SUMMER READING BOOK CHOICES 2015
Learning Targets
1. I can find the reading list for my grade level on the following pages
· Incoming Freshman – 9th grade
· Incoming Sophomores – 10th grade
· Incoming Juniors – 11th grade
· Incoming Seniors – 12th grade
2. I can choose ONE book from EACH column for a total of TWO books
3. I can complete a Dialectical Journal (see accompanying document)
4. I can send my completed assignment to my English teacher by September 28, 2015
a. (You can find a digital copy of a blank Dialectical Journal at www.rcsdk12.org/58 )
Dear Incoming World of Inquiry Freshmen – Graduating Class of 2019:
The curriculum for English I begins this summer with a required reading assignment. You must select and read one book from each of the lists below. This means you will select one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction for a total of two books. You must also complete a fiction and non-fiction reading log for the two selected literary works. Both the fiction and non-fiction reading logs will be collected by your English teacher on Monday, September 28, 2015.
FICTION TITLES / NON FICTION TITLESEnder’s Game, Orson Scott Card:
Set in the future, the children of Earth must fight for their future. A New York Times Bestseller. / Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama
This memoir reveals the first African-American president’s childhood, teenage and college years.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason
Imagine the epic anew through these inventive stories. / Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
A personal account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is a 1997 bestselling non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer.
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
Narrated by a murder victim looking down from heaven, a family’s story in the wake of the crime unfolds. / Firehouse, David Halberstam
Follow thirteen firefighters into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff
This story portrays the relationship between a rebellious 1950s teenager and his abusive father, based on the memoirs of writer and literature professor Tobias Wolff. / Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis
The author explains how the Oakland Athletics built a successful team despite one of the smallest payrolls in baseball.
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
A Mexican girl learns the secrets of her mother’s kitchen and heart in this favorite of the magic realism genre. / Gemini, Nikki Giovanni
The celebrated author gives an extended autobiographical statement on her first 25 years as a black poet.
Pidgeon English, Stephen Kelman
Recently emigrated from Ghana with his sister and mother to London’s enormous housing projects, Harri is pure curiosity and ebullience: obsessed with gummy candy, a friend to the pigeon who visits his balcony, quite possibly the fastest runner in his school, and clearly also fast on the trail of a murderer. / I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, Nujood Ahi
Sold off by her impoverished family at the age of 10, Nujood found the courage to run away. With the help of an activist lawyer, sympathetic judges, and the international press, she divorced her husband and returned home.
47, Walter Moseley
Tall John, who believes there are no masters and no slaves, and who carries a yellow carpetbag of magical healing potions and futuristic devices, is both an inspiration and an enigma. He claims he has crossed galaxies and centuries and arrived by Sun Ship on Earth in 1832 to find the one chosen to continue the fight against the evil Calash. The brutal white overseer and the cruel slave owner are disguised as Calash, who must be defeated. / The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley
Haley reveals the life of Malcolm X from his traumatic childhood plagued by racism to his years as a drug dealer. This includes his conversion to the Black Muslim sect (Nation of Islam) while in prison for burglary, his subsequent years of militant activism, and the unexpected turn late in his life to orthodox Islam.
Chinese Cinderella; The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter, Adeline Yen Mah
A Chinese proverb says, “Falling leaves return to their roots.” Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair.
The Book Thief, Markus Zuzak
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. / Silent Tears: A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage, Kay Bratt
In 2003, Kay Bratt’s life changed dramatically. A wife and mother of two girls in South Carolina, Bratt relocated her family to rural China to support her husband as he took on a new management position for his American employer.Within months, her simple desire to make use of her time transformed into a heroic crusade to improve the living conditions and minimize the unnecessary deaths of Chinese orphans.
The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
Two kids with the same name live in the same decaying city. One grows up to be a Rhodes Scholar, the other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.
Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas
In his memoir Thomas navigates El Barrio, a neighborhood of Spanish Harlem. / Children of the Paper Crane, Masamoto Nasu
This story chronicles the life and death of a 12 year-old girl in Hiroshima following the A-bomb attack at the close of World War II.
The Circuit, Francisco Jimenez
This is a collection of short stories based on the life of the author, Francisco Jimenez, while he was growing up as the son of migrant farm workers in California.
Dear Incoming World of Inquiry Sophomores– Graduating Class of 2018:
The curriculum for English II begins this summer with a required reading assignment. You must select and read one book from each of the lists below. This means you will select one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction for a total of two books. You must also complete a fiction and non-fiction reading log for the two selected literary works. Both the fiction and non-fiction reading logs will be collected by your English teacher on Monday, September 28, 2015.
