's big brother has been shot and killed. According to the rules that Will has been taught, it is now his job to kill the person responsible. He gets on the elevator to head down from his eighth-floor apartment. But it's a long way down to the ground floor. At each floor, a different person gets on to tell a story. Each of these people is already dead. As they relate their tales, readers learn about the cycle of violence in which Will is caught up. The protagonist faces a difficult choice. 
Sensitive Content: language, stereotypes, violence

Summary of Text:  In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Lore Olympus is a modern take on the classic Hades and Persephone tale. Usually, the story either goes that he kidnapped her or that she casually wandered into the Underworld and decided to stay.
Sensitive Content:  language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: This tragedy opens with the sight of witches finishing a cabal and moves deeper into chaos, "fog and filthy air," murder, and dark mystery. Events transpire faster than the mind can conceive as Macbeth seizes power only to be destroyed by his blind ambition. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  During the spring of 1994, in a tiny country called Rwanda, some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors in a gruesome civil war. Several years later, journalist Jean Hatzfeld traveled to Rwanda to interview ten participants in the killings, eliciting extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they perpetrated. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: Inspired by the Native Alaskan myths and legends of her adopted state, Nancy Lord explores the persistent human need for contact with nature in the quietly ironic fables set that make up The Man Who Swam with Beavers. The title refers to a Dena’ina traditional story about a man who lived with beavers, with the moral that all creatures have "their own lives, as complete and legitimate as any others.” These wise, charming stories examine individual and collective responsibilities to one another and to the natural world.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories." 
Sensitive Content: language, sex

Summary of Text: It is the story of Vladek Speigelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody paw prints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: The Ojibway is one of the largest groups of Native Americans, belonging to the Anishinabe people of what is today the northern United States and Canada. The Mishomis Book documents the history, traditions, and culture of the Ojibway people through stories and myths passed down through generations. Written by Ojibway educator and spiritual leader Edward Benton-Banai, and first published in 1988, The Mishomis Book draws from the traditional teachings of tribal elders to instruct young readers about Ojibway creation stories and legends, the origin and importance of the Ojibway family structure and clan system, the Midewiwin religion, the construction and use of the water drum and sweat lodge, and modern Ojibway history.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text:  The novel tells the story of the cataclysmic summer of 1948, when the charges of a young Sioux woman force David Hayden's father, the sheriff of their small town, to confront his older brother, a charming war hero and respected doctor.
Sensitive Content:  sex, violence

Summary of Text: Kamala Khan is a normal teenage girl who dreams of being a superhero, working with the Avengers. When she goes to a party an unexpected fog rolls in and she finds herself talking to Captain Marvel, who gifts her with extraordinary gifts.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Middle school student Izuku Midoriya wants to be a hero more than anything, but he hasn't got an ounce of power in him. With no chance of ever getting into the prestigious U.A. High School for budding heroes, his life is looking more and more like a dead end.
Sensitive Content: none 

