Interesting graph. What strikes me is that the most pushed and publicized books seem to be the ones that are of no cognitive consequence. As many high schools struggle to find high priced answers and outside solutions to the falling SAT scores, maybe they should asses exactly what the quality of the "literature" is that they are demanding be consumed in the curriculum.

I teach kids from other countries who've never read books in English before. Many of my colleagues teach native-born kids who've reached high school never having read books in English before.

I adored Lolita and 100 Years of Solitude, but the act of making kids want to read is one of seduction, and it's simply not viable to use such books as a starting point. Still, kids who can appreciate such novels are likely independent readers, and as such in good shape for not only the SAT, but college and life in general.

And independent readers are what we need to create. If the only books kids read are those their teachers suggest, we haven't really done our jobs.

Hi everyone,

Just to be clear, I'm not signing on to Griffith's tongue-in-cheek (and I believe joking) assertion that certain books make you dumb. It's not surprising that kids attending institutions with high average SAT scores favor relatively complex and culturally high-status books. This graph should be read as a cultural description a la "Bobos in Paradise" rather than a scientific insight into the effects of certain books on students' learning.