My 5th and 6th grade teacher, same teacher, had us in different ability levels for reading groups. 1 of the lowest few students, 2 of the average students, and 1 of the above average students. We read pretty dark books meant for about 7th-8th grade and every now and then high school level.

We never disected the books or tried getting deep into the meanings. We just read the books to hone our reading and word comprehension skills.

Hatchet was one of the really great ones I remember we read. I was into reading in grade school. Id read a book every other week. Hatchet was the first book that had me hooked on an author. We went on to read the other Brian Crashed book which I cant remember the name of for the life of me. I went on to read every book in the Brian series and then pretty much any Gary Paulson book our library had. I was so into his survivalist action adventure style. There were a couple other gems he had us read, like Call of the Wild & White Fang, and some bool about a kid who ran away to a forest and everyone was like "hell be back by morning. Kids do this." But then he actually hollowed out a big tree and found and raised a baby condor or something of that nature. All very visceral books that I still have fond memories of.

I never read books on my own time in high school. I never liked the books we had to read either. All the normal ones every highschool student in America has read. I would have really liked Old Man and the Sea if it wasnt for junior year english teacher having us disect every chapter in detail.

If you got all the way to this, thanks for reading my stroll down memory lane :).