World Book Day: The 10 best teen reads

As the sixth What Kids Are Reading report bemoans a tendency among secondary school students to read books that are too easy – suggesting that teachers and librarians aren't pushing challenging titles strongly enough to older kids – the organisers of World Book Day have announced a list that might serve as a corrective, or at least a useful source of ideas. The Writes of Passage list of popular books for young adults, voted for by 7,000 people across the UK, features a top 10 of books to help "shape and inspire" teenagers, and give them the empathic tools and words to handle some of the challenges of adolescence. The complete list of 50 features books to "help you understand you", "change the way you think" and "make you cry", as well as thrill, transport and scare you. And it's quite substantial.

On the longer list are plenty of writers who are surely grown-up by anyone's standards, including Emily Brontë, Anthony Burgess, F Scott Fitzgerald and Alice Walker. The top 10 includes another Brontë (Charlotte), Harper Lee and George Orwell, and more young-adult stalwarts such as Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins and John Green. There's a broad mixture of genre and theme – from JRR Tolkien's high-fantasy elves and orcs to the poignant contemporary realism of Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. There's also dystopia, classic and contemporary – 1984 and The Hunger Games – and plenty of heartbreak, whether in The Diary of a Young Girl, To Kill a Mockingbird or Green's The Fault in Our Stars.

The top 10 is also particularly heavy on books that have been made into films: all but one have already graced the big screen, or are shortly to do so, testifying to the cinematic contribution to a book's success (a bestselling title is made into a film, and then acquires more readers from people who see the film first). EvenJames Bowen's A Streetcat Named Bob, perhaps the most surprising top 10 inclusion, might also make the leap – following a sustained spell on the bestseller lists, Bowen's agent has been in talks about a possible adaptation. The heartening story of Bob, the cat who helped straighten out the homeless busker he adopted, is one of the more recently published books on the list as it was only released in 2012. Bowen's clear, unsensational account of becoming slowly visible again after homelessness erased him from most people's view packs serious claws beneath the fluffy fur.

Some might be surprised, too, to see JK Rowling on a top 10 for teens. For me, the Harry Potter books are definitely more middle-grade fiction than young adult, but they're something of a special case, becoming more challenging and progressively darker throughout the series as Harry and his cohort grow up. And they've undoubtedly done an enormous amount to draw readers in, young and old, to some degree mitigating the notion that books are just for geeks (or kids). Despite the plethora of escapist fantasy trappings, Rowling poses some knotty questions about standing up to authority, challenging social norms and sacrificing everything for an ideal: all preoccupations close to the hearts of most teen readers.

As a confirmed orc-hater, I would have swapped The Lord of The Rings for another title from the longer list – perhaps Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, or RJ Palacio's Wonder. And the inclusion of Twilight in the top 50, in the category of books that teach you about love, gives me a colossal case of the heebie-jeebies (I'd like to see a special category for it: examples of what not to wish for). But the list is thought-provoking, wide-ranging, and should provide anyone who wants one with a title that'll suit their situation or their mood.

What do you think are the most glaring omissions? Which are your top teen tomes?

Top 10 books

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
5. 1984 by George Orwell
6. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
7. A Streetcat Named Bob by James Bowen
8. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Top 50 books that will …

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Change the way you think
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Streetcat Named Bob by James Bowen
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Wonder by RJ Palacio
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Help you understand you
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Outsiders by SE Hinton

Make you cry
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Make you laugh
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
Geek Girl by Holly Smale
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

Scare you
1984 by George Orwell
Lord Loss by Darren Shan
The Rats by James Herbert
The Shining by Stephen King
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Teach you about love
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Forever by Judy Blume
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Thrill you
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Gone by Michael Grant
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Transport you
Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald