Special Collections

Browse by Lexile: 1200L +

Description: Find books that match your lexile measure. Browse these novels and non-fiction reads written at the 1200L through 1900L. All Lexile measures verified by MetaMetrics. #teacher #lexile


Showing 1 through 25 of 51 results
 

The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A profound novel in which Dostoevsky has searched for the truths about man, life and the existence of God. It presents the story of four brothers, each of them with the motive of murder . a gripping action that entangles its reader throughout the story. This was the author s last novel that will remain alive in the annals of history because of its language and unique literary style.

Date Added: 08/16/2018


Category: n/a

The Smart Girl's Guide to Going Vegetarian

by Rachel Meltzer Warren

What would you love. Love what you eat. No labels. No fuss. It's not about what you call yourself--it's about how you feel. Whether you're going vegan, vegetarian, fish-only, chicken-only, or all veggies except grandma's famous pigs-in-a-blanket, this book is your new best friend. Eating less meat can boost your energy, help you lose weight, and it's better for the environment. If you're looking to cut down on meat or cut it out completely, here you'll find awesome advice and the answers you need to make it work for you. Get the Scoop On: Daily meal ideas and easy recipes even your non-veggie friends will want to try How to convince your family this isn't just a fad or a phase Finding good food when you're away from home: veggie-friendly restaurants, colleges, and travel spots Getting enough iron, protein, and other vital nutrients to be healthy (because being vegetarian does NOT mean a diet of ice cream and pasta) Sneaky meaty things that can end up in food that seems perfectly safe for vegetarians

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1200L

Abe Lincoln Grows Up

by Carl Sandburg and James Daugherty

From the author of 'Biography of Lincoln', this book introduces the journey of Abe from childhood to adulthood and what transformed the young man to rise above the ordinary to be one of the finest presidents of America.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1260L

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

by J. K. Rowling

The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Warlock's Hairy Heart, Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump, and The Tale of the Three Brothers. This is the book that Dumbledore willed to Hermione.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1230L

The Impossible Rescue

by Martin W. Sandler

The dead of an Arctic winter. Whaling ships full of men, stranded in ice. Follow three rescuers in a race against time--and all odds--in this heartpounding true adventure. Martin W. Sandler takes us on every step of their riveting journey, facing raging blizzards, killing cold, injured sled dogs, and setbacks to test the strongest of wills.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1270L

The Incredible Journey

by Sheila Burnford and Carl Burger

Instinct told them that the way home lay to the west. And so the doughty young Labrador retriever, the roguish bull terrier and the indomitable Siamese set out through the Canadian wilderness. Separately, they would soon have died. But, together, the three house pets faced starvation, exposure, and wild forest animals to make their way home to the family they love. The Incredible Journey is one of the great children's stories of all time--and has been popular ever since its debut in 1961.

Winner of Pacific Northwest Library Association’s Young Reader’s Choice Award

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1320L

1776

by David McCullough

America&’s beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation&’s birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a war against her rebellious colonial subjects and that placed America&’s survival in the hands of George Washington.In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence—when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King&’s men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough&’s 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1300L

Cod

by Mark Kurlansky

From the Bestselling Author of Salt and The Basque History of the WorldCod, Mark Kurlansky's third work of nonfiction and winner of the 1999 James Beard Award, is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main character. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. What did the Vikings eat in icy Greenland and on the five expeditions to America recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod, frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken into pieces and eaten like hardtack. What was the staple of the medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques, an enigmatic people with a mysterious, unlimited supply of cod. As we make our way through the centuries of cod history, we also find a delicious legacy of recipes, and the tragic story of environmental failure, of depleted fishing stocks where once their numbers were legendary. In this lovely, thoughtful history, Mark Kurlansky ponders the question: Is the fish that changed the world forever changed by the world's folly?"A charming fish tale and a pretty gift for your favorite seafood cook or fishing monomaniac. But in the last analysis, it's a bitter ecological fable for our time." -Los Angeles Times"Every once in a while a writer of particular skill takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight. Such is the case of Mark Kurlansky and the codfish." -David McCullough"One of the 25 Best Books of the Year." -The New York Public LibraryMark Kurlansky is the author of many books including Salt, The Basque History of the World, 1968, and The Big Oyster. His newest book is Birdseye.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1200L

Black Ships Before Troy

by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Story of the Iliad Homer's epic poem, The Iliad, is one of the greatest adventure stories of all time. In it, the abduction of the legendary beauty, Helen of Troy, leads to a conflict in which even the gods and goddesses take sides and intervene.

It is in the Trojan War that the most valiant heroes of the ancient world are pitted against one another. Here Hector, Ajax, Achilles, and Odysseus meet their most formidable challenges and in some cases their tragic ends.

[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 6-8 at http://www.corestandards.org.]

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1240L

Ring of Bright Water

by Gavin Maxwell

This classic memoir of otters in the Scottish Highlands and the naturalist who cared for them is “one of the outstanding wildlife books of all time” (New York Herald Tribune).While touring the Iraqi marshes, Gavin Maxwell was captivated by an otter and became a devoted advocate of and spokesman for the species. Maxwell moved to a remote house in the Scottish Highlands, co-habiting there with three otters and living an idyllic and isolated life—until fate, fame, and fire conspired against him. This volume weaves together the Scottish otter stories from Maxwell’s three non-fiction books, Ring of Bright Water, The Rocks Remain, and Raven Meet Thy Brother—and includes his beautifully expressive illustrations. Ring of Bright Water: A Trilogy stands as a lasting tribute to a man, his work, and his passion for another species.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1490L

Small Is Beautiful

by E. F. Schumacher

Small is Beautiful is the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published, this is a landmark set of essays on humanistic economics. This 25th anniversary edition brings Schumacher's ideas into focus for the end-of-the-century by adding commentaries by contemporary thinkers who have been influenced by Schumacher. They analyze the impact of his philosophy on current political and economic thought. Small is Beautiful is the classic of common sense economics upon which many recent trends in our society are founded. This is economics from the heart rather than from just the bottom line. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1330L

Life in a Medieval Castle

by Joseph Gies and Frances Gies

From acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies comes the reissue of this definitive classic on medieval castles, which was a source for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.“Castles are crumbly and romantic. They still hint at an age more colorful and gallant than our own, but are often debunked by boring people who like to run on about drafts and grumble that the latrines did not work. Joseph and Frances Gies offer a book that helps set the record straight—and keeps the romance too.”—TimeA widely respected academic work and a source for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, Joseph and Frances Gies’s bestselling Life in a Medieval Castle remains a timeless work of popular medieval scholarship.Focusing on Chepstow, an English castle that survived the turbulent Middle Ages with a relative lack of violence, the book offers an exquisite portrait of what day-to-day life was actually like during the era, and of the key role the castle played. The Gieses take us through the full cycle of a medieval year, dictated by the rhythms of the harvest. We learn what lords and serfs alike would have worn, eaten, and done for leisure, and of the outside threats the castle always hoped to keep at bay.For medieval buffs and anyone who wants to learn more about this fascinating era, Life in a Medieval Castle is as timely today as when it was first published.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1380L

Up from Slavery

by Booker T. Washington

Born in a Virginia slave hut, Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) rose to become the most influential spokesman for African Americans of his day. In this eloquently written book, he describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In simply written yet stirring passages, he tells of his impoverished childhood and youth, the unrelenting struggle for an education, early teaching assignments, his selection in 1881 to head Tuskegee Institute, and more.A firm believer in the value of education as the best route to advancement, Washington disapproved of civil-rights agitation and in so doing earned the opposition of many black intellectuals. Yet, he is today regarded as a major figure in the struggle for equal rights, one who founded a number of organizations to further the cause and who worked tirelessly to educate and unite African Americans.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1320L

Inside Divergent

by Cecilia Bernard

The #1 New York Times bestselling novel Divergent is soon to be a major motion picture in theaters March 2014!Illustrated with more than 100 photographs--many never before seen--this eye-catching volume takes you inside the film version of Divergent where you'll discover the factions, meet the initiates, and enter the thrilling dystopian world.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1200L

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel Márquez

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family.

It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendia family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel.

Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel Garcia Marquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1410L

In the Heart of the Sea (Young Readers Edition)

by Nathaniel Philbrick

On November 20, 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry whale. Within minutes, the twenty-one-man crew, including the fourteen-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, found themselves stranded in three leaky boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with barely any supplies and little hope. Three months later, two of the boats were rescued 4,500 miles away, off the coast of South America. Of the twenty-one castaways, only eight survived, including young Thomas.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1200L

Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

The timeless tale of survival and adventure that set the standard for the English novelRobinson Crusoe is the only man still alive when his ship is destroyed in a terrible storm. Washing up on a deserted island, he realizes that he is stranded, with no immediate hope of rescue. Displaying remarkable ingenuity, Crusoe builds a crude home, raises crops, and keeps track of the passing days with a rudimentary calendar. Loneliness is his greatest adversary until a tribe of cannibals arrives with their intended victims. When one of the prisoners escapes, Crusoe rescues him. The shipwrecked sailor and his newfound companion, Friday—named for the day of the week on which Crusoe first meets him—band together to vanquish the cannibals and leave the Island of Despair forever. Based on the true accounts of eighteenth-century castaways, Robinson Crusoe popularized the then-new art form known as the novel. Nearly three hundred years after it was first published, it is still the rare classic with the power to thrill and edify in equal measure. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1270L

The Woman in Black

by Susan Hill

The classic ghost story by Susan Hill: a chilling tale about a menacing spectre haunting a small English town. Arthur Kipps is an up-and-coming London solicitor who is sent to Crythin Gifford--a faraway town in the windswept salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway--to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of a client, Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. Mrs. Drablow's house stands at the end of the causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but Kipps is unaware of the tragic secrets that lie hidden behind its sheltered windows. The routine business trip he anticipated quickly takes a horrifying turn when he finds himself haunted by a series of mysterious sounds and images--a rocking chair in a deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and, most terrifying of all, a ghostly woman dressed all in black. Psychologically terrifying and deliciously eerie, The Woman in Black is a remarkable thriller of the first rate.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1360L

A Princess of Mars

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Transported to Mars, a Civil War veteran fights to rescue a princess in this classic science fiction adventure story from the creator of Tarzan Prospecting in the mountains of Arizona, John Carter is attacked by Apache warriors. Cornered in a cave, he thinks his life is finished, but when he emerges, the Apache are nowhere to be seen and the landscape is like nothing on Earth. John Carter has been transported to Mars—and the universe will never be the same.   The shift in gravity gives Carter superhuman powers of strength, speed, and agility. On Earth, he was but a man. On Mars, he is a god. And he will need all the power he can muster, for the red planet—called Barsoom by its inhabitants—is in the grips of its own civil war. To save the legendary Princess Dejah Thoris, Carter must defeat legions of giant, four-armed green barbarians and travel thousands of miles across a landscape populated with monstrous flora and fauna.   The first volume in Edgar Rice Burroughs&’s beloved Barsoom series, A Princess for Mars is one of the wildest and most imaginative tales ever told.   This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1390L

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

by Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, along with its companion piece, Rip Van Winkle is one of the best-known short stories to have come from America—though written while Irving was living abroad in England. Best enjoyed at Hallowe'en! The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (historical Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors. Some residents say this town was bewitched during the early days of the Dutch settlement. Other residents say an old Native American chief, the wizard of his tribe, held his powwows here before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. The most infamous spectre in the Hollow is the Headless Horseman, said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper that had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head".

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1380L

Bootleg

by Karen Blumenthal

Filled with period art and photographs, anecdotes, and portraits of unique characters from the era, this fascinating book looks at the rise and fall of the disastrous social experiment known as Prohibition.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1250L

The War to End All Wars

by Russell Freedman

Nonfiction master Russell Freedman illuminates for young readers the complex and rarely discussed subject of World War I. The tangled relationships and alliances of many nations, the introduction of modern weaponry, and top-level military decisions that resulted in thousands upon thousands of casualties all contributed to the "great war," which people hoped and believed would be the only conflict of its kind. In this clear and authoritative account, the Newbery Medal-winning author shows the ways in which the seeds of a second world war were sown in the first. Numerous archival photographs give the often disturbing subject matter a moving visual counterpart. Includes source notes, a bibliography, and an index.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1220L

Rule of the Bone

by Russell Banks

When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone." He finds dangerous refuge with a group of biker-thieves, and then hides in the boarded-up summer house of a professor and his wife. He finally settles in an abandoned schoolbus with Rose, a child he rescues from a fast-talking pedophile. There Bone meets I-Man, an exiled Rastafarian, and together they begin a second adventure that takes the reader from Middle America to the ganja-growing mountains of Jamaica. It is an amazing journey of self-discovery through a world of magic, violence, betrayal and redemption.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1530L

Spies of Mississippi

by Rick Bowers

In 1956, at the height of the civil rights era, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was created to counter the movement for racial integration. Bowers, a career journalist, chronicles 10 years of the commission's propaganda campaigns, bribery, and its collection of files on 87,000 citizens and organizations including freedom riders and protest marchers. In addition to the commission's archives (opened in 1998), the author draws on interviews with protesters, the personal papers of state's elected leaders, and articles from the period. The book's accessible language, short chapters, and eye-friendly layout will appeal to all ages of general readers and students in high school and up. B&w historical photos show material from files and propaganda billboards. An appendix of document facsimiles is also included. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1290L

Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes

The immortal comedy of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and their chivalrous misadventures. Entranced by romantic tales of heroism and chivalry, Don Quixote goes on a delusional quest for fame and adventure as a self-proclaimed knight errant. Riding his nag of a horse and wearing a rusty old suit of armor, he roams the countryside with his loyal squire Sancho Panza. Together they encounter an array of unforgettable characters and undertake some of the most famously foolhardy exploits in literature.   Widely considered one of the greatest works of fiction ever written, Don Quixote is also recognized as the first modern European novel and a classic example of the picaresque novel. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its iconic characters and timeless themes have inspired works of homage from generations of artists, including Pablo Picasso, Richard Strauss, and Orson Welles.  This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Date Added: 08/14/2018


Category: 1480L


Showing 1 through 25 of 51 results