What books (set texts) do children read in secondary school these days?

[Natsku]

And which ones are good?
I live abroad so DD (12 years old) doesn't get English literacy education as such. Her English teacher at school has said she can just read in lessons because she doesn't need to do the work everyone else is doing as its her mother tongue so I was thinking maybe this would be a good opportunity to expand her reading and vocabulary with books with richer language that she usually reads (she reads things like Percy Jackson and Alex Rider at home) as she wants to be an author when she grows up so wider reading will help with that.

So looking for suggestions. I remember reading I Am David and Of Mice and Men in school but can't remember anything else.

Roll of thunder here my cry (yr 8), animal farm (yr 9) seem to happen most years at my school

I did the hobbit in yr 7, z for Zachariah in year 8 and animal farm in year 9 many moons ago, lord of the flies in year 10

The only set texts I can think of are the ones they study in English lessons (they don't read them at home, but do lessons on them). There are common Shakespeare ones, Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth. Also an inspector calls, animal farm and the boy in the striped pyjamas.

Our kids do get a reading book over the summer as well which is set by the school - 12yo dd had 'trash' this year but tbh she hated it, as did Ds when he had the same book. I wouldn't necessarily pick books for your DD that UK schools read, I would let her choose her own.

We read animal farm, Jekyll and Hyde, the merchant of Venice, an inspector calls and then lots of poetry. War poetry as well as more modern poetry.

She already picks her own books but is very limited in what she will read, she won't branch out into anything else so I'm thinking if its done as her English lesson instead she can approach it differently (and stop her being so bored in class as her teacher doesn't have many books for her to read there)

English teacher here. I would encourage a bright interested reader to look into some of the excellent teen fiction about these days - people like Patrick Ness, Malorie Blackman, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman. But she could also stretch herself in a different way by reading children's classics from earlier times - the Secret Garden, E Nesbit, Wind in the Willows etc - the style and vocab of these books makes them a more challenging read than modern books. She could then move onto some adult classics - Brontes? Austen? Dickens? Orwell? If she feels ready.

Between 11 & 14 DS had Good Night Mr Tom, Midsummer Night's Dream, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Boy in striped pyjamas, A Christmas Carol.

For a lighter, more fun read, try House with Chicken legs or Castle of Tangled Magic. My school uses those for y7. If she's doing this alone and not studying them as a class, the dated references and quite complex ideas in the traditional set texts might be a bit much.

My Yr 7 DS (12 next month ) is reading A Series of Unfortunate Events, A Bad Beginning, as the class set text. He did actually read the whole series of books for pleasure in Yr 5/6. An English comprehension exercise featured an extract from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He's already read lots of the books suggested above, as they feature in several lists of books to read before you leave Primary School. Not the Shakespeare or An Inspector Calls, which are usually GCSE texts.

Things Fall Apart
Never Let Me Go

Schools have choices of texts from the English gcse syllabus. So I would search the main exam boards such as AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexdel and CIE to see their lists.

Thanks, some good ideas here, I'll see which of them I can find in the library.
I'm going to read the books too so we can discuss them (already do that with the books she chooses) so if there's complicated ideas or language she struggles to understand hopefully I can help her.

1984

In yr 8 last year mine did the hunger games, an inspector calls and Romeo and Juliet.

If she hasn't read them already, I might start with things like Ballet Shoes, What Katy Did + sequels, Little Women + sequels, Anne of Green Gables + sequels, the Borrowers, The Family from One End Street. From there she could, depending on her tastes and abilities, branch out into more 'adult' stuff (Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, John Wyndham, then F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Conrad, Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, Woolf, etc etc) or YA stuff, either older (the Kevin and Sadie books, Z for Zachariah, the Curious Incident, suppose Catcher in the Rye sort of falls into this category) or newer (Lies We Tell Ourselves, Noughts and Crosses).

This is a good list with lots of variety....https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/reading-lists-for-ks3-pupils/suggested-reading-list-for-year-7-pupils-ks2-age-11-12/

Take a look at the reading list and chose something else. I think DD won't touch a recommended book ever again.

She had

Of Mice and Men
An Inspector calls
Richard III
Macbeth
Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde
Animal Farm

The other half of her school did a Dickens novel and Pride & Prejudice (which meant a friend is now hating Austen) plus another dystopian novel

I find these selection soul destroying. There are so many good books around. teens can be interested in but the exam boards aren't including them at all.

DD moved in her free time mainly to mysteries, historical fiction, bit of fantasy and biographies.
She like Austen but would hate analysing them.

Our KS3 do Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies

This is our form reading programme www.dysonperrins.worcs.sch.uk/curriculum/Form-Group-Reading

Ds in y8 is currently reading of mice and men at school. Last year he read a book about 2 brothers separated at birth and having completely different lives.

And I disagree that studying a book at school will make that child hate those books and authors; it completely depends on how it's taught and the child's own interests. Ds, who has adhd and hated English at primary school, loved it last year.