Reading selection for a 9th grader

[symphony]

Could you good people recommend some small literary pieces like essays/short stories/articles that are rich enough in language and also interesting enough to keep teenagers from zoning out?
I'm tutoring a 9th grader in English, among other things. She is not much into reading, which in turn is making her a poor writer. She is not very familiar with formal writings, and performs poorly in any kind of creative writing exercises (problems like: incomplete sentences, poor structure, poor vocabulary, unfocused writing...). She doesn’t even read books of Twilight/Vampire Diaries level because they look like entire books, so when I say small- I mean really small!

I’ve always loved language and literature, and was a natural reader back in school. Now that I'm in university and quite rusty on reading myself, I’m finding it hard to make the language interesting for my student. LitNet is the only place I could think of for ideas. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[KCurtis]

For a book how about the Outsiders by S.E. Hinton? I have middle school kids who even though they did not like to read, they liked this book. I would also look at Literature text books used in schools- they have good selections, and some are short. Also, there are some great Langston Hughes short stories.

[Charles Darnay]

Another way to go about it is short graphic novels - like Gaiman's "Sandman" series.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Of course there's The Catcher in the Rye and if that catches fire with your student, she might go on to Salinger's Nine Stories. Although she might have trouble with the British diction, I'd also suggest Lord of the Flies or Muriel Sparks' The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

[symphony]

Thanks a lot guys, I will have to try these with her. But since the very appearance of books repel her, she will probably ignore them if I give her novels right now, so I would like to start with some short stories first. Langston Hughes and J.D.Salinger sounds great. I'm already checking some of the stories to find one fit for the purpose.