11AP Language and Composition Summer Reading Assignment
For your Summer Reading assignment you must read 2 novels – one Fiction and 1 Non-Fiction. You will select your books from the list provided on the Valley Stream North Website.
- For your fiction novel you must complete a reading response log.
Directions: All work must be typed using a size 12 professional font (Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman)
- While reading your novel, you will note a minimum of5 passages that you find particularly important, provocative, dramatic, surprising, or disturbing. (Use post-its to note/mark your passages as you read.)
- For each passage you note you will write a 5-8 sentence response that explains why the passage is important to the book’s message/theme. Does the passage develop characterization, offer commentary on a social issue that is evident; or, has the passage altered your view on the topic?
- Each response should include your analysis of the literary andrhetorical techniques present in the quotations; you can discuss the author’s attitude, purpose or tone.You can talk about how the author’s utilization of structure, point of view, diction, appeals, or syntax isinstrumental to the development of the plot.
- Your entries must range from the beginning to the end of the book. ***You must provide page numbers with your quotes.
Sample response:
Book Title / AuthorThe Scarlet Letter / Nathaniel Hawthorne
Quotations from Text with Page Numbers / Commentary/Responses to TEXT
Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. (Hawthorne 45)
Use MLA format for quotations and citations! / This quote strikes me because amid the ugly description of the prison, the author calls it “the black flower of civilized society.” Now admittedly, calling it a “black flower” might imply that it is a dark stain on, or evil transformation of, something beautiful. However, a flower is a flower, and flowers are universally considered something beautiful. This is an early hint that the prison, or perhaps imprisonment of some other kind, will serve a positive purpose.
Don’t forget to enjoy the reading!
- After reading your non-fiction novel you must do the following…
Directions: Choose one of the following four writing prompts. Write a thoughtful and well-written response to the selected question. The length of your response must be 500 to 750 words (maximum).
1.Think about your novel and ask yourself – What is the author’s purpose for writing this novel? Is the writer trying to elicit a certain response from the reader? If so, what? Place this memoir/text in a cultural context and examine the social issues the author offers a commentary on, either directly or indirectly. What argument is the writer making? Has this reading altered or enhanced your view on any particular social issues? (You must answer all parts of this question.)
2.Explore the techniques the writer utilizes in developing the character throughout the text. Include a discussion of a memorable scene in the book that reveals the character and explore how this scene relates to the whole of the text.
3.Discuss how the writer or character’s experiences have affected and shaped his or her views.
4.Memoirs, in some way, typically contain coming of age stories addressing the quest to discover or define a person. Elements may include family, friendship, community, home, culture, values, education, rebellion, travel, or politics. What does “coming of age” mean to your author?
Name ______11AP Language and Composition Summer Reading Response Journal
Directions:Complete the following organizer by noting 5 passages from your novel. Your commentarymust explain why the passage is important to the book’s message/theme. You must include analysis of the literary and rhetorical techniques present in the quotations.
Book Title: / Author:Quotations from Text with Page Numbers / Commentary/Responses to TEXT
Summer Reading List – 11AP
Directions: You are to choose (1) book from the list of Non-Fiction novels and (1) book from the list of Fiction novels.
Non-Fiction
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poorblack tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more.Henrietta's cellshave been bought and sold by the billions, yetshe remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. In "Redeployment", a soldier, must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people "who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died." In "After Action Report", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains—of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming.
Dear Abigail by Diane Jacobs
Much has been written about the enduring marriage of President John Adams and his wife, Abigail. But few know of the equally strong bond Abigail shared with her sisters, Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, accomplished women in their own right. Now acclaimed biographer Diane Jacobs reveals their moving story, which unfolds against the stunning backdrop of America in its transformative colonial years. This engaging narrative traces the sisters’ lives from their childhood sibling rivalries to their eyewitness roles during the American Revolution and their adulthood as outspoken wives and mothers. They were women ahead of their time who believed in intellectual and educational equality between the sexes. Drawing from newly discovered correspondence, never-before-published diaries, and archival research, Dear Abigail is a fascinating front-row seat to history—and to the lives of three exceptional women who were influential during a time when our nation’s democracy was just taking hold.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
Reading Lolita in Teheran by Nazar Nafisi
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
There is nothing imaginary about Junger's book; it is terrifyingly, awesomely real.—L. A. Times
It was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high—a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm." In a book that has become a classic, Sebastian Junger explores the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched. ?The Perfect Storm? is a real-life thriller that makes us feel like we've been caught, helpless, in the grip of a force of nature beyond our understanding or control.
I Never Had It Made by Jackie Robinson, Alfred Duckett
Before Barry Bonds, before Reggie Jackson, before Hank Aaron, baseball's stars had one undeniable trait in common: they were all white. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke that barrier, striking a crucial blow for racial equality and changing the world of sports forever. I Never Had It Made is Robinson's own candid, hard-hitting account of what it took to become the first black man in history to play in the major leagues. I Never Had It Made recalls Robinson's early years and influences: his time at UCLA, where he became the school's first four-letter athlete; his army stint during World War II, when he challenged Jim Crow laws and narrowly escaped court martial; his years of frustration, on and off the field, with the Negro Leagues; and finally that fateful day when Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers proposed what became known as the "Noble Experiment"—Robinson would step up to bat to integrate and revolutionize baseball.
More than a baseball story, I Never Had It Made also reveals the highs and lows of Robinson's life after baseball. He recounts his political aspirations and civil rights activism; his friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, William Buckley, Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller; and his troubled relationship with his son, Jackie, Jr. I Never Had It Made endures as an inspiring story of a man whose heroism extended well beyond the playing field.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
Fiction
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
The extraordinary #1New York Timesbestseller … Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.
Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In most books about the Holocaust, we are told the Jewish point of view: how they suffered, the concentration camps, and the prejudices that Nazis accompanied with them. However, The Book Thief is told from the German perspective, with the story of eight year old Liesel Meminger and her foster family. This story is unique, as it is told through the eyes of Death, who comments on everyone he encounters. Also, the book is frequently interrupted with extra information or drawings. These features make the book much more realistic. Zusak’s points out how real the Holocaust was, not only to Jews, but to Germans living in 1942 Germany.
The Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Atwood
In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies?
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—Robert Louis Stevenson
This intriguing combination of fantasy thriller and moral allegory depicts the gripping struggle of two opposing personalities — one essentially good, the other evil — for the soul of one man. Its tingling suspense and intelligent and sensitive portrayal of man's dual nature reveal Stevenson as a novelist of great skill and originality, whose power to terrify and move us remains, over a century later, undiminished.
The Picture of Dorian Gray—Oscar Wilde
The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than he. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, and when he subsequently pursues a life of debauchery, the portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.
The Lowland—Jhumpa Lahiri
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Namesake comes an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past death.
Born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers. It is the 1960s, and Udayan—charismatic and impulsive—finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty; he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother’s political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America. But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family’s home, he goes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind—including those seared in the heart of his brother’s wife.