# The Handmaid's Tale

**Author:** Margaret Atwood
**Lexile:** 750L
**Grade range:** Grades 11–12
**Age range:** 16–18
**First published:** 1985
**Page count:** 311
**Genre:** Dystopian Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780385490818`
**ISBN-10:** `038549081X`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/the-handmaids-tale
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

In the near-future theocracy of Gilead, a coup has stripped women of money, work, and reading, and assigned the few remaining fertile women as "Handmaids" to bear children for the ruling class. Offred narrates her constrained life and the memories of the world she lost. Atwood's 1985 dystopia is a common grades 11-12 and AP/IB text for its themes of power, gender, religion, and resistance.

## Themes

- women's rights
- totalitarianism
- religion
- oppression
- identity

## Content notes

- sexual violence
- oppression
- mature themes

## Where this book is assigned

### AP English Literature & Composition

- **recommended** · 11th grade — [source: AP Lit representative text](https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition)
- **recommended** · 12th grade — [source: AP Lit representative text](https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition)

### IB Diploma Programme — English A: Literature

- **recommended** · 11th grade — [source: Margaret Atwood is on the IB Diploma Programme English A: Literature Prescribed Reading List (author-eligible; schools select from the full PRL). Verified via independent author-roster cross-reference, 2026-09-04.](https://www.ibo.org/programmes/diploma-programme/)
- **recommended** · 12th grade — [source: Margaret Atwood is on the IB Diploma Programme English A: Literature Prescribed Reading List (author-eligible; schools select from the full PRL). Verified via independent author-roster cross-reference, 2026-09-04.](https://www.ibo.org/programmes/diploma-programme/)

### Summer reading lists

- **recommended** · 12th grade · Massachusetts — [source: Middleborough High School (MA) — Summer Reading 2025, choose one per incoming grade](https://www.midlib.org/sites/midlib.org/files/images/MHS%20Summer%20Reading%202025.pdf)

## Banned / challenged record

Documented removals or formal challenges in at least one school district in 18 states: AK, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KS, MD, MI, MN, MO, OR, SC, TX, UT, VA, WI, WY. Source: [PEN America's Index of School Book Bans](https://pen.org/banned-book-list/) 2022-2024.

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