It's back-to-school time, which got us thinking about the books taught in classrooms these days. Naturally, we got all bossy and decided to suggest some new course reading. Here are 12 Canadian books that we think should be taught in every high school.

The Book of Negroes won Canada Reads 2009 where it was championed by Avi Lewis. (HarperCollins/Penguin Classics/McClelland & Stewart)

Monkey Beach was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in 2000. (Groundwood Books/Doubleday /Vintage Canada)

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson

The Best Laid Plans won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for humour. (Emblem Editions/House of Anansi Press/St. Martin's Griffin)

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Generation X by Douglas Coupland

Two Solitudes won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1945. (New Canadian Library/Drawn & Quarterly/Simon & Schuster)