Thirty Books of Explorer West Middle School

By klonergan | October 17, 2025

We love books here at Explorer West! Reading is a significant part of our school culture. Take a walk through our school, and you'll find readers curled up with books in one of our many comfy reading spaces. Students love to discuss and share their favorite books with each other.

Here are just some of the ways we nurture a love of reading in our students:

  • We make time to read! "Sustained Silent Reading" (SSR) is built into our schedule. Students enjoy 20 minutes of reading time three days a week.
  • We surround our students with great books, both in our school library and in our Language Arts room.
  • In Language Arts, we read novels together as a class and form student book groups.
  • We provide plenty of opportunity for students to talk about the books they are reading independently. This discussion helps them understand and appreciate those books more deeply, and lets them share their enthusiasm about great books.

Thirty Books for our Thirtieth Year

This is Explorer West's 30th anniversary year. In honor of this milestone, we polled all of our current students about their all-time favorite books. Here are their choices, in order of popularity.

  1. Percy Jackson / Heroes of Olympus (series) - Rick Riordan
  2. The Hunger Games (series) - Suzanne Collins
  3. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (series) - Holly Jackson
  4. Keeper of the Lost Cities (series) - Shannon Messenger
  5. Wings of Fire (series) - Tui T. Sutherland
  6. Harry Potter (series) - J.K. Rowling
  7. Warrior Cats (series)  - Erin Hunter
  8. Big Nate (series) - Lincoln Peirce
  9. The Wild Robot (series) - Peter Brown
  10. The Summer I Turned Pretty (series) - Jenny Han
  11. Ranger’s Apprentice (series) - John Flanagan
  12. The Giver (series) - Lois Lowry
  13. Scythe (series) - Neal Shusterman
  14. To Green Angel Tower / Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn - Tad Williams
  15. Hatchet (Brian’s Saga series) - Gary Paulsen
  16. Land of Stories (series) - Chris Colfer
  17. The False Prince (Ascendance Trilogy) - Jennifer A. Nielsen
  18. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise - Dan Gemeinhart
  19. The Wingfeather Saga (series) - Andrew Peterson
  20. Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicle) - Patrick Rothfuss
  21. Twilight (series) - Stephenie Meyer
  22. They Both Die at the End - Adam Silvera
  23. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
  24. Maus - Art Spiegelman
  25. The Mysterious Benedict Society (series) - Trenton Lee Stewart
  26. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Mildred D. Taylor
  27. West with Giraffes - Lynda Rutledge
  28. A Wrinkle in Time (series) - Madeleine L’Engle
  29. The Odyssey / Greek Myths retold by D’Aulaire - Homer / Ingri & Edgar D’Aulaire
  30. The Extraordinaries (series) - TJ Klune