Grade+9+Book+List


 * WHAT BOOK COULD WE USE TO SPARK STUDENT INTEREST IN HISTORY AND TEACH THE ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF STUDYING HISTORY IN THE FIRST UNIT OF GRADE 9?**

If you have suggestions, add them below. If you can't figure out how to add something but want to, send me an email. For now, let's assume that the content will be Modern European History (Renaissance to the Cold War).

**__Books written about the time period we will study (Renaissance to Cold War)__**

 * //__One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich__// __by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (fiction)__: This is accessible and we have full class sets at DAA. It is also a topic (Soviet Russia) that we would endeavor to teach in this course and later in IB History.
 * __//Things Fall Apart// by Chinua Achebe (fiction)__: This is accessible and would be a great way to introduce the idea of colonization/decolonization. But the senior English classes at DAA already use it.


 * __Thoughts from social studies teachers not at DAA__**
 * On "thinking like a historian," one thing I used for years in AP that is excellent is the introduction to Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. Great for giving kids an idea of the difficuties involved in trying to come up with an accurate story of the past. The whole book is good but probably not for grade 9. For books, offhand I like Will Durant's Heroes of History. You could use the first 3/4 and get to the Renaissance. It doesn't do anything with the Germans that I recall, but there isn't much to do. Charles Van Doren's History of Knowledge is probably above the kids but if you don't have it you would probably find it to be a helpful resourse."