Summer reading
My old high school now has a web presence and I found their summer reading list online.I get the impression that all the titles are for extra credit, and students need to answer questions and parents or guardians are required to sign an affidavit assuring teachers that the books have been read.
Most of what I read is online these days, because I don't create time to read books. I uused to read a book a week on the subway, but I don't take subways anymore. I suppose I could check if there is a rickshaw service nearby.
I'd envy any kid reading these books for the first time (the asterisks indicate challenging reads):
Students entering 9th Grade:I think the parenthetical exclusions might be for books that are to be read during the school year.
Big Mouth, Ugly Girl, Joyce Carol Oates
* Frannie and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
* The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
* How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,
Julia Alvarez
* The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
Summerland, Michael Chabon
When I was Puerto Rican, Esmerelda Santiago
Any novel by: Ann Brashares
Chris Crutcher
Chris Lynch
Walter Dean Myers (not Monster)
Tamora Pierce
Gary Paulsen
Students entering 10th Grade:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,
Michael Chabon
* Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly
The Color of Water, James McBride
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,
Mark Haddon
Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas
* The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
* Life of Pi, Yann Martel
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
My Jim, Nancy Rawles
Any novel by: Ray Bradbury
John Updike
Kurt Vonnegut
Students entering 11th Grade:
* Native Son, Richard Wright
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
* The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,
Sherman Alexie
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
* The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
* Any novel by: William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(except The Great Gatsby)
Students entering 12th Grade:
A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
* Dubliners, James Joyce
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Inn at Lake Devine, Eleanor Lipman
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
* Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
No Great Mischief, Alistair McLeod
* A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
* Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
Any mystery novel by P.D. James
If plot descriptions of many of these books had been mailed home while I was in high school, I can guarantee I wouldn't have been allowed to read them. I've never read "When I Was Puerto Rican" but that would have been rejected outright.
"Whaddaya mean, 'when you were a Puerto Rican?'" my parents would say.
posted
by Marty Barrett at Wednesday, July 19, 2006
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