The Gryphon Gazette has been catching upper-school English teachers off-guard and asking them their top five favorite books. One of the upper school teacher’s picks will be released every day this week leading up to the break.

Mrs. Rubin, the 12^th grade English and AP English Literature teacher, was extremely reticent to discuss her top five favorite books. Her claim that she “wouldn’t even answer this question if it popped up on Facebook,” let alone feel excited to answer it publicly to the school, made it difficult for her to answer the question definitely.

After initially stating that Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden” because of her attachment to the book in elementary school, she then replaced it with Charles Dickens’s “Our Mutual Friend,” before adding that, really, “all Charles Dickens would work.”

1. “The Once and Future King” by T. H. White
   • “[I like it] for a lot of reasons; I like the King Arthur stories, and I had seen different stories [about King Arthur] but I read that in High School and I really liked it. A lot.”
2. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez
   • “I have to say “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. I love Gabriel García Márquez and everything about the book is so brilliant.”
3. “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë
   • “[I chose this book] because Heathcliff, as a character, is so complicated. I don’t know whether to scream at him or to feel terrible for him.”
4. “The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong Kingston
   • “[“The Woman Warrior”] is a memoir. It’s just very powerful.”
5. “Our Mutual Friend” by Charles Dickens
   • “Really, all Dickens, but especially “Our Mutual Friend.” It’s just really satisfying. I took a summer of classes reading Dickens at Oxford. I think that was my final book, and so maybe that was part of why I liked it so much. It’s just a great story.”

Stay tuned after the break for the middle school teacher’s top five favorite books.