Pan Macmillan English Secondary School Brochure by Macmillan Education South Africa

Reading for Enjoyment

English class readers for Secondary Schools

English Home Language and First Additional Language readers to encourage reading in the classroom.

Grandpa Zombie

ISBN: 9781776250066

Grade 6–8 (First Additional Language)

Alex’s grandpa has grey hair and false teeth and he loves watching travel shows on television. But then he suddenly develops an interest in BRAIIINNNSSS!

Grandpa is turning into a zombie and if Alex wants to rescue him before the Zombie Squad shows up, he’ll need to come up with a plan (and heaps of broccoli). Their travels to find a cure take them across Africa – from Zambia to Egypt – and along the way they meet a range of interesting and wonderful characters.

The Highland Falcon Thief

ISBN: 9781529013061

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

Adventures on Trains is a major mystery series from bestselling authors M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman. First stop, The Highland Falcon Thief, is a breathless train journey full of deceptions, puzzles and clues to solve.

Harrison Beck is reluctantly joining his travel-writer Uncle Nat for the last journey of the royal train, The Highland Falcon. But as the train makes its way to Scotland, a priceless brooch goes missing, and things are suddenly a lot more interesting. As suspicions and accusations run high among the passengers, Harrison begins to investigate and uncovers a few surprises along the way. Can he solve the mystery of the jewel thief and catch the culprit before they reach the end of the line?

Hear whispers in the dining car, find notes in the library, and unknown passengers among the luggage as you help Harrison to solve the mystery aboard one of the world’s grandest trains. Fast-paced and packed with illustrations and clues, Adventures on Trains is a stop you won’t want to miss!

Kidnap on the California Comet

ISBN: 9781529013085

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

Board the California Comet and help Harrison Beck to solve another heart-stopping mystery in the second Adventures on Trains story, Kidnap on the California Comet, from bestselling authors M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman.

After the excitement of his adventures aboard the Highland Falcon, Harrison Beck can’t wait for the opportunity to go on another amazing train journey. So when his Uncle Nat invites him aboard the California Comet, the iconic three-day train journey from Chicago to San Francisco, he leaps at the chance to travel. But when the daughter of billionaire entrepreneur August Reza goes missing en route, Hal finds himself with another mystery to solve. Can he uncover the kidnapper before the journey’s end?

An adrenaline-fuelled journey across America in the second mystery adventure in the major Adventures on Trains series.

Murder on the Safari Star

ISBN: 9781529013108

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

Join Hal and Uncle Nat as they plunge straight into an exciting mystery – this time while on Safari!

All-aboard for the third amazing journey in the bestselling Adventures on Trains series, Murder on the Safari Star, from M. G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman, illustrated throughout by Elisa Paganelli.

Harrison Beck and his Uncle Nat are on the journey of a lifetime aboard the Safari Star – a luxurious steam train that will take them from Pretoria to the stunning Victoria Falls. Close encounters with the amazing animals and landscape of Southern Africa are adventure enough, but things get mysterious when a passenger is found dead inside a locked compartment. Is it just a terrible accident or is something more suspicious afoot? It’s up to train detective Hal and his new friend Winston to find out.

Sabotage on the Solar Express

ISBN: 9781529072655

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

Billionaire train enthusiast August Reza has invited Harrison Beck and Uncle Nat on the maiden voyage of the Solar Express – the winning design of his Reza’s Rocket competition. But during the journey, they discover the train has been sabotaged, hurtling passengers into a heartstopping, action-packed, thrill ride across the Australian Outback. Can Hal find the saboteur and stop the runaway train before disaster strikes? Sabotage on the Solar Express can be read as a stand-alone novel, or enjoyed as part of the Adventures on Trains series. Join Hal and Uncle Nat on more stops in this thrilling series with: The Highland Falcon Thief, Kidnap on the California Comet, Murder on the Safari Star, and Danger at Dead Man’s Pass

Danger at Dead Man’s Pass

ISBN: 9781529013122

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

A mysterious letter from an old friend asks Hal and Uncle Nat to help investigate a spooky supernatural mystery. Legend has it the Kratzensteins, a family of rich and powerful railway tycoons, are cursed, but there is no such thing as a curse, is there …? Hal and Nat take the night train to Berlin and go undercover. From a creaking spooky old house at the foot of the Harz mountains, they take the Kratzenstein family’s funeral train to the peak of the Brocken Mountain. Can Hal uncover the secrets of the Brocken railway and the family curse before disaster strikes? Danger at Dead Man’s Pass can be read as a standalone novel, or enjoyed as part of the Adventures on Trains series. Join Hal and Uncle Nat on more stops in this thrilling series with: The Highland Falcon Thief, Kidnap on the California Comet, Murder on the Safari Star and Sabotage on the Solar Express

When the sky falls

ISBN: 9781783449651

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

1941. War is raging. And one angry boy has been sent to the city, where bombers rule the skies. There, Joseph will live with Mrs F, a gruff woman with no fondness for children. Her only loves are the rundown zoo she owns and its mighty silverback gorilla, Adonis. As the weeks pass, bonds deepen and secrets are revealed, but if the bombers set Adonis rampaging free, will either of them be able to end the life of the one thing they truly love?

Inspired by a true story.

Hatchet

ISBN: 9781509838790

Grade 7–8 (First Additional Language)

There was a wild crashing sound, a ripping of metal, and the plane blew through the trees, out over the water and down, down to slam into the lake …

Brian is a city boy. Not used to living rough. Until his plane crash-lands in the Canadian wilderness. All he has is a hatchet – and a desperate will to survive. Now Brian must learn to live the hard way – or die.

A Quiet Kind of Thunder

ISBN: 9781529037586

Grade 7–8 (Home Language)

Grade 9–10 (First Additional language)

Steffi doesn’t talk.

Rhys can’t hear.

They understand each other perfectly.

Love isn’t always a lightning strike. Sometimes it’s the rumbling roll of thunder …

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life – she’s been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He’s deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she’s assigned to look after him. To Rhys it doesn’t matter that Steffi doesn’t talk and, as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she’s falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.

Hashtag Happy

ISBN: 9781776250608

Grade 7–8 (Home Language)

Grade 9–10 (First Additional language)

@VideoPrincess: I never meant to hurt anyone, including myself, the way I did …

Diana Murray’s life is #goals. Home might not be perfect but her Instagram can be. After only a few months on YouTube her subscriber count is soaring, she’s getting recognised in public and the absolutely gorgeous @ErichLang is sliding into her DMs. How can she be anything but #happy? But while Diana and her friends are living it up with Cape Town’s favourite social media celebs she sees something she wishes she hadn’t, something that could get you #cancelled for good. Just as Diana tries to bring the shocking event out in the open, her phone is confiscated and she is sent to rehab for social media addiction while trolls are tearing her down online. Will Diana take responsibility for her actions and start the journey towards recovery and freedom, or will she remain a prisoner of the false security that social media brings?

When you Dream

ISBN: 9781776250707

Grade 7–8 (Home Language)

Grade 9–10 (First Additional language)

Every great dream starts with a dreamer. Megan’s dream is to build a light aircraft with other teenagers and fly it from Cape Town to Cairo. Her aim is to inspire children in other African countries to follow their dreams. In 2018 twenty inexperienced teenagers from various backgrounds were provided with hands-on experience in engineering and building an aircraft. They assembled a Sling-4 aircraft from start to finish within three weeks, under the guidance and supervision of a group of senior engineers. When they eventually take to the air more than a year later, 17-year-old Megan and her co-pilots undertake a journey full of adventure and nail-biting moments. They fly over war-torn Sudan, in Egypt they almost land in jail, and officials refuse to give them permission to fly over Kenya. But at last, the triumphant team reaches Cairo … just for tragedy to strike a few days later while the team are on their way back to South Africa. Megan’s father and his co-pilot die when their support plane crashes near Tanzania. Megan however refuses to let her dream be compromised by this tragedy. Her dad would not have wanted that. After writing her record exams, she and two of her co-pilots retrieve their plane and complete the flight back to South Africa.

When you dream is based on true events and is a story of courage, commitment, hope AND pain. An adrenaline filled adventure that might sound far-fetched … if it wasn’t for the fact that it is true.

The Code

ISBN: 9781770104501

Grade 7–8 (Home Language)

Grade 9–10 (First Additional language)

Sometimes all you need to turn hope into action is to write your promises down and say them out loud – to make a promise to no one but yourself. This book is about many things –faith, courage, creativity, determination –but above all it’s about the promises we make to ourselves about the future. These stories will inspire you to believe in yourself and to believe in the power that each and every one of us has to shape our lives through the power of “I Will”.

I Heard The Owl Call My Name

ISBN: 9781447289579

Grade 8–9 (Home Language)

Grade 10–11 (First Additional language)

When Mark Brian, a young priest, is sent to the Indian village of Kingcome in British Columbia, he finds himself in an astonishing place of salmon runs and ancient totems. Yet amidst the beauty, the old culture is under attack, slowly being replaced by prefab houses and alcoholism. Mark has not long to live, and so he sets about sharing the hunting and fishing, the festivals and funerals, the joys and sorrows of a once proud tribe. Perhaps here he will learn enough of life to be ready to die.

With all the qualities of a legend or fable, I Heard the Owl Call My Name is a journey of discovery, and a story about the transforming power of love. Exploring the clash of old and new, it is an outstanding modern classic, both wise and tragic.

The Book of Gifts

ISBN: 9781770107007

Grade 9–11 (Home Language)

Grade 10–12 (First Additional Language)

What is the cost of giving a gift? What is the cost of receiving one?

At eleven years old, Julian Flint prefers to remain invisible, safe inside the architecture of adults provided by his mother, his uncle and his aunt. But when his mother, Emma, a celebrated sculptor, takes them all on a family holiday to a hotel by the sea, he meets the captivating and irreverent Clare and everything he thought he knew begins to shift –setting off a chain of events that will determine each of their fates.

