The only rule my teacher gave was for it to not be a memoir and that it’s well written enough to be analyzed (so it would be easy to use for the Literary Argument essay on the exam).
I love all things animal related so I was thinking about reading Jurassic park but a friend of mine said the story is good but it isn’t that thought provoking in anyway and the fictional science would get me very annoyed.
by GalapagosWhale
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Animal Farm would be the most obvious answer… but I’d recommend The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper instead. It’s fantasy, but has feminist and political undertones. Plus, it’s unexpected.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel?
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
If you can use fantasy animals, The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
Watership Down
– Animal farm
– Life of pi
– Watership down
– Remarkably bright creatures
– War horse
– Open throat
– Night bitch (or anything else in the genre of human becoming animal, like metamorphosis)
– Playground by Richard powers
– the friend
– his dark materials has a good play on animals with the daemons. Probably not a good choice if you’re at a religious school though
– The bees
I’d probably go with Life of Pi because it’s a beautiful read and there’s a tonne of directions you could go in for an essay. Open throat and nightbitch are also very literary and enjoyable reads.
Have you considered Black Beauty by Anne Sewell?
It was written in the Victorian era and it’s basically a biography from the perspective of a working horse.
It painted so sympathetic a picture of a Victorian-era horse that it can be linked to some changes in animal handling in the late 1800s! I don’t know much about the demands of AP lit specifically, because I’m not in your country, but I am an English literature “grad student” (i.e., still studying post-undergraduate degree 💀) and I could see this book being a reasonable one to analyse for the purposes of a literary studies essay.
Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle!
Remarkably Bright Creatures?
*The Trumpet of the Swan* by E.B. White
My Family and Other Animals – Gerard Durrell (it’s autobiographical but a novel not a memoir) – classic set in 1930s Gerard and his family relocate from England to Corfu. Its a funny study of his charismatic family and of all the animals he is obsessed with.
The Mountain in the Sea – Ray Nayler – a near future speculative fiction book, where scientists on an island study what may be octopi that have developed a culture. Well written and literary, but a little ethereal, no clear conclusions.
The Island of Dr Moreau, by H.G. Wells. Eminently suited to analysis.