Summary of Text: The stories of mythology involve many tales about the gods and their interactions with each other and with mortals. The stories begin at the beginning of time and proceed through the first few generations of gods and goddesses until they begin to interact with humans. Doing so creates a wide variety of troubles for humans and gods alike.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: After 58 years in print, Wright's Native Son has acquired classic status. It has not, however, lost its power to shock or provoke controversy. Bigger Thomas is a young black man in 1940s Chicago who accidentally kills the daughter of his wealthy white employer. 
Sensitive Content: language, racist language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Chan Kim has never felt like an outsider in his life. That is, not until his family moves from L.A. to a tiny town in Minnesota. The Kims are the only Asian family in town, and when Chan and his twin sister, Young, attend high school, it's a blond-haired, blue-eyed whiteout. Chan throws himself into the only game in town--football--and the necessary roughness required to make a player. On the field it means "justifiable violence," but as Chan is about to discover, off the field it's a whole different ball game.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text:  Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy. Nickel is a reform school where abuse is common, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: An autobiographical narrative, in which the author describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. Weisel’s relationship with his father is central to this horrific story of survival under the worst circumstances of western 20th century history. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Ignatia Broker recounts the life of her great-great-grandmother, Night Flying Woman, who was born in the mid 19th century and lived during a chaotic time of enormous change, uprootings, and loss for the Minnesota Ojibwe. But this story also tells of her people’s great strength and continuity.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Nimona is a science fantasy graphic novel by American cartoonist N.D. Stevenson. The story follows the title character, a shapeshifter who joins the disgraced knight Ballister Blackheart in his plans to destroy the over-controlling Institute. Blackheart's intent to operate under his code of ethics contrasts him with the impulsive Nimona.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: The Odyssey is Homer's epic of Odysseus' 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War. While Odysseus battles mythical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods, his wife Penelope, and his son Telemachus stave off suitors vying for Penelope's hand and Ithaca's throne long enough for Odysseus to return.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: Odysseus, King of Ithaca wants to return home to his family after the Trojan War. On the way he offends the sea god Poseidon who makes sure he can't return home resulting in endless wandering. With help from Mount Olympus he and his small army of men have to fight and travel through dangerous areas to return home.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text: Novella by John Steinbeck, published in 1937. The tragic story, given poignancy by its objective narrative, is about the complex bond between two migrant laborers. The book, which was adapted by Steinbeck into a three-act play (produced 1937), earned him national renown. The plot centers on George Milton and Lennie Small, itinerant ranch hands who dream of one day owning a small farm. George acts as a father figure to Lennie, who is large and simpleminded, calming him and helping to rein in his immense physical strength. 
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text: Ivan Denisovich (Shukhov), like his fellow prisoners in the communist work camp, was wrongly imprisoned. This novel — based on some of Solzhenitsyn’s own experiences in similar camps — chronicles just one of the 3,653 days of Shukhov’s sentence. Through Shukhov’s eyes, readers feel the chill of sub-freezing conditions while prisoners lay brick, sense the hunger resulting from inadequate food rations and grasp the dehumanizing effect that life in these camps has on prisoners. Shukhov and members of his work gang watch out for each other like family, and each man seeks, in his own way, to discover some meaning and fulfillment in horrific conditions.
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: Towering tragedy tells the story of a Moorish general who earns the enmity of his ensign Iago. Masterly portrait of an arch villain. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Author Wes Moore grew up fatherless in an impoverished area of Baltimore, Maryland just blocks away from another boy with his exact name who grew up with similar circumstances. However, the author ended up a decorated veteran and Rhodes Scholar, and the other Wes Moore is currently serving a life sentence for murder. This book juxtaposes both of their lives in order to shed light on how they ended up veering into such different futures.
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: Malcolm Gladwell considers the circumstances that lead to success. The first half of the book looks closely at how opportunities matter more in the lives of successful people than hard work or raw talent. The second half of the book focuses on cultural legacies: behavioral tendencies rooted in their ancestral past.
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: The story of a father raising his three children in 1960s Minnesota, Peace Like a River is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a love story, and a haunting meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Originally published to wide critical acclaim in France, where it elicited comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black‐and‐white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great‐granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text:  Jade lives in a not-so-great part of town, but she's given a scholarship to attend a private school across town. She feels out-of-place in this school, but she knows the opportunities being there affords. She comes from humble means but wants so much more out of life. While at school, she becomes part of a mentorship program that will lead to a scholarship for college. The mentorship program gives her experiences she wouldn't have without it; however, it also makes her feel like a project. In the end, Jade is finally given the opportunity to showcase her creative talents in her first step toward her future.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Chayo, the flower seller, and her husband Candelario, the salad maker, are finally blessed with the child they thought they would never have.
Sensitive Content:  none

Summary of Text: This first-person novel in verse is about a high school girl who is confused about her feelings on boys, her body, her relationships, and religion. She is a budding poet and shares her struggles through her poetry, which helps her deal with the pressures of life.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text:  Following Marie Curie's discovery of Radium in the late 1800s, the United States started using the glowing substance as a commercial product. Namely, the substance was used for painting the glowing dials on watches. Relying on young girls to paint the dials and to use the “lip, dip, and paint” method for sharpening the point on the brush head for efficient detailed painting, the wonder substance soon reared its toxic effect.  This story details, through primary documents (photographs and the young women’s own words), the discovery of the toxicity of radium,  the suffering and death of some of the dial painters, and their fight against the industry’s attempted coverup.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: An African-American family is united in love and pride as they struggle to overcome poverty and harsh living conditions, in the award-winning a959 play about an embattled Chicago family. When it was first produced in 1959, “A Raisin in the Sun” was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. 
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text:  2044, the planet is ravaged by climate change, corporate greed, and cities are overcrowded. Wayne Watts spends most of his time living in a virtual world. The entire planet has been on a virtual quest to win the game created by a billionaire on the planet - and the winning prize is unimaginable wealth. Wayne is the first to crack the first clue in the hunt, and races to beat others who, like him, are determined to win the ultimate prize.
Sensitive Content: language, sex