From the award-winning author of The Dream House and The White Room comes Craig Higginson’s most gripping and nuanced novel to date. Moving from the lush beaches of uMhlanga Rocks to the stark midwinter wastes of Johannesburg and the rich and strange coral reefs of Mauritius, this masterfully plotted novel explores the fault lines between loyalty and betrayal, innocence and accountability, blindness and perception, entrapment and flight. The Book of Gifts dives into the deepest and most hazardous reaches of human consciousness in order to catch the brightest fish.

Concrete Rose

ISBN: 9781406384444

Grade 10–12

(English Home Language & First Additional Language)

The son of a drug king, seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter is negotiating life in Garden Heights as he balances school, slinging dope, and working two jobs while his dad is in prison. He’s got it all under control – until, that is, Mav finds out he’s a father. Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. Loyalty, revenge and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. So when Mav is offered the chance to go straight, it’s an opportunity – in a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing – to prove he’s different and figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

The Hate U Give

ISBN: 9781406372151

Grade 10–12

(English Home Language & First Additional Language)

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl’s struggle for justice. Movie rights have been sold to Fox, with Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games) to star.

On the come up

ISBN: 9781406372168

Grade 10–12 (English Home Language & First Additional Language)

The award-winning author of The Hate U Give returns with a powerful story about hip hop, freedom of speech – and fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you. Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri’s got massive shoes to fill. But when her first song goes viral for all the wrong reasons, Bri finds herself at the centre of controversy and portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. And with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it – she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be.

Born a Crime and other stories

ISBN: 9781770105379

Grade 10–12 (Home Language)

Grade 11–12 (First Additional Language)

Trevor Noah’s path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show in New York began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of his relationship with his fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother – his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic and deeply affecting. Whether being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping or simply trying to survive the lifeand-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty.

The Dream House

ISBN: 9781770104891

Grade 10–12 (Home Language)

Grade 11–12 (First Additional Language)

A farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman – called ‘the barren one’ behind her back – dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life. At the entrance to the long dirt driveway, a car appears and pauses – pointed towards the house like a silver bullet, ticking with heat.

So begins The Dream House, Craig Higginson’s riveting and unforgettable novel set in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. Written with dark wit, a stark poetic style and extraordinary tenderness, this is a story about the state of a nation and a deep meditation on memory, ageing, meaning, family, love and loss.

The Boys in the Boat

ISBN: 9781447210986

Grade 10–12 (Home Language)

Grade 11–12 (First Additional Language)

An extraordinary journey of how Joe and eight other working-class boys exchange the sweat and dust of life in 1930s America for the promise of glory at the heart of the Berlin Olympics. Stroke by stroke, a remarkable young man strives to regain his shattered self-regard, to dare again to trust in others – and to find his way back home. Told against the backdrop of the Great Depression, The Boys in the Boat is narrative non-fiction of the first order; a personal story full of lyricism and unexpected beauty that rises above the grand sweep of history, and captures instead the purest essence of what it means to be alive.

The Elephant Whisperer

ISBN: 9781509838530

Grade 10–12 (Home Language)

Grade 11–12 (First Additional Language)

When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of ‘rogue’ elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse.

But he was the herd’s last chance of survival – dangerous and unpredictable, they would be killed if Anthony wouldn’t take them in. As Anthony risked his life to create a bond with the troubled elephants and persuade them to stay on his reserve, he came to realise what a special family they were, from the wise matriarch Nana, who guided the herd, to her warrior sister Frankie, always ready to see off any threat, and their children who fought so hard to survive. With unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, this is an enthralling book that will appeal to animal lovers and adventurous souls.

Confluence: Beyond the River with Siseko Ntondini

ISBN: 9781770104730

Grade 10–12 (Home Language)

Grade 11–12 (First Additional Language)

The Dusi Marathon in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is a well-known annual canoeing event. In the race each river is unique, winding a course through a valley of its own making. But at a confluence rivers meet, each taking on the strength of the other as they join forces and head towards the sea.

Confluence tells the uplifting non-fiction story of the Dusi canoe marathon partnership of Piers Cruickshanks, a seasoned paddler who had won multiple gold medals in the Dusi, with Siseko Ntondini, a paddler who had come up through the ranks of the Soweto Canoe Club, and whose dream was to win a gold medal in the Dusi. The two men agree to paddle together and start training towards their goldmedal goal, but in order to get to the start line, they need to overcome cultural and physical challenges to create a winning combination.

Born a Crime

ISBN: 9781770108608

Grade 12 (Home Language)

‘A terrific book … His comedy is so universal that it has the power to transcend borders.’ – BILL GATES

‘… this is a moving, intimate story of growing up in South Africa from 1984. It stands as an archetypal rite-of-passage and coming-tomaturity tale, with unflinching and vivid accounts of home and school life in township and city, domestic violence, enterprising young men in Alex scrabbling to make the barest of livings …’ – MAIL & GUARDIAN

Trevor Noah’s path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show in New York and beyond began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison.