Running out of planning time? Let us give you a hand.

It’s August.

This is not the time for another list of “100 Books Every Student Should Read Before Graduation.”

You do not need 100 books.

You need one.

One book you can put on the syllabus. One book you can order, assign, and start teaching without spending the next two weeks wondering whether you made the right choice.

If you’ve reached the I just need to pick something stage of back-to-school planning, here’s my advice:

Pick a book that gives you something to teach.

That sounds obvious, but there’s a difference between a good book and a good book to teach.

A Great Story Isn’t Quite Enough

Of course you want students to enjoy the book.

But you’re going to spend weeks with it.

You’re going to ask questions about it. Assign writing about it. Stop in the middle of chapters and say, “Did you notice what just happened there?”

So give yourself some material to work with.

Look for a novel that naturally opens doors.

A book with vocabulary worth learning.

A book with characters who make decisions worth arguing about.

A book with historical, scientific, political, philosophical, or cultural context you can explore.

A book with symbolism students can actually discover.

A book that lets you teach irony, foreshadowing, point of view, characterization, or figurative language without having to drag those concepts into the lesson by force.

Most importantly, look for a book that gives students something worth talking about after they close it.

Pick a Book With Questions That Don’t Have One Right Answer

Some of the best literature discussions begin when two students read the same chapter and come away with completely different conclusions.

Was that character brave—or reckless?

Was the decision justified?

Who was actually responsible?

When did things start to go wrong?

Could this have ended differently?

What would you have done?

Those questions are infinitely more useful than trying to fill forty-five minutes discussing what happened in Chapter Four.

A book that creates disagreement gives you something to teach.

Pick a Book That Connects to Something Bigger Than Itself

This doesn’t have to mean choosing a Very Important Book and spending six weeks being Very Serious about it.

It means choosing a story that gives you somewhere else to go.

Animal Farm can take you into propaganda,

revolution, political language, and the way power changes people.

Fahrenheit 451 can lead to censorship, conformity, technology, entertainment, and whether people sometimes willingly surrender things we assume have to be taken from them.

A Wrinkle in Time opens doors to science, individuality, courage, conformity, and the uncomfortable experience of discovering that your greatest weakness might also be useful.

A Christmas Carol can become a conversation about poverty, responsibility, regret, generosity, and whether people really can change.

The novel is the starting point.

That’s when literature gets interesting.

Pick Something You Actually Want to Talk About

This one matters.

You are going to live with this book for a while too.

If you finish reading it and your only thought is, Well, I suppose students ought to read this, keep looking.

Find the one that makes you want to ask somebody:

“Okay, but what did you think about THIS?”

That’s probably the book you want in your classroom.

Enthusiasm is contagious.

So is boredom.

And Then Stop Looking

At some point, choosing the “perfect” book becomes another form of procrastination.

There will always be another recommendation.

Another curriculum list.

Another teacher who swears that this is the novel that transformed her ninth-grade classroom.

You don’t need the universally perfect novel.

You need a good book, appropriate for your students, that gives you enough material to build something worthwhile around it.

So if you’re still staring at lists and reviews and sample chapters:

Pick one with interesting language.

Pick one with complicated questions.

Pick one that connects to something bigger.

Pick one you want to talk about.

Then close the other seventeen tabs.

Pick the book.

You can figure out the rest from there. We can help.

SwiftRiverResources.com