FICTION TITLES / NON-FICTION TITLESA Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
This book is a moving story of two women struggling to survive the Taliban’s grip in Afghanistan during the 1990s. / The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Baldwin explores the relations between race and religion with a concentration in his experiences with the Christian church when he was a young man. In addition, Baldwin discusses the Islamic ideas of others in Harlem.
The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
A lonely British boy in South Africa learns important lessons about race and courage in following his own heart and two friends, one black and one white. / On the Rez, Ian Frazier
This book is a sharp, unflinching account of the modern-day American Indian experience, especially that of the Oglala Sioux, who now live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the plains and badlands of the American West.
Wanting, Richard Flanagan
An aboriginal orphan in Tasmania, an Arctic explorer, and Charles Dickens all want something more from life. / The Lost City of Z, David Grann
A modern-day journalist follows the tracks of an explorer of the Amazon and solves the mystery of a legendary ancient city.
Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat
At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix- de-Rosets to New York, reunited with a mother she barely remembers. She discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti –to the women who first reared her. / King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochchild
Hochchild’s superb, engrossing chronicle focuses on one of the great, horrifying and nearly forgotten crimes of the century: greedy Belgian King Leopold’s rape of the Congo, the vast colony he seized as his private fiefdom in 1885.
Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
This is a gripping story of how the plague impacted one small village in England during the 1600s. / Reflections of a Rock Lobster, Aaron Fricke
A gay teen describes his decision to use the courts to allow him to bring a male date to his senior prom.
Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
In the Southwest, a young woman finds love and new meaning in her life by embracing dreams, Native American myths, and her past. / When I Was Puerto Rican, Esmeralda Santiago
Santiago lyrically writes about her childhood on her native island and of her bewildering years of transition in New York City
The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her – the legend of the tiger’s wife. / Lies My Teachers Told Me, James W. Loewen
Americans have lost touch with their history, and in Lies My Teachers Told Me, Professor James Loewen provides an explanation. After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
The story of Christopher John Francis Boone, who knows all the countries of the world & their capitals, as well as every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He can’t stand to be touched, and detests the color yellow. / . Gulag: A History, Anne Applebaum
In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Applebaum offers a fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of Glasnost.
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Adiche
In post-colonial Nigeria, three children of different backgrounds experience the ravages of civil war and relief of union. / Those Guys Have All the Fun, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
Miller and Shales provide an oral history of the ESPN.
Bless Me Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya
Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past. / A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League, Ron Suskind
As an honor student walking the gauntlet of sneers and threats at his crime-infested high school in Washington, D.C., Cedric Jennings achieved the impossible: a 4.02 grade point average and acceptance into Brown University.
Indian Killer, Sherman Alexie
A serial murderer is terrorizing Seattle, hunting and scalping white men. The crimes of the so-called Indian Killer have triggered a wave of violence and racial hatred. Seattle’s Native Americans are shaken and confused, none more so than John Smith. Born Indian, and raised white, Smith desperately yearns for his lost heritage and seeks his elusive true identity. / Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin’s first non-fiction book has become a classic. These searing essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and Americans abroad remain as powerful today as when they were first written.
Mint Alley, C..L.R. James
A young, black, educated, middle class man observes and becomes involved in the everyday life of the “ordinary, regular people” in Mint Alley, a barrack yard in Trinidad. / Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup
Kidnapped into slavery in 1841, Northup spent 12 years in captivity. This autobiographical memoir represents an exceptionally detailed and accurate description of slave life and plantation society.
Born to Run, Christopher McDougall McDougall reveals the secrets of distance running from a Mexican Indian tribe.
Dear Incoming World of Inquiry Juniors– Graduating Class of 2017:
The curriculum for English III begins this summer with a required reading assignment. You must select and read one book from each of the lists below. This means you will select one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction for a total of TWO books. You must also complete a fiction and non-fiction reading log for the two selected literary works. Both the fiction and non-fiction reading logs will be collected by your English teacher on Monday, September 28, 2015.
Fiction / Non-FictionThe Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
A family of immigrants struggles to blend its new culture into the old. / The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
Examine the intricacies of evolution.
When the Emperor was Divine, Julie Otsuka
The Japanese-American experience in the WWII internment camps is told through the eyes of each member of one uprooted family. / Black Boy, Richard Wright – ALL SOPHOMORES RECEIVED A COPY OF THIS TITLE!!!
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorris The story of one Native American family is woven together through the accounts of a grandmother, mother, and daughter. / Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers binds the lives of an unlikely set of New Yorkers.
Manchild in the Promised Land, Claude Brown
Harlem’s vibrancy racism’s viciousness illustrate a young man’s struggle to rise from petty crime to educated freedom. / Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc