Are you tired and bored of school? Do you want to leave this stressful world behind?  Maybe take a trip to another galaxy, live in a dystopian universe, or battle gods and monsters? What if I told you you could achieve that goal through simply reading? Three different novels, Ender’s Game, The Maze Runner, and Percy Jackson, will entrance and absorb you, giving the ultimate escape from reality.

Ender’s Game, a riveting Sci-Fi piece of literature by Orson Scott Card, readers are able to travel to another planet and experience a world of adventure through the eyes of Ender Wiggins, a young boy who changes everything. In the novel, Ender is specially picked for a military training program seeking to find the chosen child who can defeat the buggers (the antagonists) and save the world.  Throughout his military training, he undergoes arduous tasks on a spaceship orbiting the planet, and steadily rises through the ranks until he is one of the top fighters on the entire capsule. By reading this book you too will be able to witness this fierce and dangerous journey with Ender as you travel the galaxy and fight the aliens.

The Maze Runner, a dystopian novel by James Dashner, the reader experiences the terrifying reality of a group of boys trapped in the Glade by the evil group WCKD, which is surrounded by a daunting and treacherous maze. These boys face daily life-threatening dangers like the terrorizing buggers, that inject poison into the children that make them go insane. Every few weeks a new boy is sent up to the Glade, but once Thomas and Teresea arrive, everything changes and the dangers became even more present. Thomas, Teresea, and the other boys on the Glade are a determined to discover the reason they are there and figure out how they can escape.

Although The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan may only seem suitable for younger ages, it is an easy read that gives the reader illusion that they’re entering a new world full of magical powers and creatures. The young Percy Jackson discovers at the age of 12 that he is a half-blood, half human and half god. His entire world is turned upside-down and he realizes that dangerous mythical beings want to kill him, meaning that he, along with other half bloods, must attend a summer camp in order to stay protected. At the camp he is assigned a quest to retrieve Zeus’s master lightning bolt and encounters powerful gods and terrifying creatures along the way. By reading this book students will enter a realm of fantasy and combat vicious monsters in order to save the lightning bolt and Mount Olympus.

If you seek to take a break from the stress of school, I highly recommend these books to captivate and invigorate you. Once you return to reality, you might not carry fictional aliens, mazes, or monsters with you, but you may just find yourself holding a new perspective.