Education Dept. Vastly Widens Best Books List

A geisha, a fruit bat and explorer Meriwether Lewis have more in common than it appears.

The three are subjects of best-selling books that hadn’t been written when the California Department of Education last put out a recommended reading list more than a decade ago.

But books in which they are featured--”Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Stellaluna” and “Undaunted Courage”--made the cut for a new list that the agency will soon publish.

The eclectic collection of 2,700 titles is intended as a guide to the kinds of books that kindergarten through 12th-grade students should read independently both at school and outside of class.

Reflecting the changing makeup of California, the list for the first time will include hundreds of books in the five languages other than English that are commonly spoken by the state’s students: Spanish, Vietnamese, Hmong, Chinese and Tagalog.

Putting the list together was a daunting task involving scores of literature experts, educators and representatives of arts and library organizations statewide, said Diane Levin, a consultant to the state who initiated the effort.

One member of a state advisory panel was stunned by the dearth of classic literature on an early draft of the list.

“There was a sudden discrimination against dead white males,” said Leo Aguilera, an English literature teacher at Thomas Downey High School in Modesto. An AP English teacher, Aguilera pushed to restore nearly 50 classics that had been dropped.

He was not able to build a consensus for Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or even the King James version of the Bible.

Some dead white females were initially absent too--notably the Bronte sisters. Aguilera succeeded in resurrecting Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre” and Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” (although it is attributed to Charlotte in a draft list on the department’s Web site).

Despite those troublesome omissions, he said, “it’s a list we can be very proud of, from contemporary works back to the classics. What a great service it is for teachers.”

For the first time, the state’s list will be available online on the department Web site, https://www.cde.ca.gov, though it has not been posted yet. Teachers, students, parents and librarians will be able to search for entries by author, title, subject, grade level, genre and other categories.

Annotations will appear with each entry and will include a summary of the book’s subject, content, story line and characters. An annotation might also suggest a link to a particular standard or subject area, such as math, history or science. Or it might mention that the book, poem or play contains sensitive subject matter or explicit language.

California authors, illustrators and settings will be highlighted.

Unlike the bound reading lists of years past that were out of date as soon as the agency issued them, this list will be dynamic. Plans call for winners of such prizes as the Pulitzer, the Caldecott Medal and the Newbery to be added on a regular basis.

Being on such a list in a state the size of California can be lucrative. Barbara Kingsolver, whose “Animal Dreams,” “The Bean Trees” and “Pigs in Heaven” made the list, was lobbying to get her more recent “Poisonwood Bible” added as well, Aguilera said.

Teachers, especially, should find the online list a helpful resource as they plot lessons to meet California’s content standards.

“I’m very impressed,” said Karen Symms Gallagher, the new dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education, who served on the advisory group for the list. Most other states do not provide such a list.

The new version is more than twice as long as its predecessor. Panel members hesitated to let it grow much more, figuring it would become unwieldy.

“You have to draw the line on what this database can hold,” said Robert Pritchard, an education professor at Cal State Fresno.

No book made the list on the recommendation of a single individual. And each one was read by at least one committee member.

What won’t be clear to many list users is which books are appropriate for which particular children. Parents and teachers will have to pay close attention to notations of graphic language or issues of sexual orientation.

“If you don’t look for those, you might think [many books] would be appropriate for seventh grade, but they’re not,” said Carol Jago, a high school English teacher in Santa Monica.

For the most part, she said, the recommendations will find a large, appreciative audience.

“That [old] list desperately needed revision,” Jago said. “Teachers have been dying for [the new one] for a long time.”