Prepare For Summer Reading
by Jackie Arnold
May 02, 2008
Dear Parents,
Due to the efforts of our Berkshire SPTO and the elementary PTO, we are pleased to tell you that the English department will be able to issue summer reading books to current 6th -10th graders.
Students in regular English classes, grades 7-10 will be issued a book at the end of this year. Your child is required to complete the reading by the end of the summer and they will be assessed over the material this fall. Please be aware that students may be assessed over the reading as early as the first few days of school. Encourage them to be responsible and finish the reading before school starts.
Your child’s book number will be recorded and kept on file. They will also bring home a letter where their book number will be recorded. Seventh through eleventh grade students will be required to turn in this book to their English teacher in the fall, so the book may be used for future classes. Current sixth graders will be receiving their books as a gift from the PTO and they will not need to return it.
Students who are in Honors English classes will need to obtain copies of the additional summer reading books assigned for the class.
Students who will be seniors in the fall of 2008 have been given a list of summer reading titles to choose from. They are responsible for obtaining copies of the books they will need. This list is also available below, along with the list of books that will be provided to students:
Summer Reading Titles 2008/2009 School Year
Seventh Grade English:
Freak The Mighty by Rodman Philbrick ISBN# 0439286069
Eighth Grade English:
No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman
#0786816015
English I:
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#0399501487
Honors English I:
Lord of the Flies by William
Golding #0399501487
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
#9781594480003
The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean #9780060890353
English II:
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#9180641861826
Honors English II:
A Separate Peace by John
Knowles #9180641861826
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#0060955511
Cry The Beloved Country by Alan Patton
#0743262174
English III:
The Ilustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
#9780553274493
Honors English III:
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury #9780553274493
My Antonia by Willa Cather #9781593080242
Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer #9780385486804
English IV:
Senior Summer Reading Options
**Students enrolled in English IV are to pick one of three books listed in Tier One to read. Students enrolled in Honors English IV are to pick one from each tier to complete along with the assignments.**
Tier One:
(The summer reads)
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien) The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a "little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves." He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, "looking for someone to share in an adventure," Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.
Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) In the vice president's mansion in an unnamed South American country, a lavish party is taking place to celebrate the birthday of a visiting Japanese businessman. An American opera singer is entertaining the guests, dignitaries and high-ranking officials from around the world, when suddenly the room is plunged into darkness. Terrorists invade the mansion and set in motion a series of events that irrevocably alters the life of every person involved.
Nineteen
Minutes (Jodi
Picoult) In nineteen minutes, you can mow
the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In
nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a
dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five....In nineteen
minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In
nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town
where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is
shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the
town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin
healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the
tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and
wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie
Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case,
could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what
happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses,
fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin
to show, destroying the closest of friendships and
families.
Tier Two:
(A bit of a challenge…)
A Thousand Splendid Sun(Khaled Hosseini)
Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters.
Set in the smoking ashes of a postapocalyptic America, Cormac McCarthy's The Road tells the story of a man and his son's journey toward the sea and an uncertain salvation. The world they pass through is a ghastly vision of scorched countryside and blasted cities "held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell" [p. 181]. It is a starved world, all plant and animal life dead or dying, some of the few human survivors even eating each other alive.
The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
"There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you." The Mists of Avalon is a story of another time and place. It's the legendary saga of King Arthur and his companions at Camelot, their battles, love, and devotion, told this time from the perspective of the women involved. Viviane is "The Lady of the Lake," the magical priestess of the Isle of Avalon, a special mist-shrouded place which becomes more difficult to reach as people turn away from its nature- and Goddess-oriented religion. Viviane's quest is to find a king who will be loyal to Avalon as well as to Christianity. This king will be Arthur. Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen, is an overly pious, fearful woman who successfully sways her husband into betraying his allegiance to Avalon. Set against her is Morgaine of the Fairies, Arthur's sister, love, and enemy - and the most powerfully believable person in the book - who manipulates the characters like threads in a tapestry to achieve her tragic and heroic goals. The Mists of Avalon becomes a legend seen through new eyes, with details, majestic language, and haunting foreshadowing that hold the reader through its more than 800 pages.
Tier Three:
(New Classics)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
Kingsolver follows an evangelical Baptist minister's family to the Congo in the late 1950s, entwining their fate with that of the country during three turbulent decades. Nathan Price's determination to convert the natives of the Congo to Christianity is, we gradually discover, both foolhardy and dangerous, unsanctioned by the church administration and doomed from the start by Nathan's self-righteousness. Fanatic and sanctimonious, Nathan is a domestic monster, too, a physically and emotionally abusive, misogynistic husband and father. He refuses to understand how his obsession with river baptism affronts the traditions of the villagers of Kalinga, and his stubborn concept of religious rectitude brings misery and destruction to all. Cleverly, Kingsolver never brings us inside Nathan's head but instead unfolds the tragic story of the Price family through the alternating points of view of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. Cast with her young children into primitive conditions but trained to be obedient to her husband, Orleanna is powerless to mitigate their situation. Meanwhile, each of the four Price daughters reveals herself through first-person narration, and their rich and clearly differentiated self-portraits are small triumphs.
The Handmaid’s Tale(Margaret Atwood)
Atwood’s book is a frightening look at a not too distant future where sterility is the norm, and fertile woman are treated as cattle, to produce children for the upper class who cannot have any. The narrator Offred, as she is called in her new life, is the Handmaid for a top Commander in the new government. Once a month she is tested by a gynecologist to ensure that she is healthy, and then is taken to the Commander and his wife in the hopes of becoming pregnant. Offred, along with the other handmaid's, are not allowed to look directly at anyone else. They all wear the same outfits; red long dresses and headgear that cover their bodies. They live together, spend most of their time together, and are taken care of, in the hopes that they will produce children for this barren society. In this society, most women are not allowed to read, and are treated as if they have no minds. The government dictates their role in society. If they disobey, they are punished severely.
The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
Episodic and bursting with incident, this sprawling memoir of an English boy's lonely childhood in South Africa during WW II pays moderate attention to questions of race but concerns itself primarily with epic melodrama," This is the story of a boy, Peekay, born in South Africa in the 1930s. It is a tumultuous time politically, with Hitler gaining power in Europe and the seeds of Apartheid being sewn in his own country. Peekay is English, a Rooinek, in a country that is mostly black but controlled by Boers, white descendents of Dutch settlers. This leaves Peekay an outsider. His mother is a religious nut and sends him to boarding school where he suffers at the hands of older Nazi boys. But on the train one day, he meets someone who will change his life: a boxer named Hoppie. Peekay decides that he will grow up to be the welterweight champion of the world. As he works toward this goal, Peekay meets a host of interesting characters that shape his life: Doc, a German exile, botanist and legendary pianist; Geel Piet, a prisoner and boxing coach; and Morrie, a pal at and co-conspirator at boarding school.
*Abstracts are from Amazon.com.
