8Th Grade Honor Language Arts Summer Reading List
8th grade Honor Language Arts Summer Reading List
Each student is responsible for reading 2 of the following novels. It is recommended that each student take notes on each book so that it is easier to write an essay in class at the beginning of the school year based on the Literary Elements. Do not write a rough draft or the final essay over the summer, as the essay will be created and written in class. Your notes should include quotes and passages from the novels that reflect change and growth of the characters, as well as how the characters’ actions and decisions affect their fates as well as the outcome of the novel. Focus on one or two of the main characters for each novel.
Literary Elements- can be, but are not limited to setting, plot, characters, protagonist, antagonist, conflict, climax, resolution, mood, theme; utilize websites such as
Anne of Green Gables -Lucy Maud Montgomery
As soon as Anne Shirley arrives at the snug white farmhouse called Green Gables, she is sure she wants to stay forever...but will the Cuthberts send her back to the orphanage? Anne knows she’s not what they expected--a skinny girl with fiery red hair and the temper to match. If only she can convince them to let her stay, she’ll try very hard not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes and blurting out the first thing that comes to her mind. Anne is not like anybody else, the Cuthberts agree; she is special--a girl with an enormous imagination. This orphan girl dreams of the day when she can call herself Anne of Green Gables.
The Last of the Mohicans -James F. Cooper
The Last of the Mohicans contains the classic portrait of the man of moral courage who severs all connections with a society whose values he can no longer accept. Despite his chosen exile, Hawk-eye (Natty Bumppo), the frontier scout, risks his life to escort two sisters through hostile Indian country. On the dangerous journey he enlists the aid of the Mohican Chingachgook. And in the challenging ordeal that follows, in their encounters with deception, brutality, and the deaths of loved ones, the friendship between the two men deepens –the scout and the Indian, each with a singular philosophy of independence that has been nurtured and shaped by the silent, virgin forest.
My Antonia -Willa Cather
This great American novel tells the story of several immigrant families who move to rural Nebraska. Antonia is the eldest daughter of the Shimerdas and is a bold and free-hearted young woman who becomes the center of narrator Jim Burden's attention. The story has many elements but clearly documents the struggles of the hard-working immigrants that homesteaded the prairies, and does a particularly fine job covering the hardships that women faced in that difficult environment. My Antonia also provides Willa Cather with a platform to make some comments on women's rights while weaving a story where romantic interests are ultimately bandied about by the uncontrolled changes that occur in people's lives. The final book of Willa Cather's prairie trilogy, My Antonia, is considered her greatest accomplishment. My Antonia was first published in 1918.
The Natural -Bernard Malamud
Biting, witty, provocative, and sardonic, Bernard Malamud's The Natural is widely considered to be the premier baseball novel of all time. It tells the story of Roy Hobbs--an athlete born with rare and wondrous gifts--who is robbed of his prime playing years by a youthful indiscretion that nearly consists him his life. But at an age when most players are considering retirement, Roy reenters the game, lifting the lowly New York Knights from last place into pennant contention and becoming an instant hero in the process. Now all he has to worry about is the fixers, the boss, the slump, the jinx, the fans...and the dangerously seductive Memo Paris, the one woman Roy can't seem to get out of his mind.
Pride and Prejudice -Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, is one of the world's most popular novels. Pride and Prejudice—Austen's own 'darling child'—tells the story of fiercely independent Elizabeth Bennet, one of five sisters who must marry rich, as she confounds the arrogant, wealthy Mr. Darcy. What ensues is one of the most delightful and engrossingly readable courtships known to literature, written by a precocious Austen when she was just twenty-one years old.Humorous and profound, and filled with highly entertaining dialogue, this witty comedy of manners dips and turns through drawing-rooms and plots to reach an immensely satisfying finale. In the words of Eudora Welty, Pride and Prejudice is as 'irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.
Pudd’nhead Wilson -Mark Twain
Set in a town on the Mississippi during the pre-Civil War era, Pudd’nhead Wilson
centers its plot around a deception of switched identities involving a child born free and a child born slave. It is a novel of biting social commentary and enduring relevance. It is also a melodrama and a murder mystery, and it introduces one of the author’s most delightful characters: Pudd’nhead Wilson, an intellectual with a penchant for amateur detection.
Robinson Crusoe -Daniel DeFoe
“I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, all the rest of the ship’s company being drowned. In despair of any relief, I saw nothing but death before me….”
(Chapter 5, Robinson Crusoe by William Defoe)
Thus Crusoe begins his journal in Daniel Defoe’s classic novel: the vividly realistic account of a solitary castaway’s triumph over nature itself – over the crippling fears, self-doubt, and loneliness that are inescapable parts of human nature.
For two centuries Robinson Crusoe has remained one of the best-known and most read tales in modern literature, a popularity owing as much to the enduring freshness and immediacy of its style as to its widely acknowledged title as the very first English novel.
Watership Down -Richard Adams
First published in 1972, Richard Adam's extraordinary bestseller
Watership Down takes us to a world we have never truly seen: to the remarkable life that teems in the fields, forests, and riverbanks, far beyond our cities and towns. It is a powerful saga of courage, leadership, and survival; and epic tale of a hardy band of Berkshire rabbits forced to flee the destruction of their fragile community and their trials and triumphs in the face of extraordinary adversity as they pursue a glorious dream called "home."