Spanish reading list for native speakers in high school

[Brad S]

There was a previous thread last year on AP Spanish Language and Culture for native Spanish speakers, but I thought I'd take a step back and share a list of readings I've (struggled to ) come up with for pre-AP Spanish for a native speaker.  In our case, it's for a 9th grade native Spanish speaker, or roughly something like high school Spanish 4.  These all include materials originally written in Spanish (not translations), with some literary value, and of interest to a high-school-aged student: 

1. Andrade, Marcel (ed.) Classic Spanish Stories and Plays (in Spanish), on the easier side of this list.  Nice, brief introductions and vocabulary footnotes.
2. Varona-Lacey, G. (ed.) Contemporary Latin American Literature (in Spanish). Nice, brief introductions and vocabulary footnotes.
3. Quevedo, F. Aventura Caribe, maybe more middle school level for native speaker?
4. Sepúlveda, F and L Díaz (eds.) Cuentos Latinoamericanos   
5. Garcia-Marquez El Coronel No Tiene Nadie Con Escribir    
6. Bastidas Padilla, C. Quetzalcóatl y Otras Leyendas de América
7. Cuentos latinoamericanos (Prologue by Conrado Zuluaga, analysis by Maria Candelaria Posada; Publisher: Alfaguara Juvenil/Santanilla). Appears to be for solid high school students in Latin America

The list is roughly in order of difficulty.  I tried to avoid lengthy works so as to provide a variety of texts, especially since Spanish reading speed may not be as fast as English. 

 

There are also a few other materials which may be of interest for others in this situation:

 

(A) there's a great highly abridged, paraphrased Spanish graphic novel of Don Quijote de la Macha by Oceano press, which is really late elementary school level but could be used later.  Highly entertaining and you get some of the main storyline;

(B) Michael Clay Thompson's vocabulary building texts for English speakers have a lot of words that tie in nicely with Spanish for bilingual students, especially Caesar's English 1, Caesar's English 2, and, to a lessor extent, Word Within the Word 1;

© A very nice book, in English, on the early history of the Americas is The Ancient American World (Oxford Press).  It's probably at the middle school level, but could be used for early high school unless you find something more appropriate. 

 

If anyone else has additional suggestions for this level, I'd love to hear them.