New Classics

I would recommend the following books if I am to make a list of future classics:

1. Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
2. The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
3. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
4. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
5. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

All of these may be fiction but there are lessons learned from each book.

Judy Blume is a good one to recommend kids to read.
But I also really like Laurie Halse Anderson also.
My daughter loves her books so much, she has made me read one of her books.
Speak...is the title of what I rad by her. And it was wonderful!!!
Truly, an amazing author!
But I would also recommend the books like 'Go Ask Alice'..the author is actually anonymous.

In high school english, I'd throw in

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
The Alchemist, as aforementioned by someone else,
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

and more as I think of them. Most of the classics they teach in school serve no other purpose than to turn people off of reading forever.

I'm thinking in terms of high school students, because the books I read in elementary/middle school didn't do much for me. They bored me because I've read at a high school level since I was about six.
Some of the high school reading I did I would keep on the curriculum- like Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," and Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." I'd do away with George Orwell's "1984," because I hated it. I'd add in "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt, "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice, and Tolkien's "The Hobbit." I'd also have my students read the works of Oscar Wilde.

i would definately pick different ones. the ones we had to read were boring and you had to figure out things that you had no clue on what you were reading. my son has a difficult time with reading. he does not understand alot of what he reads. but if you put something in a book that he likes he will remember it forever. maybe if they used more interesting books. i have been making my son read for his book reports and he actually likes some of the books. but they are not shakespeare.: )

I agree with most of the authors mentioned here. I actually had to read most of them (Blume, Golden, Heinlein, etc) in school, I credit my teacher for that though, not the school. As an aspiring teacher myself, I'd recommend both modern and classic books:
Anything by Twain, Dickens, Faulkner, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Tolkien, J.K. Rawling, L'Engle...there are so many...Im' sure I'll think of tons more. I do advocate the classics a bit more, as they are better examples of the use of style, symobls, character development, etc.