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Reading at HGS

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Our aim is for all students to develop a life-long passion for reading and we have a culture where reading is enjoyed and celebrated. 

Reading is a core skill which not only helps to improve spelling, increase vocabulary and written skills but also stimulates the imagination and challenges beliefs and perspectives. Reading for pleasure boosts brain and memory function, reduces stress, promotes relaxation and improves sleep; this is why reading regularly is so important.

All students have access to a vibrant and inspiring library, where fiction and non-fiction texts can be borrowed. Whether these texts are complementary to their wider curricular studies or are simply being read for pleasure, our library has something for every reader.

The library can be accessed by all students before and after school and during every morning break and lunch times. Students in Year 7 and 8 also experience one library lesson per fortnight, in which they are able to browse the library, listen to motivating author talks and book recommendations and participate in engaging reading activities. 

To achieve excellence in reading, we actively promote reading through form time and via home learning. We celebrate our annual Harrogate Grammar School Reading Week and participate in many national activities and competitions.

Suggested Texts

Looking for books to read to support your reading in school.  Click on the links below to access suggest texts:

Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11 - also suitable for students in Year 9)



Recommended Reading

To support students and parents, we regularly share reading recommendations.  Our most recent recommended reads are listed below.  To access our recommended reading lists from previous months click on the grey box below.


Reads to mark remembrance

Lest we forget

Autumn Term 2025

Key Stage 3 (Years 7 to 9)

The First World War

Take a journey to a vanished world with the ADVENTURES IN TIME series - stories so exciting you won't believe they're all true. 'The whistles blew, the cheers went up, and thousands of men were scrambling up into the rolling fields of No Man's Land . . .' Travel back in time to the First World War, as historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us from the soaring heights of an aeroplane cockpit to the desperate depths of the enemy trenches. We are plunged first hand into a conflict like no other as, amid the greatest clash of empires ever known, the future of the world hangs in the balance.

Zinc

It is World War 2 and brothers George and John, and their sister Eva are each fighting in their own way. Secret agent George is parachuted into Slovakia in an Operation codenamed Zinc, John breaks codes at Bletchley Park, while Eva is stranded in enemy-occupied Hungary. Based on the extraordinary real-life stories of Sue Klauber’s father, uncle and aunt, she wrote Zinc for her son to celebrate the full and heroic engagement of their North London Jewish family in the fight against tyranny.
Sadako Sasaki

Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Ten years later, just as life was starting to feel almost normal again, this athletic and enthusiastic girl was fighting a war of a different kind. One of many children affected by the bomb, she had contracted leukaemia. Patient and determined, Sadako set herself the task of folding 1000 paper cranes in the hope that her wish to be made well again would be granted. Illustrations and personal family photos give a glimpse into Sadako's life and the horrors of war

Key Stage 3 and 4

When the world was ours

Vienna, 1936. Elsa, Leo and Max have always been best friends, a special team of three. Then the Nazis come. As a growing darkness descends around them, Leo and Elsa run for their lives, taking two very different paths across Europe. And Max, once their closest friend, now becomes the enemy as he is drawn into the Hitler Youth. Will the friends ever find their way back to each other? Will they want to? Inspired by a true story, WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking, and shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times. Three friends. Two sides. One memory.

Safiyyah's war

War comes to the streets of Paris and Safiyyah’s life changes for ever. Her best friend’s family have fled, and the bombing makes her afraid to leave the mosque where she lives. But when her father is arrested by the Nazis for his secret Resistance work, it falls to Safiyyah to run the dangerous errands around the city. It’s not long before hundreds of persecuted Jews seek sanctuary at the mosque. Can Safiyyah find the courage to enter the treacherous catacombs under Paris and lead the Jews to safety?

Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11)

Remembrance

1915 - Scotland. It begins with a group of teenagers from two families, friends despite their social differences, on a picnic on a beautiful sunny day. Mostly romance is on their minds, but the peace of the day is shattered by the sound of a plane flying overhead - an omen of how the reality of the war across the Channel is soon to tear them away from such youthful pleasures. All too soon the horror of what is to become known as The Great War engulfs them, their friends and the whole village. From the horror of the trenches to the devastating reality seen daily by those nursing the wounded, they struggle to survive. They are luckier than some - all but one return home - but they know that nothing will ever be the same again.

The Enigma Game

Windyedge Airfield, Scotland. World War II. Louisa Adair, newly orphaned and shunned for her mixed-race heritage, has come here to the edge of the world to look after an old lady with a dark past. Jamie Beaufort-Stuart is a flight lieutenant whose squadron is posted to the airfield over winter. Ellen McEwan is a young woman held hostage by the German pilot who lands at Windyedge one wild stormy night carrying a terrible secret. Three young people desperate to make a difference in a war that has decimated their families, friends and country. When the means to change the course of history falls into their hands, how will they use it? And when the enemy comes looking for them, who will have the courage to strike back? A thrilling story of wartime secrets, international intrigue and wild courage from the award-winning author of Code Name Verity, with three young heroes you'll never forget.

Key Stage 4 and 5 (Years 10 to 13)

All the light we cannot see

‘Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.’ For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth. In this magnificent, deeply moving novel, the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner illuminate the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Night

Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor’s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century

Key Stage 5 (Years 12 and 13)

On the beach

After the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from the United States and the submarine must set sail through the bleak ocean to search for signs of life. On the Beach is Nevil Shute's most powerful novel.

The Alice Network

1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her "little problem" taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister. 1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the "Queen of Spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose. Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house.

New Arrivals in the LRC

Dagger Wrong tracks Lies we sing Legend Pet sem the summer i the foundation

Harrogate Grammar School is part of Red Kite Learning Trust, a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales with company number 7523507, registered office address: Red Kite Office, Pannal Ash Road, Harrogate, HG2 9PH

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