Summer Reading
During the summer, all students will need to read at least 1 book from the All School Booklist and prepare for a discussion and assignment.
The procedure:
- The student will choose one of the four books listed below in the All School Booklist. A professional summary and review of the books have been added to help students choose.
- The student will read the book and complete the PreDiscussion Writing Assignment prior to the first day of school in September. This assignment is available on the school’s website. Click here for the PreDiscussion Writing Assignment.
- On the first full day of school, during English class only, the students will be put into discussion groups with a teacher (or two) based on the book the student read. The groups will consist of students of all ages and all levels—only the book decides which group the student attends.
- If the student read more than one of the four books, the student will choose which book he/she wants to discuss.
- The student will take notes during discussion (essentially noting the opinions of other students in the group—the name of the students giving the opinion should not be taken down).
- The student will then use his/her PreDiscussion Writing Assignment and the notes taken during the discussion to complete the assignment given by his/her English teacher.
Additional Required Reading
Students enrolled in AP classes for grades 11 and 12 have their own booklist in addition to the one from the All School Booklist.
Students enrolled in Honors classes will need to read one book required by grade listed below in addition to the one from the All School Booklist.
Grade 9: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Grade 10: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Grade 11: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Grade 12: The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte
ALL SCHOOL BOOKLIST
The following are the all school books--the books from which all students will need to choose 1 (one) to read over the summer and prepare for discussion and writing when school begins.
In The Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time – Peter Lovenheim (hardcover only but $9.99 as amazon.com) (2010) (256 pages) (nonfiction)
Teacher's NOTE: This book is brand new this year and only available in hardcover--this book is too good to wait for soft cover.
After a tragic murder-suicide in his neighborhood, Lovenheim feels compelled to learn if closer relationships among neighbors might have saved a woman from death. The cultural study that follows is as much about sociology as it is about simple friendship as Lovenheim wonders why people can live side-by-side and know literally nothing about each other. He engages in long conversations both with those he has known (at least casually) for years and others he has never met. A retired doctor, harried real-estate agent, workaholic consultant, pathologist, radiologist fighting cancer, dog walkers, and others allow him into their homes and, at least a little bit, their hearts. He meets families and pets and witnesses daily routines, asking repeatedly just what it is that makes a place a home and a street more than merely an
address. He reaches out and finds others also searching for connection and longing for what used to be. Lovenheim advances ideas about isolation in the modern world, and why a welcoming front porch is needed now more than ever. --Colleen Mondor
Life As We Knew It [Paperback] Susan Beth Pfeffer (2008) (fiction)
Amazon.com Review
It's almost the end of Miranda's sophomore year in high school, and her journal reflects the busy life of a typical teenager: conversations with friends, fights with mom, and fervent hopes for a driver's license. When Miranda first begins hearing the reports of a meteor on a collision course with the moon, it hardly seems worth a mention in her diary. But after the meteor hits, pushing the moon off its axis and causing worldwide earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, all the things Miranda used to take for granted begin to disappear. Food and gas shortages, along with extreme weather changes, come to her small Pennsylvania town; and Miranda's voice is by turns petulant, angry, and finally resigned, as her family is forced to make tough choices while they consider their increasingly limited options. Yet even as suspicious
neighbors stockpile food in anticipation of a looming winter without heat or electricity, Miranda knows that that her future is still hers to decide even if life as she knew it is over.
Veteran author Susan Beth Pfeffer, who penned the young adult classic The Year Without Michael over twenty years ago, makes a stunning comeback with this haunting book that documents one adolescent's journey from self-absorbed child to selfless young woman. Teen readers won't soon forget this intimate story of survival and its subtle message about the treasuring the things that matter most—-family, friendship, and hope.--Jennifer Hubert --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Slam Nick Hornby (2008) (fiction)
*Starred Review* For Hornby, author of About a Boy (1998) and High Fidelity (1995), the move from adult to young-adult fiction represents more of a natural progression than a change in course. So it should come as no surprise that he has written an accomplished~teen novel featuring a character whose voice hits its groove at the downbeat and sustains it through the final chord. Sam is a disarmingly ordinary 15-year-old kid who loves to skate (that's skateboarding, to you and me). But then he is blindsided: his girlfriend gets pregnant, and he lands in the middle of his mum's nightmare (she had Sam when she was 16). This may sound like an old-fashioned realistic YA problem novel, but it's a whole lot more. Sam, you see, has a sort-of-imaginary friend: the world's greatest skater, Tony Hawk, whose poster Sam talks to when he
has problems. And the poster talks back, maybe, or maybe Sam is just reciting quotes from Tony's autobiography. And is it really Tony who is "whizzing" Sam into the future for glimpses of what is to come? With or without Tony's help, Sam gives us the facts about~his very eventful couple of years, but as he reminds us, "there comes a point where the facts don't matter anymore . . . because you don't know what anything felt like." Which is where Hornby comes in. We know exactly how Sam feels—even when he feels differently from the beginning of a sentence to the end—and it feels just right: a vertiginous mix of anger, confusion, insight, humor, and love. Ott, Bill
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party M.T. Anderson (2008) (384 pages) (fiction)
TEACHER'S NOTE: Highly challenging and heavy (some disturbing scenes as this book deals with slavery in the U.S.)
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up–In this fascinating and eye-opening Revolution-era novel, Octavian, a black youth raised in a Boston household of radical philosophers, is given an excellent classical education. He and his mother, an African princess, are kept isolated on the estate, and only as he grows older does he realize that while he is well dressed and well fed, he is indeed a captive being used by his guardians as part of an experiment to determine the intellectual acuity of Africans. As the fortunes of the Novanglian College of Lucidity change, so do the nature and conduct of their experiments. [...] Readers will have to wait for the second volume to find out the protagonist's fate (this volume came out this year). The novel is written in 18th-century language from Octavian's point of view and in letters written
by a soldier who befriends him. Despite the challenging style, this powerful novel will resonate with contemporary readers. The issues of slavery and human rights, racism, free will, the causes of war, and one person's struggle to define himself are just as relevant today. Anderson's use of factual information to convey the time and place is powerfully done.–Sharon Rawlins, NJ Library for the Blind and Handicapped, Trenton
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
The plot focuses on Octavian, a young black boy who recounts his youth in a Boston household of scientists and philosophers (The Novanglian College of Lucidity). The Collegians believe so thoroughly in the Age of Reason's principles that they address one another as numbers. Octavian soon learns that he and his mother are objects of one of the Collegians' experiments to learn whether Africans are "a separate and distinct species." Octavian receives an education "equal to any of the princes in Europe," until financial strains shatter Octavian's sheltered life of intellectual pursuits and the illusion that he is a free member of a utopian society. As political unrest in the colonies grows, Octavian experiences the increasing horrors of what it means to be a slave.
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