Leading Authors on the Novels Every School Should Teach

We ask writers from Ben Okri to Samantha Harvey to pick books that will inspire a lifelong love of reading.

There has been a marked decline over recent years in the numbers of children reading for pleasure. It’s why the National Literacy Trust designated 2026 the National Year of Reading. Already there has been a shift from a 20-year low in 2025 of 32.7% of eight-to-18-year-olds saying they enjoy reading in their free time up to 36.1%. It’s a start.

We are also in a long-overdue moment of curriculum renewal for GCSE English, so when better to ask if what’s studied in school helps young people fall in love with reading – or possibly puts them off for life?

Here, to get the conversation started, are suggestions of texts to inspire a passion for fiction in young readers. And, from me, a plea for the government to support teachers who want to better reflect the gender balance and diversity of their classrooms.

This is the way to encourage a lifelong love of reading.

Nussaibah Younis
The Trees by Percival Everett

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a blisteringly funny novel on the syllabus? The Trees is a daring satire on racism, generational guilt and cultural complicity, inspired by the lynching of Emmett Till. Genre-bending and gloriously inventive, it finds morbid delight in the absurdities of American racial violence without ever trivialising its victims. With characters such as Dr Reverend Fondle, Junior Junior and Hot Mama Yeller, Everett exposes the grotesque stupidity of white supremacy through comedy that is as vicious as it is exhilarating. What better way to show teenagers that literature can be genuinely enjoyable, even laugh-out-loud funny, while remaining intellectually and morally serious.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

A great short story hits you like a left hook or an unexpected kiss – coming out of nowhere and leaving you gasping, what just happened? Which is the perfect state for learning, of course. Short stories work really well in the classroom because reading is best when it’s shared. I would, therefore, strongly suggest Ted Chiang’s astonishing science fiction collection Stories of Your Life and Others. Each story takes on a big idea – language, love, intelligence, the collateral damage to real estate that angels might cause when intervening in human affairs, that sort of thing. They go off in your head like bombs. The most famous is the title story, which was made into the movie Arrival. Teenagers love ideas. They’re about to go into a world that their grownups are viewing as some kind of sci-fi nightmare. Here’s a bold, brilliant, thrilling set of thought experiments about how it could be OK after all. It’s a science fiction collection that opens with a story set in Old Testament Babylon. What else do you need to know?

Patrice Lawrence
Random by Debbie Tucker Green

I recommend this play. For a Black working-class London family, it’s a normal weekday – until the teenage son is senselessly stabbed and killed.

The work is performed by one actor, from the point of view of the sister. The dialogue is funny, tenderly painting the warm family relationships until that one moment destroys everything. Then follows grief, fury, helplessness and despair.

Random is gripping and short. It’s a springboard for many different conversations, from topics such as the impact of race in the criminal justice system and the representation of working-class families, to the benefits and challenges of performing such an emotional piece in a stripped-back set.

David Mitchell
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

This wise, chaotic, gentle, painful, funny, superb novel follows five teens trying to navigate the most difficult year of their lives, while the town’s cool indie kids are battling Stranger Things-sized perils in vignettes at the start of each chapter. It contains some of the truest (and helpful) lines about social anxiety I’ve ever read. For reluctant readers, The Rest of Us Just Live Here proves that great fiction is as compelling as a great video game; and unlike social media, it leaves you feeling nourished, smarter, and not wanting back the time you just spent on it. I was asked to provide one title only, but hey: class, now turn to that blast of medieval Tarantino, The Pardoner’s Tale. Chaucer, Patrick Ness and the language we’re using right now cohabit the same glorious entangled continuum. Compare and contrast Henry IV Part 2 Act 3 Scene 1, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” with the lyrics to Stormzy’s song Crown. Art is made of art. It speaks across centuries. Now it’s your turn.

- Author: Kate Mosse, The Guardian

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