With a New Year beginning, a popular resolution considered is reading more books. A struggle that comes along with this resolution is finding good books to read. For this reason English teachers share their all time top two favorite books and why they would recommend them. 

Autumn Goodwin

“My favorite book from childhood is called The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, and it’s the book that made me fall in love with words because there is so much wordplay in that book,” Goodwin said. “I read that for the first time in 4th or 5th grade and I was just in love with reading from then on. It’s magical and it’s fun there’s a watchdog and it literally is a dog with a watch on, it plays on words the whole time.”

Goodwin recommends the Phantom Tollbooth to anyone who wants to understand the English language better because they talk about the language a lot and math. More into Goodwins adulthood she has more of a favorite author than a favorite book, it’s more of a grown up series but she enjoys the humor in the books. 

“The series makes me laugh and it’s very realistic but silly, and it’s a really good escape from the world,” Goodwin said. “Stephanie Plum is like ‘‘’Two for the money, one for the dough.’ It’s all a play on words, and there are like 30 books. I have read up until 22. I’m behind, everything I’ve had to do since COVID has kind of thrown me off. I would recommend the Stephanie Plum books to anyone who is 18 years or older. It’s a more grown up series but just to laugh because it is a screwball comedy.”

Meagen Seales 

“‘Once a Runner’ by John L. Parker is one of my favorites. It has to do with a collegiate runner having to break four (minutes) in the mile. It’s a realistic fiction so you can tell that the author did his research to show how the dynamic of the team is.” Seales said.” It’s very accurate to my own college experience of how the team works and working towards goals and the mental toll it takes to try to reach your goals. It’s a really good book that has to do with running.” 

“Bravey which is about an Olympic runner and it’s basically maybe like a memoir of her life. She talks about how she was a soccer player in high school and that she was also a runner but she kind of took a different approach to running.” Seales said. “She has a lot of trials as a kid like her mom was always in a mental institute and she only had like three memories of her mother and she was there when her mom committed suicide. It talks about life that continues on while you’re still trying to reach your goals and be this professional athlete. It’s a different take but it’s a really neat novel I think.”

Seales recommends these books depending on what an athlete is going through. These books help overcome or help navigate through that. 

“One of my athletes would read the last chapter before every meet because it motivated her for her race. I usually recommend books on what that athlete is facing and how this book could help overcome that or navigate through that.”

Carlen Scarlett

“The first [book] is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbra Kingsolver because it’s a good reflection of the time and a lot of symbolism and character development,” Scarlett said. “Honestly anything by Barbra Kingsolver is amazing. She does a really good job.”

“The second one I picked was Night By Elie Wiesel which is pretty much non fiction because it’s his account of the holocaust and Auschwitz. A good book because of it’s historical context and understanding genocide which is still current in our day today,” Scarlett said. 

Scarlett recommends these books due to the fact that they are helpful with learning about our past and trying not to repeat the same mistakes.

“The Poisonwood Bible is fiction but there are still a lot of familiar themes that are still relevant in today’s society,” Scarlett said. 

Harrison Lofton

“My favorite book is Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, it’s my favorite book because I think it’s genuinely good and it’s also the first book that I read when I was 16 or 17 and I was like ‘wow reading is like fun and a good way to spend my time,’” Lofton said. “It’s interesting and funny and I could understand the themes in it. It was the first book that I thought was fun since I read Percy Jackson in elementary school after a dry spell of not reading”

“This book is something that makes you feel a range of emotions and something that is funny but it’s also really thematically dense, the author has a lot to say it’s not just an entertaining sci-fi novel,” Lofton said.  “I think it is super entertaining and will also give you insights that will make you a better person” 

Lofton recommends Slaughterhouse Five because he believes it’s super entertaining and suspenseful. The book talks about war and time and what people should do with their lives with their limited time on earth.

“My second favorite book is Fahrenheit 451, kinda similar, that’s one of the only books I read in just a day where you pick it up and you can’t put it down, it was just super interesting and fun to read and both of them are sci-fi novels and it probably my favorite genre of books. I just like imagining all the sci-fi stuff just super fun,” Lofton said.

Lofton recommends Fahrenheit 451 because the writer is criticizing things that are happening and he foresaw a lot of things when he wrote the book that are coming to fruition. 

“I was just talking about it with my parents yesterday actually, and there is one part in future America and it’s super dystopian in all these ways. They still vote in elections but the party kind of just gives them a person to vote for, and they just vote for that person and feel like they are making a choice and they’re not. That reminds me of elections now,” Lofton said. “The last presidential election, I didn’t really like either candidate and I just felt like ‘wow I’m voting between one of these two people?’ It’s both really frustrating and interesting.”

Erinn Devoss

“My first book would be Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. It’s a great story about the mentor dying and it goes back in time about how he tutored this young man and it was really inspirational and a little bit sad but very good. It’s a powerful book,” DeVoss said.

Devoss recommends Tuesdays with Morrie for anyone who is considering going into teaching or has the chance to mentor someone. Devoss’ second book, Shiloh, is from her childhood and it gives the readers a sense of empathy for animals. 

“The book Shiloh is about a beagle and this little boy saves this beagle from being abused. It was like my first true love of a book,” DeVoss said.

Erin Balfour 

“One of my favorite books that I loved reading for the first time that I felt like it was really powerful was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and it opens with the narration with death like death as a person like as a character,” Balfour said. “It’s about WWII and a German family. It’s a very interesting take on WWII which is a topic I thought was really interesting and it’s just so well written so that was one.” 

Balfour recommends The Book Thief due to the lessons that readers can learn from it like reflection and empathy, along with how we treat other people when it’s time to make hard decisions. Balfour’s favorite book to teach is The Great Gatsby 

“I really love teaching The Great Gatsby. I haven’t gotten to teach it in a couple of years and I miss it so much because it’s so great,” Balfour said. “My favorite question to ask when someone reads it is ‘Who do you hate the most?’. ‘Which character made you the most angry?’ I love to create pie charts about who’s responsible for all the deaths and like the drama and all this stuff so it’s a really fun book to teach.”

Balfour recommends The Great Gatsby because she is able to help students understand that just because it’s old doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. 

“You can still find joy in and excitement and all those things in something that is 100 years old,” Balfour said.