Summary of Text: With the publication of his Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), when he was twenty-four years old, Stephen Crane became famous in the United States and England. Less than five years later he died of tuberculosis. In his brief life, however, he had published five novels, two volumes of poetry, and over three hundred sketches, reports, and short stories. His writings significantly enriched the subject matter of American literature, and his craftsmanship influenced both poetry and prose in the twentieth century. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: It's the story of Michael O'Sullivan, a feared and religiously inclined mob hit man who's brutally betrayed-and the fierce vengeance he wreaks. It's 1930 and O'Sullivan works for the Looneys, an Irish mob family with a stranglehold on the politics and businesses of a small Midwestern city.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Romeo and Juliet Summary. An age-old vendetta between two powerful families erupts into bloodshed. A group of masked Montagues risk further conflict by gatecrashing a Capulet party. A young lovesick Romeo Montague falls instantly in love with Juliet Capulet, who is due to marry her father's choice, the County Paris.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: A tragic accident causes 16-year-old Jessica to lose one of her legs.  Therefore, she is unable to run competitively.  Her prosthetic limb eventually allows her to walk, but recovery is slow physically and mentally.  She gets to know Rosa, a classmate with cerebral palsy whom she had previously overlooked.  As Jessica slowly regains mobility and even competitive running, Rosa helps Jessica with math while Jessica helps Rosa experience the thrill of a race.   
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Set in Puritan Boston, The Scarlet Letter tells the disturbing tale of Hester Prynne, a woman caught in the conflict between the Puritan ethics of her community and the higher law of her own love. In this tragic tale, we see the struggle between the laws of scripture and those of a different moral authority. 
Sensitive Content: adultery

Summary of Text: The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. 
Sensitive Content: language

Book Summary: This collection is the testimony of a life's work from one of the commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape at the end of the twentieth century.
From the revolutionary "The Great Pax Whitie" and "Poem for Aretha" to the sublime "Ego Tripping" and the tender "My House," these 150 mind-speaking, truth-telling poems are at once powerful yet sensual, angry yet affirming. 
Sensitive Content: none

Book Summary: A Separate Peace, novel by John Knowles, published in 1959. It recalls with psychological insight the maturing of a 16-year-old student at a New England preparatory school during World War II. Looking back to his youth, the adult Gene Forrester reflects on his life as a student at Devon School in New Hampshire in 1942.
Sensitive Content: language

Book Summary: The Sirens of Titan is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history. Much of the story revolves around a Martian invasion of Earth.
Sensitive Content: language, sex

Summary of Text: To save her kingdom, Princess Elizabeth has pinned her last hope on the infamous traitors, “The Seven Deadly Sins” and has set out on a journey with Meliodas—the Dragon Sin of Wrath—to seek out the rest of his fellow knights and former friends. Deep within an uninviting forest they find Diane, the Serpent Sin of Envy.
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Book Summary: Slaughterhouse-Five is an account of Billy Pilgrim's capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II, and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy's life both before and after the war, and from his travels to the planet Tralfamadore.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: A young 13-year-old Nepali girl is sold into prostitution so her stepfather can have more money for gambling.  The women (mothers) have no say in what the fathers choose to do with their daughters. They are told that she is to go and work for a wealthy woman as a maid and she will be able to send some of her earnings home to her family however, this is just a cover story for girls who are forced into prostitution to pay off their families debts.  
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text: Jimmy hasn't seen his father in nine years. But one day he comes back -- on the run from the law. Together, the two of them travel across the country -- where Jimmy's dad will find the man who can exonerate him of the crime for which he was convicted. Along the way, Jimmy discovers a lot about his father and himself -- and that while things can't always be fixed, sometimes they can be understood and forgiven.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: All over this country, there are refugees. But beyond the headlines, few know who they are, how they live, or what they have lost. Minnesota has welcomed more refugees per capita than any other, from Syria to Bosnia, Thailand to Liberia. Somewhere in the Unknown World is a themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis. 
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Since the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that it's been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud: "My throat is always sore, my lips raw.... Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis." What could have caused Melinda to suddenly fall mute? Could it be due to the fact that no one at school is speaking to her because she called the cops and got everyone busted at the seniors' big end-of-summer party? Or maybe it's because her parents' only form of communication is Post-It notes written on their way out the door to their nine-to-whenever jobs. While Melinda is bothered by these things, deep down she knows the real reason why she's been struck mute.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: Diane Wilson’s beautifully crafted memoir begins with the romantic 1862 event that creates fissures between Midwestern families, neighbors, and tribes, but this is mostly the story of a woman unburying her family’s history and trying to begin the healing after hundreds of years of cultural genocide.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: Station Eleven takes place in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the "Georgia Flu", has devastated the world, killing most of the population. 
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: The novel follows Young Ju, a little girl, from her homeland in South Korean to 'Mi Gook,' or America, after her family emigrates. The novel then charts her life from age four up until she is preparing to enter college, showing her transformation from a hopeful child into a hardened young woman.
Sensitive Content: abuse

Summary of Text: A Streetcar Named Desire is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by her younger sister and brother-in-law.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text:  No one's more shocked than shy 15-year-old Felton Reinstein himself when he undergoes a tremendous growth spurt. After dusting the football jocks in a race, Felton marvels at his new athletic ability. Everything isn't looking up, however. Felton must also come to grips with his mother's sudden depression and his bratty younger brother. And then Felton learns a shocking secret about his past that helps put things in perspective.
Sensitive Content: language, suicide

Summary of Text: Set in 1946, the book centers on a Chinese-American family, the Lees, who move out of Chinatown and into a different part of Metropolis. There, they come face-to-face with a seriously evil hate group and the Man of Steel himself. And while Tommy Lee finds his place quickly and easily, his younger sister Roberta struggles with feeling generally out of sync with the world around her.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: After the death of his longtime friend and fellow Hazelwood Tiger in a car accident, Andy, the driver, blames himself and cannot get past his guilt and pain. While his other friends have managed to work through their grief and move on, Andy allows death to become the focus of his life. In the months that follow the accident, the lives of Andy and his friends are traced through a series of letters, articles, homework assignments, and dialogues.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: The epic tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life's joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace.
Sensitive Content:  language, sex, violence  

Summary of Text: There There tells the story of twelve characters, each of whom have private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow. This is a relentlessly paced multigenerational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. 
Sensitive Content:  language, violence

Summary of Text: Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live. They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky is the three boys' account of that unimaginable journey. 
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: In this poetry collection, Gill gives readers the words to help heal from a first breakup, to celebrate finding family, to understand first love, to express anger and joy, to fight for what one believes in, and to help be one’s truest self.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: The Things they Carried is a sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories, but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O’Brien’s theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Every story in The Things they Carried speaks another truth that Tim O’Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. 
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: First novel by Chinua Achebe, written in English and published in 1958. The novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community, from the events leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return. The novel addresses the problem of the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society. It describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s. 
Sensitive Content: sex, violence

Summary of Text: This is a coming of age story about two teenage friends, Rose and Windy, during a summer in Awago, a small beach town. Rose and Windy discover themselves while battling family dynamics and mental disabilities.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan's last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms.
Sensitive Content: language, sex, violence

Summary of Text: To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the century (Library Journal). Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice, but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
Sensitive Content:  language, racist language, violence

Summary of Text: The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text: Jealous conspirators convince Caesar's friend Brutus to join their assassination plot against Caesar. To stop Caesar from gaining too much power, Brutus and the conspirators kill him on the Ides of March. Mark Antony drives the conspirators out of Rome and fights them in a battle.
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the hardships of an immigrant family in New York City. It is split into five sections, or books, each portraying a different moment in time during the early 20th century. The novel was a giant success when it was first published, and is partially based on experiences of the author.
Sensitive Content: sex

Summary of Text: This is the story of GB Tran and his family's journey from Vietnam to America. The artwork and dialogue piece together the Vietnamese history and culture of his family and outline his youthful intent to leave it all behind until he is forced to go to Vietnam and learn about his extended family and their good friends. The stories of each family member are interesting and engaging and provide historical context to a war within a country where families were torn apart. The reader learns about the conflict, but also the importance of our stories and where we come from. GB is the only American born child and his perspective will resonate with children of immigrant families. 
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: The book is about a young man going to his school with a gun, killing six, injuring five then killing himself. Each chapter is told from a different perspective. Some are periphery characters and some are close to the shooter or the victims. It is a series of short stories that revolve around the shooter.   
Sensitive Content: language, violence

Summary of Text: A major philosophical statement on the American character, a life of simple toil, & the values of rugged independence. Also includes "Civil Disobedience," "Slavery in Massachusetts," "A Plea for Capt. John Brown," & "Life Without Principle."
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text:  Malala Yousafzai introduces the people behind the statistics and news stories about the millions of people displaced worldwide. Malala's experiences visiting refugee camps caused her to reconsider her own displacement — first as an Internally Displaced Person when she was a young child in Pakistan, and then as an international activist who could travel anywhere in the world except to the home she loved. In We Are Displaced, Malala not only explores her own story, but she also shares the personal stories of some of the incredible girls she has met on her journeys — girls who have lost their community, relatives, and often the
only world they've ever known.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Main characters Pulga, Chico and Pequeña make the poignant decision to leave everything they know in Guatemala to try and make a life for themselves in America. But first, they need to figure out how to cross the treacherous journey from Guatemala and through Mexico. The only way they know how is by paying Coyotes with questionable morals and making their way on the route of La Biesta. Not only must these three overcome the hardships that come with illegally trying to cross the border, but they are also haunted by the pasts that they have chosen to leave behind. 
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Arthur is only in New York for the summer, but if Broadway has taught him anything, it’s that the universe can deliver a show stopping romance when you least expect it. Ben thinks the universe needs to mind its business. If the universe had his back, he wouldn’t be on his way to the post office carrying a box of his ex-boyfriend’s things. But when Arthur and Ben meet-cute at the post office, what exactly does the universe have in store for them?
Sensitive Content: language, sex

Summary of Text: In 2002, Pat Tillman walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army and became an icon of American patriotism. When he was killed in Afghanistan two years later, a legend was born. But the real Pat Tillman was much more remarkable, and considerably more complicated than the public knew. Drawing on Tillman’s journals and letters and countless interviews with those who knew him and extensive research in Afghanistan, Jon Krakauer chronicles Tillman’s riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. 
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: Fueled by a passion for running dogs, Gary Paulsen entered the Iditarod--the 1150-mile winter sled-dog race between Anchorage and Nome-- in dangerous ignorance and with a fierce determination. Winterdance is his account of this seventeen-day battle against Nature's worst elements and his own frailty.
Sensitive Content: language

Summary of Text: Following a family tragedy, siblings Lou and Oz must leave New York and adjust to life in the Virginia mountains–but just as the farm begins to feel like home, they'll have to defend it from a dark threat in this New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story.
Sensitive Content: none

Summary of Text: In a ruined and hostile landscape, in a future few have been unlucky enough to survive, a community exists in a giant underground silo. Jules is part of this community, but she is different. She dares to hope. And as her walls start closing in, she must decide whether to fight, or to die.
Sensitive Content: violence

Summary of Text:  Adam is a pretty regular teen, except he's navigating high school life while living with paranoid schizophrenia. His hallucinations include a cast of characters that range from the good (beautiful Rebecca) to the bad (angry Mob Boss) to the just plain weird (polite naked guy). An experimental drug promises to help him hide his illness from the world. When Adam meets Maya, a fiercely intelligent girl, he desperately wants to be the normal, great guy that she thinks he is. But as the miracle drug begins to fail, how long can he keep this secret from the girl of his dreams?
Sensitive Content: bullying, language, sex

Summary of Text: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the self-told story of a middle-aged man and his son, Chris, who go on a motorcycling trip accompanied by an adult couple. They journey from Minnesota to California, taking the back roads and sleeping overnight in motels or camping.
Sensitive Content: none