Earlier this year, Verona’s Board of Education moved to make improvements to its college prep English classes in grades 9 to 11. Central to those changes is getting more books into classroom libraries, particularly the kinds of books that high school kids are most likely to be interested in. But in today’s tight budget environment, the BOE is not in a position to hand a charge card over to Amazon.
So the district’s director of humanities, Patrick Higgins, has gotten creative. He has drawn up a list of high-interest books and is asking the community to donate any copies they may have to Verona High School. Chances are you’ve got more than a few of them on your bookshelves at home.
Higgins has put together a wide-ranging list, organized by categories. He’d like coming of age titles like The Book Thief by Markus Zusak or The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Jodi Piccoult’s Nineteen Minutes. There are fantasy books like Cirque du Freak, The Twilight Saga series and The Da Vinci Code. Among the non-fiction titles are Girl, Interrupted and Running With Scissors. There are poetry titles and sports books, mysteries and graphic books. Higgins’ wish list also has a set of titles specifically for high school boys, and another oriented to the girls.
You can download the full wish list here. If you have books to donate, drop them off on the designated collection days in the main office at VHS, with a note that they are for Higgins. Book collection dates are today, June 8, as well as June 13 and 14, June 17, and June 20 and 21.
