Books Every Teenager Should Read

I Am Malala By Malala Yousafzai

This 2013 memoir by 20-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner Yousafzai (who was attacked by the Taliban for her outspokenness on the importance of girls’ education) should be required reading for any young person.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou

Angelou’s 1969 autobiography shows how a love of literature can help you overcome just about anything (in her case, racism, and trauma). It’s an important reminder for teens who might be more interested in Instagram than books.

Persepolis By Marjane Satrapi

This graphic memoir recalls Satrapi’s coming of age in Tehran, Iran, during and after the Islamic revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Alternately darkly funny and tragically sad, Persepolis humanizes the author’s homeland and provides a fascinating look at how vastly different life for teenagers can be around the world.

Night By Elie Wiesel

In one of the preeminent books about the Holocaust, Romanian-born Wiesel, in just over 100 pages, writes about his experience with his father in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in the mid-1940s.

This super short essay-slash-book was adapted from Adichie’s 2012 TED Talk. She offers readers a unique definition of 21st-century feminism that’s rooted in inclusion and awareness.

We Should All Be Feminists By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Between The World And Me By Ta-nehisi Coates

This winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction is written as a letter to Coates’s teen son and explores the sometimes-bleak reality of what it’s like to be black in the United States.

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time By Mark Haddon

This poignant 2003 novel is about 15-year-old Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog.