These nonfiction books provoke students to desire an expanded world knowledge, to consider the flawed moral decision making of the past and the imperiled morality of the future. They all contain high-level vocabulary, but not so much that a typical student might fail to grasp major points.

As we rounded the corner into the tail end of eighth grade, I set out a number of these books for students to choose from for an informal reading class. One student chose to read “Hiroshima” during her last two weeks of school. After a day or so, I checked in with her. Although the eighth grade covered the dropping of the bomb in social studies, I wanted to be certain she could handle the material. I asked, as a casual conversation opener: “It’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?” She replied, “I feel more sympathy than disgust for these people, Ms. Hollander.”

As the kids say, my bad.

Another student, a struggling reader, chose “A Long Way Gone,” about a child soldier. When I checked in with him, he opened his laptop, pointing out his home country on a map that showed places in which young men, including his father, had been forced into armed service. He reminded me that I cannot always anticipate what a book will say to a reader.

While reading classic literature with students is my passion, I prefer that students explore literature in the summer as a pleasure and return to school curious about the world around them, not weary from having written about books they could not fully understand, or smug from having earned credit for an essay on a book they could have easily comprehended in fourth grade.

Summer assignments should be about why we need to learn and why we need to talk about what we think. We have to move students away from disgust at the unknown, at the horrors visited on other human beings, and toward sympathy. Students who have immersed themselves in real-world problems become excited by current events and history as well as literature. They can make connections between academic areas that are ordinarily divided. They will understand Dickens better for having read “Iqbal,” which tells the story of a boy who is sold into slavery at a carpet factory.

Reading serious nonfiction in the summer is an immersion in the world of necessary ideas. So let’s try that instead of the late August nagging and the relentless complaints from parents about their child’s stubborn refusal to enjoy, say, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” To those parents who wish ardently to re-experience their first literary love, I say, reread it yourself. Perhaps you will recall that the real horrors in that novel happen offstage, to characters who remain peripheral to the narrative. Perhaps your children need to confront some hard truths this summer that will make it easier for them to want to learn about the world.