Those of you who’ve been paying attention to my rants here at the ‘Realms know that this week, I’m back at school. Today, in fact, was my first day back for the teachers. First day for Freshman (which is what I teach) is Friday, and the rest of the kids return on Monday. As is the case at schools across the country, the first day was consumed with workshops, new teacher introductions, and “funtivities” that certainly got us all in the spirit.

Somehow, we managed to sneak in a little time to start getting our classrooms in order. Frankly, I was a little irritated when I stepped into my room. My class was used for summer school, which I’m okay with, but what the heck? One of my charts was folded in half and tacked back to the wall, my whiteboard is absolutely filthy, the wallpaper and settings on my computer have been totally changed and, worst of all, my desk chair is missing. I still haven’t found it.

But I brushed this off and got back to work, specifically heading for my slowly-growing class library. When I first got my job teaching, I had no time at all to prepare. I grabbed a few books from my own personal shelf that I thought would be approproate for a high school audience and that I wouldn’t feel too bad about if they got messed up or walked away via pairs of sticky fingers. Since then, I’ve been expanding the shelf a little at a time. Whenever I see a used bookstore or a book sale of any kind, I dive in and pull out stuff. A lot of family and friends have given me books they didn’t want anymore. And I’ve been trying to pick up the occasional magazine on varied subjects to drop in as well. Now of course, because of this, the library is pretty eclectic. Half of the books are quite reflective of my own tastes, and the other half are utterly random.

I want to make the library better, and I’d like a little help here. Here’s a short list of just some of the books I DO have on the shelf. (It’s a short list because there’s just no way I’ll remember ‘em all…)

• By Isaac Asimov: The Complete Robot, Fantastic Voyage and Murder at the ABA.
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, and a few other related books.
• Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.
• Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and James and the Giant Peach.
• Robert Heinlein’s The Day After Tomorrow and Starship Troopers.
• Three of Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider novels (these have proven extremely popular among the boys in my class): Stormbreaker, Scorpio and Point Blank.
• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.
• The Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Pearson.
• William Sleator’s Interstellar Pig, Parasite Pig, House of Stairs and The Boy Who Reversed Himself.
• Three volumes of Donald Sobol’s Two Minute Mysteries series.
• Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• War of the Worlds by H.G. Welles.
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
• Plus, several collections of short stories, nonfiction books full of “fun facts,” a Dean Koontz novel whose title escapes me, and a lot of other young reader novels given me by various other people that I don’t recall because I’ve never really even considered reading them myself. Oh… and a couple of novels by some schmoe named “Petit.”

So this is what you’ll see on my bookshelf. The question is, what do you think I should put up there? If you’re a teenager, if you were recently a teenager, if you’re the parent/aunt/uncle/sibling of a teenager, what are some books that you think are appropriate to include and exciting for that age group? I’m open to suggestions here, friends. C’mon. Help a guy out.