Common Core text exemplars for high school
34 books set by Common Core State Standards, Appendix B, each with its first edition, the points that identify it and what it is worth where sales are recorded.
Common Core text exemplars for high school: 34 books in 2 groups. We have identified the first edition of 33 of them. A school or study copy of any of these is a reprint worth a few pounds; the first printing of the first edition is the copy collectors pay for. The list comes from the official source, read on 22 October 2026.
The Common Core State Standards never required any particular book, but Appendix B gave teachers a list of "text exemplars" to show the level of complexity expected at each grade band, and in the decade since it has become the nearest thing the United States has to a national reading list for high school English. The grades 9 to 10 list runs to 41 titles and the grades 11 to 12 list to 48, mixing novels, plays, poetry, speeches and essays; the rows above are the books and plays among them that we catalogue, in the order the appendix gives them.
The two bands have different collecting profiles. The lower band is heavy with twentieth-century American firsts that turn up in ordinary homes: To Kill a Mockingbird (Lippincott, 1960), Fahrenheit 451 (Ballantine, 1953, with its asbestos-bound limited issue), The Grapes of Wrath (Viking, 1939) and Things Fall Apart (Heinemann, 1958). The upper band reaches back to The Scarlet Letter (1850), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Jane Eyre (1847), where a first edition is a rare-book purchase, and forward to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), the scarcest modern first on the list.
A student's copy of any of these is a classroom reprint worth a few dollars. Each row links to the book's page, where the first edition is identified against two sources, its points of issue are listed, and a value band appears once we hold recorded sales of that printing.
Grades 9 to 10
- 1623 Macbeth by William Shakespeare First edition: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount (First Folio) 1623
- 1488 The Odyssey by Homer First edition: Bernardus and Nerius Nerlius with Demetrius Damilas 1488
- 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee First edition: Lippincott 1960 points listed
- 1953 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury First edition: Ballantine Books 1953
- 1939 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck First edition: Viking 1939 points listed
- 2005 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak First edition: Picador 2005
- 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou First edition: Random House 1969
- 1958 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe First edition: Heinemann 1958
- 1994 In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez First edition: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 1994
- 1945 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams First edition: Random House 1945
- 1989 The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan First UK edition: Mandarin 1989
- 1759 Candide by Voltaire First edition: Cramer 1759
- 1889 A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen First edition not yet identified
- 1974 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara First edition: Random House 1974
Grades 11 to 12
- 1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald First edition: Scribner 1925 points listed
- 1603 Hamlet by William Shakespeare First edition: N.L. and Iohn Trundell 1603
- 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston First edition: Lippincott 1937
- 1850 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne First edition: Ticknor and Fields 1850
- 1813 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen First edition: T. Egerton 1813
- 1847 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë First edition: Smith, Elder 1847
- 1949 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller First edition: Viking 1949 points listed
- 1866 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky First edition: A. Bazunov 1867
- 1970 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison First edition: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1970
- 1938 Our Town by Thornton Wilder First edition: Coward-McCann 1938
- 1959 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry First UK edition: Methuen 1960
- 1476 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer First edition: William Caxton 1478
- 1945 Black Boy by Richard Wright First UK edition: Gollancz 1945
- 1854 Walden by Henry David Thoreau First edition: Ticknor and Fields 1854
- 2003 The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri First edition: Houghton Mifflin 2003
- 1899 The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde First edition: Leonard Smithers and Co. 1899
- 1930 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner First edition: J. Cape, H. Smith 1930
- 1929 A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway First edition: Scribner 1929 points listed
- 1924 Billy Budd by Herman Melville First UK edition: Constable and Company 1924
- 1605 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes First edition: Juan de la Cuesta, for Francisco de Robles 1605
What changed
Appendix B is a list of exemplars that illustrate text complexity, not a required list: states and districts choose their own books, and most draw on it.
Other school curriculum lists
Frequently asked questions
What books are on the Common Core text exemplars for high school?
34 books: Macbeth, The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, The Grapes of Wrath, The Book Thief, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Things Fall Apart, In the Time of the Butterflies, The Glass Menagerie, The Joy Luck Club, Candide and more. The full list on this page comes from the official source, dated.
Is my school copy worth anything?
No: school and study editions are reprints made in huge numbers and sell for a few pounds. The copy that carries value is the first printing of the first edition, which each row links to with its points.
What changed on the Common Core text exemplars for high school?
Appendix B is a list of exemplars that illustrate text complexity, not a required list: states and districts choose their own books, and most draw on it.
Where these facts come from
- Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, Appendix B: text exemplars and sample performance tasks, grades 9 to 12 (Oregon Department of Education mirror) (ode.state.or.us)
The list is the official one; the first editions, points and values come from our catalogue and are listed only where two sources agree. Checked 22 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.