15 Winter Break Reading Suggestions to Entertain, Educate, and Inspire

With winter break fast approaching, we hope you’re planning to spend some time doing the things you love best. And we know that, for many teachers, reading is on this list. If you’re looking for winter break reading suggestions, here are 15 books you might enjoy! 

Fiction

Title/Author: The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Recommended by: Dr. Barrie Olson, Carnegie Learning Chief Literacy Officer 
Why you should read it: Set during the Great Depression, Hannah’s novel is a testament to human strength and resilience, offering uncanny parallels and hope for the world we live in now.

Title/Author: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: Transcendent Kingdom is Gyasi's equally brilliant follow-up to her acclaimed national bestseller Homegoing. It’s a deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama and examines themes such as the intersection of science and religion, the feasibility of the American dream, addiction, loss, and familial strength. 

Title/Author: Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore
Recommended by: Jennifer Kilmore, Carnegie Learning Director of Sales Enablement, World Languages
Why you should read it: It’s hard to say if Moore is a satirist, a historian, an artist, a scholar, or a visionary, because, really, he’s all these things. And, like his other books, Sacré Bleu, which features several nineteenth-century French impressionists trying to figure out why their friend, Vincent van Gogh, killed himself, is funny, informative, and even sometimes profound. You’ll laugh! You’ll learn! You’ll visit Paris without leaving your couch!   

Title/Author: The Heathens by Ace Atkins
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: What would a winter break reading list be without a good mystery? All of Atkins’ Quinn Colson novels are excellent, and The Heathens is no exception. It’s the perfect fireplace read: part road trip, part southern gothic thriller, part troubled family drama, and wholly satisfying. 

Title/Author: The River Why by David James Duncan
Recommended by: Peter LaCasse, Carnegie Learning Chief Strategy Officer 
Why you should read it: This comedic but deeply spiritual novel is about family relationships, finding love, discovering oneself, connecting to nature, and fly fishing. How many books can you say that about?

Young Adult Fiction

Title/Author: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: Acevedo’s YA novel-in-verse tells the story of two sisters, one in New York and one in the Dominican Republic who don’t know of each other’s existence until their father dies in a plane crash. As the girls begin to process their grief and start the hard work of forgiving their father, they grow to love and depend on each other and ultimately reckon with the fact that their father’s indiscretions have given them each the greatest gift of their lives. 

Title/Author: This Is My America by Kim Johnson
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: In Johnson’s YA novel, Tracy Beaumont’s father is an innocent man on death row, and her brother, Jamal, has just been arrested for killing a white classmate. As Tracy works to uncover the secrets that will set both her dad and brother free, the racist history of her small Texas town comes to light, and she learns to speak the truth even when faced with seemingly insurmountable opposition. This intense and gripping novel excellently illustrates how injustices of the past still impact present-day realities.  

Title/Author: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: In this paranormal YA novel, Yadriel, whose family has trouble accepting his true gender, is determined to prove his supernatural powers and show that he deserves a place in his mystically-inclined family. With the help of his cousin and best friend, he attempts to summon the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. Unsurprisingly, things don’t go exactly as planned, and Yadriel ends up learning a lot about culture, compromise, love, and self-acceptance. 

Nonfiction 

Title/Author: Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn by Sanjay Sarma
Recommended by: Peter LaCasse, Carnegie Learning Chief Strategy Officer 
Why you should read it: Sanjay Sarma, head of Open Learning at MIT, provides a groundbreaking look at the science of learning and equips educators with practical tools they can use in their classrooms to cultivate curiosity and promote deep and lasting learning. 

Title/Author: How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now by Stanislas Dehaene
Recommended by: Dr. Martha Burns, Carnegie Learning Director of Neuroscience Education, Literacy
Why you should read it: In How We Learn, Dehaene expansively and brilliantly draws from computer science, neurobiology, and cognitive psychology to explain how learning really works. He also examines how artificial intelligence is programmed to mimic the intricacies of the human brain and gives actionable strategies for using the brain’s learning processes in the classroom, as well as in everyday life.

Title/Author: Poet Warrior: A Memoir by Joy Harjo
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: Joy Harjo is the first Indigenous U.S. poet laureate, and in Poet Warrior, she writes about the heartaches, influences, and realizations that led her to write poems with the power to unearth truth and demand justice. In smoldering, lyrical prose, Harjo writes about her mother’s death, grieves her stolen ancestral homeland, and contemplates her roles as artist, wife, mother, and community member. If you want to start earlier in Harjo’s life, we also recommend her 2013 memoir, Crazy Brave.

Title/Author: The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: Bechdel’s third graphic memoir is about the history of exercise trends, but don't let the topic make you doubt that this book contains the same emotional depth as Fun Home and Are You My Mother? While The Secret to Superhuman Strength is peripherally about exercise, it focuses centrally on the quest for perfection and the journey to self-acceptance as the author comes to grips with her deep dependence on others.   

Title/Author: Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education by Justin Reich 
Recommended by: Dr. Steve Ritter, Carnegie Learning Founder and Chief Scientist
Why you should read it: Reich describes both the potential of educational technology and ways in which it integrates or fails to integrate with common school and classroom practice. He holds up Carnegie Learning’s research-based approach as exemplary: “The development of Carnegie Learning’s Cognitive Tutor over more than twenty years and their promising results on algebra learning outcomes represent one high point in K-12 educational data science.”

Poetry

Title/Author: Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why You should read it: Gorman is best known for her inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” and, like that poem, this collection captures our fraught and troubled moment and transforms it into one of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, and identity through an imaginative melange of many poetic forms and styles. For ideas on teaching Gorman’s inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” check out our mini-lesson plan series.  

Title/Author: Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Recommended by: Carnegie Learning staff
Why you should read it: Betts, who spent nine years of his life in prison, writes bold, resilient poems that take on a wide range of experiences: life during and after prison, homelessness, law, underemployment, love, drug abuse, guilt, violence, redemption, fatherhood, and hope.

Happy Reading!

It’s no secret that teachers spend most of their time caring for others, so we hope you can take time for yourself over break to curl up with a good book. You’ve earned it!