The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

gah ok, they found updated books that are as bad or worse than the classic ones they used to push. I think this is a warped sense of what constitutes important 'literature' combined with some vague sense that it is important to teach literature to young people.

No it is more important to teach them to read and if you can instill a love of learning so much the better. leave the 'literature' for collage classes that say they will talk about such subjects where smart people can avoid it.

Not all of those would be bad if it is what you want in a book or if the subject interested you. But to arbitrarily say that this is the list of what is important to read? Gah.