Introduction Reading provides young people with numerous benefits. Apart from providing enjoyment, it helps young readers learn more about the world around them including its challenges and chances and it also enables the youth to understand themselves better (Bucher & Hinton, 2010). Clearly, educators have to choose the right works to help young readers in this process. Thus, for grade 7-8, I have chosen the major theme, family relations. The theme is relevant to the age group (12-14 years old) as children are becoming teenagers and they gain more freedom and become more involved into the social life. Clearly, their family relations transform as 7-graders are affected by many factors (peer pressure, changing habits, personality and so on). At this age, 7-graders often stop understanding their parents or rather they think their parents do not or do not want to understand them. Reading texts on the topic may help young readers to find answers to many questions and develop proper relationships with their close ones. For grades 11-12, I have chosen the theme identity. This is a relevant topic for discussion with people at the age of 16-18. This is the age when teenagers focus on their identity and try to understand who they are and what their place in this world is. Again, these teenagers are under pressure occurring at different levels (peers, parents, media, their own dreams and wishes). Obviously, understanding oneself is a very difficult process, especially in the contemporary society where people are dictated to follow certain paths and pursue certain goals. Therefore, reading the texts on the topic will help young adult readers find themselves or, at least, find the way to focus on one’s own goals and dreams rather than pick up somebody else’s paths. Grades 7-8: Family Relations When choosing the stories for students, it is essential to take into account a number of important factors. Bucher and Hinton (2010) stress that the stories should reflect the age of the readers, their reading abilities, interests and needs as well as their thinking levels. Apart from that, the stories should concentrate on contemporary issues, as readers have to be able to associate themselves with the characters of texts. Importantly, these texts should also address cultural issues and various situations related to diversity, gender, environment and so on. Such stories will enable the teacher to start a discussion of important issues and guide young readers in their way to understand the world and themselves. To achieve the goals mentioned above, I will use the following stories. The story “Biderbiks Don’t Cry” focuses on the relationship between father and son and the way sons try not to disappoint their fathers. In “Willie and the Christmas Spruces”, siblings’ relationships are put to the fore. In “No Way of Knowing”, the family is about to split up and the son has to deal with it. “Ice Cream Man” dwells upon relationships between fathers and sons who often fail to pay attention to each other until it is too late. In “The Southern Belle and the Black-Eyed Pea”, relationships between mother and son are revealed. In “Los Tres Ratoncitos: A Chiste”, the relationship between mother and sons are put to the fore. It is possible to focus on the story “Biderbiks Don’t Cry” to illustrate the way the stories can be used through analyzing three literary elements. The first literary element to be discussed is the plot. In this story, three out of four major types of conflict a