Renaissance Learning has released its fifth edition of the What Kids Are Reading report. Among the many topics covered in the free report, it compared high school reading across the last century.
Below, we’ve linked to free eBook copies of the most popular books in 1907, 1923 and 1964. The complete report noted “a decline over time in the complexity of required texts for high school students.” Follow this link for an infographic summary of the research. Here’s more from the report:
Although our analysis is restricted to the period of 1907 to 2012, there is evidence that writing has become less complex over the last several hundred years. Complexity is impacted in part by average sentence length; books with longer sentences tend to be more difficult to comprehend than books with shorter sentences … it is worth noting that just because the books students are being assigned to read are less complex than in prior years, this does not necessarily mean that they cannot read or comprehend books at higher levels, nor can we assume that assigning more complex texts would necessarily lead to improvements in achievement.
Welcome to our Top Stories of Summer 2013 series. For all our readers returning from trips and vacation reading, we’ve created a short list of the stories you may have missed during this long, strange summer for the publishing industry.
Top High School Reading, 1907-2012 with Links to Free Books
1907
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Silas Marner by George Eliot
1923
The Rivals: A Comedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Sohrab and Rustum by Matthew Arnold
1964
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
2012
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Night by Elie Wiesel