Good Books for Sophomore Religion Students

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Hello everyone!!

I teach Sophomore Religion at a Catholic school. I require my students to read a book that relates directly to their faith. For this upcoming quarter, I want to give the students a choice of young adult Christian books to choose from (fiction and non fiction).

Does anyone have any good young adult christian books that portrays a positive message?

Thank you so much for your help and God bless! 👍
 
My kids have had Letters to a Young Catholic on their HS theology reading lists. It’s by George Weigel (non-fiction). Also the Father Elijah books by Michael O’Brien (fiction).
 
Not really YA, but Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit would be excellent choices. Also, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. If they can read Shakespeare (and do sophomore math and science) they can read Dostoevsky.

Easier reading, The Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis
 
PietroPaolo said:
Not really YA, but Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit would be excellent choices. Also, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. If they can read Shakespeare (and do sophomore math and science) they can read Dostoevsky.

Easier reading, The Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis
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Yes, something like the LOTR or Narnia or Dostoevsky although I read Crime and Punishment and I didn’t see any Christian influences. Maybe that was me because I hardly payed attention to what I read of it.

I can’t think of any Shakespeare plays that have Christian influences, maybe I’m wrong though.
 
DlandFan06 said:
Yes, something like the LOTR or Narnia or Dostoevsky although I read Crime and Punishment and I didn’t see any Christian influences. Maybe that was me because I hardly payed attention to what I read of it.

I can’t think of any Shakespeare plays that have Christian influences, maybe I’m wrong though.
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Check out THE QUEST FOR SHAKESPEARE by Joseph Pearce for evidence of Shakespeare’s Catholicism.

Crime and Punishment is all about having to suffer to redeem your sins. That’s obviously a Christian influence.

I’m all for challenging the kids though. They don’t get dumbed-down math or science, so why should they get dumbed-down Catholicism?
 
If the Sophomores are pretty advance, I’d recommend Cardinal Ratzinger’s ‘God and the World’, some G.K. Chesterton (‘A Man Who Was Thursday’), or Flannery O’Connor.
 
Hello everyone!!
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I teach Sophomore Religion at a Catholic school. I require my students to read a book that relates directly to their faith. For this upcoming quarter, I want to give the students a choice of young adult Christian books to choose from (fiction and non fiction).
Click to expand...
Does anyone have any good young adult christian books that portrays a positive message?
Click to expand...
This drives me crazy. :eek:

I wanted to start working on getting my novel Empress Theresa into a printed edition using Amazon’s CREATESPACE last September,
but I had to go to the hospital and lost four months.

Now I’m working on it and may get it out by March 1 if nothing else happens,
but all that time was wasted.

ET is the perfect story for middle and high schoolers. Catholic girl Theresa is 18 or 19 throughout most of the story, but it’s not a YA book about boyfriend problems and all that. She deals with political situations on a global scale, and makes moral decisions affecting millions.
 
Boy, my grey cells aren’t firing like they used to - so he’s an anecdote that maybe someone will recall.

I remember listening to a Priest - either on CD, the radio, or at a conference. He was relating a story about his Goddaughter who was attending college. He went to visit her and all of her classes were advanced and she had all these advanced school books on her table. But her religion class book had big pictures and looked like something written for a 3rd grader. So he bought the ‘religious equivalent to the non-religious books’ she was studying. He listed a bunch. I just can’t remember what they were. And if I could remember who the Priest was, maybe I could remember where I heard him and check those resources.

Why is this string tied to my finger? :confused: 😦 :o
 
I can’t think of any Shakespeare plays that have Christian influences, maybe I’m wrong though.
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Shakespeare knew his audience.
If his plays started talking about religion the people would walk out. They wanted something new and different, not what they heard at Sunday Mass.
 
I have two books to recommend, one a classic, one contemporary.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Finding Grace by Laura Pearl

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has always been my favorite book. I don’t know what other recommendation to give other than it’s a classic and portrays a proud, though poor, Catholic family in Brooklyn in 1912. It’s a wonderful, sometimes heartbreaking, coming-of-age story. When I was young, I very much identified with Francie Nolan, but as I got older, I came to understand her mother, Katie, and identified with her as well.

Finding Grace was awarded the 2012 Catholic Writers Guild Seal of Approval and, while it is definitely a YA book, it resounded with me and several other adult readers (I felt as if the author had hidden under my bed when I was 13 and wrote down everything she heard!) The story of young Grace Kelly (not the actress, the awkward glasses-wearing, frizzy-haired young protagonist of this book) accepting her father’s challenge to become a saint in the turbulent era of the early 1970s is filled with warmth, humor, and a likeable cast of characters who aren’t perfect, but do their very best!

I hope this is some help to you!
 
My Life With The Saints by Father James Martin. SJ.
I, myself, love the Amish Fiction books. The Shack by WM.Paul Young, Crazy Love by Chan. With the Amish Fiction books that ice red so far are “The Season Of Grace” series by Beverly Lewis, and I’m on book 3 of the Women Of Lancaster County series by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould. I’m loving these books. Catholic books, I would have to say Pierced By A Sword by Bud McFarlan also by him is Conceived Without Sin, and Heart Of Gold. These can be gotten at www.catholicity.com. After reading this Amish series, I’m planning on getting another series of those to read. I’d buy books and then let my nieces read them. They were in high school at the time. Anything by Max Lucado is good as well.
 
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