Innovation Academy's Reading List Fiction & Nonfiction
Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-Year Old GI
Ryan Smithson recounts the experiences he had serving his first tour of duty as an Army engineer in Iraq when he was only nineteen.
Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives
Explores the important role oil plays in the United States and the world, explains what oil is, and describes how oil has affected history, politics, society and the economy.
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats
Traces the sources of processed food ingredients by how chemicals and other non-food raw materials are turned into consumable foods.
The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
Examines the stories behind the creation of the periodic table, focusing on the history of gold, carbon, silicon, and neon.
The World Without Us
Presents a narrative nonfiction that examines the human impact upon the earth and how it would respond without the pressure of human presence.
Elephant Talk: The Surprising Science of Elephant Communication
Photographs and text examine the nonverbal communication of elephants, covering both Asian and African ones.
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous
Shares the sometimes gruesome details of the deaths of nineteen famous historical figures.
Beta
On a futuristic island paradise where humans are served by enslaved clones, a sixteen year old clone, Elysia, seeks her own freedom.
Bunker 10
Something is going terribly wrong at the top secret Pinewood Military Installation, and the teenage geniuses who study and work there are about to discover a horrible truth as they lead a small military force trying to retrieve data and escape before the compound self-destructs.
The House of the Scorpion
In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patron, the 142-year old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.
The Masque of the Red Death
A twist of Edgar Allan Poe's gothic short story, where a wealthy teen girl falls in love and becomes caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow an oppressive government which faces a new plague when one has already decimated humanity in the mid-1800s.
The Gardener
When high school sophomore, Mason, finds a beautiful but catatonic girl in the nursing home where his mother works, the discovery leads him to revelations about a series of disturbing human experiments that have a connection to his own life.
Robot
Contains color illustrations and information about robots, looking at different types of robots, how they work, and how they are used.
Lockdown: Escape from Furnace
Alex is framed for murder and becomes an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary, where brutal inmates and sadistic guards reign, boys who disappear in the middle of the night sometimes return weirdly altered, and escape might just be possible.
Leviathan
In an alternate 1914 Europe, Austrian prince Alek, is running from those attempting to overtake the globe using mechanical machinery, when he forms an uneasy alliance with Dryn, who is disguised as a boy, learning to fly a genetically-engineered beast.