Honors World Literature Summer Reading Independent Project 2016-2017
All projects are due on the Friday of the first week of school.
Two of the goals of English II Honors World Literature are to broaden your literary and cultural horizons and to teach you how to articulate--in writing--strong individual responses to and analyses of literature. Therefore, you will read the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and complete three assignments.
A. Reading journal -- all four parts B. one assignment from “Project Options” C.Informational Text
- Reading Journal:
While you are reading this novel, you are required to keep a reader’s journal, noting important details, quotations, and your own questions and impressions. Thus, you should take notes as you read—if you buy the book, I highly recommend annotating, or writing questions and responses on the text itself, as you read (sticky notes can be helpful for this). These notes are for your benefit (and will be helpful in remembering specifics about the novel for assignments in the fall and throughout the year.
Journal ideas include the following:
1. Recording your impressions of the setting of the novel. Where does the novel take place? What do you know about this culture, country, or part of the world? What makes it different from the place you live? How is the setting important to the story?
Use specific details from the novel to support your answer. To fully answer this question you must be attentive to descriptive passages as you read. Think about the mood the authors create with these descriptions of place. Jot down a passage (with page numbers) for each novel to support your own description of the setting.
2. Describing and sharing your impressions about major characters. Did you like the main character? Why or why not? Did you change your opinion of the main character from the start to the end? Do you find them believable?
In your discussion, include specific examples in which the character said or did something that led to your opinion. Include appropriate page numbers in your discussion.
3. Identifying and annotating important passages (ex. a few sentences, a few lines of dialogue) from the novel. Choose passages that you think are important: they might reveal an important aspect of a character’s personality, a critical event in the plot, an insight into the theme of the novel, or a beautifully phrased description. Write the full quote, enclose it in quotation marks, write the page number on which you found the passage and then discuss why you chose the passage and its particular importance to the novel.
4. Writing final impressions of the story upon completion. Did you like the novel? Did you think it was well-written and worthy of study? Why or why not? Be open and honest about your opinion, but be able to defend yourself; you MUST therefore discuss specific examples in support of your conclusions. Responses like, “I just didn’t like it” or “I thought it was OK,” are not adequate responses.
Bring your journals and assignment of choice with you on the first day of school. They may be NEATLY typed or legibly handwritten on loose paper (not a notebook or journal book) and should be stapled together. Include the title and author of the novel
- Choose one of the project options below:
Work will be checked for plagiarism. This assignment must be typed and documented in MLA format! See Writing Guidelines at
- Book Review- Write a review of the story. The review must include a brief plot synopsis, an analysis of writer’s craft and a personal reaction. Your review will be posted on the class webpage during the first week of school.
- In a five paragraph essay, explain how you would make this book into a movie. Who would play the main characters? Please explain why you chose that person to play that character. For example: I would choose Rupert Grint to play the role of Ron in Harry Potter because the author describes him as being a shy red headed boy with freckles. Rupert Grint fits this description physically and could play the part well.
Where would you film the movie? What would you change to make it more interesting? Please explain your choices thoroughly.
- Write two articles for a newspaper published at the time of the major events in the book. Be sure both articles cover the five W’s of two major events in the story. The five W’s are: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
- Write an interview with one of the major characters. This needs to be written in the form of a dialogue between your main character and another person. Please explain your character’s responses using specific examples from the book.
- If you were making the book into a movie, what songs would you put on the soundtrack? Compile a list of seven to ten songs with a brief explanation of why you chose each song. From the list of seven to ten choose three songs to print the lyrics and write an essay about how the songs are thematically connected to the book. Be sure to include the theme you are discussing and how the song directly relates to it.
These journal entries will serve two purposes. They will demonstrate to me that you have carefully read the book and they will provide you with information for completing your assignments.
- Informational Text:
See Writing Guidelines at
- Choose an article that relates to a topic or issue in the novel. Choose your article from one of the six following: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, CNN.com, The Huffington Post, U.S. News and World Report, or Atlanta Journal Constitution.
B. After you have selected an article, write an explanatory essay (typed in MLA format) stating how the article relates to the novel. Be sure to write a well-developed summary of the article. Summary should be a paragraph of 5 to 8 sophisticated sentences, not just simple sentences strung together, which will give an overview of the article and state the author’s main point/s. Essay should contain one direct quote from the article and novel and appropriate parentheticalcitations from each. In addition, create a works cited page. Consult Purdue University’s online resource to assist with this assignment.