One of the best ways you can prepare your teenager for college is to encourage them to read.  As a practical matter, a teenager who reads is not only likely to achieve better grades in high school, but also earn higher scores on the SAT or ACT.

I understand how hard it can be to get many teenagers to read. One of my children is a reader and the other is not. What should help is giving teenagers lots of choices by compiling a summer reading list. One of my favorite places to get ideas for books for children of any age and any reading level is the California Reading List.

The California Department of Education has compiled great reading lists for students of different reading levels from kindergarten to 12th grade.

For teenagers, the site contains 13 reading lists. Here are just a few of the titles from the state’s recommended teen reading lists:

• All Quiet on the Western Front, Eric Mamria Remarque
• Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire
• Dune, Frank Herbert
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
• Nothing But the Truth, Avi
• A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enough, Nzoke Shange

If you’re interested in learning more about how to find wonderful colleges at affordable prices, I’d suggest you read my book, The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price. Lynn O’Shaughnessy

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under Preparing for college, SAT Test. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.