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Campbell High School English Summer Required Reading 2013/14Directions: Parents and students should choose ONE book together. However, students in an Honors or AP literature course should choose TWO books. Be sure to find a book suited to your student’s needs, interest, and maturity level. Students should select a book to which their parents have no objection, and is high school appropriate in subject matter and rigor. You may find all books in the library or may purchase one from a bookstore.Disclaimer: Students should read books that TOTAL at least 140 pages. Students should complete their own work, neither sharing ideas nor working with another on any element of this project.Philosophy: The goals of summer reading for Cobb County are to improve literacy and to promote lifelong reading. As students grow and mature, they need to continually practice their reading skills. While early reading skills are basic, when students grow older, they need selections that stimulate their imaginations, improve their thinking skills, and enhance their vocabulary development. The lists are based on recommendations from classroom teachers, librarians, and students, and support the Common Core Standards for English.You may find web sources like helpful in making your reading selection(s). At the beginning of the semester in which you have your English class, you will have an opportunity to discuss and share the selection(s) read with your teacher and classmates. See the attached assignment sheet for specifics.Assessment: The reading should be completed by August 29, 2013 for first semester English classes, and January 27, 2014 for second semester English classes. You must complete four tasks on the Assignment Check List. Please see the attached list of assessments that may be completed before the due date.Resources for choosing appropriate titles: (also see attached list of teacher recommended titles):100 Best Novels from the Modern Library Adult Library Services Association lists of “Best Books for Young Adults,” “Outstanding Books for the College Bound,” “Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers,” etc.: While providing readers a choice, we remind you to check the Lexile score of the novel to ensure that you enjoy something on an appropriate reading level. Any bookstore salesperson or media specialist may help you with this. Additionally, you may check the title on . This score denotes reading ability and text difficulty on a scale, allowing readers to select titles that meet and challenge a reader’s unique abilities and interests.Campbell High School Recommended Summer Reading BooksThe reading should be completed by August 29, 2013 for first semester English classes, and January 27, 2014 for second semester English classes.Book ListNINTH LITERATURE & HONORS LITERATURENinth Literature students will choose one book. Honors Ninth Literature students will choose two books.Long Way Gone by Ishmael BeahLexile: 920LIn A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. ( book description)The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean CoveyLexile: 870LBeing a teenager is both wonderful and challenging. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, author Sean Covey applies the timeless principles of the 7 Habits to teens and the tough issues and life-changing decisions they face. In an entertaining style, Covey provides a step-by-step guide to help teens improve self-image, build friendships, resist peer pressure, achieve their goals, get along with their parents, and much more. In addition, this book is stuffed with cartoons, clever ideas, great quotes, and incredible stories about real teens from all over the world. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens will engage teenagers unlike any other book. An indispensable book for teens, as well as parents, grandparents, and any adult who influences young people, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens is destined to become the last word on surviving and thriving as a teen and beyond. ( summary)Shiver by Maggie StiefvaterLexile: 740LFor years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf--her wolf--is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again. ( book description) Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human--or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever. ( book description)The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBrideLexile: 1240LAs a boy in Brooklyn, James McBride knew that his mother was different. But when he asked about it, she'd simply say, "I'm light-skinned". Later he wondered if he was different too, and asked his mother if he was black or white. "You're a human being", she snapped. "Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!" When James asked what the color of God was, she said, "God is the color of water". As an adult, McBride finally persuaded his mother to tell the story. Her story was of a rabbi's daughter, born in Poland and raised in the South, who fled Harlem, married a black man, founded a Baptist church, and put 12 children through college. This is James McBride's tribute to his eccentric and determined mother, and an exploration of what family means. ( summary)Impossible by Nancy WerlinLexile: HL670LInspired by the classic folk ballad “Scarborough Fair,” this is a wonderfully riveting novel of suspense, romance, and fantasy. Lucy is seventeen when she discovers that she is the latest recipient of a generations-old family curse that requires her to complete three seemingly impossible tasks or risk falling into madness and passing the curse on to the next generation. Unlike her ancestors, though, Lucy has family, friends, and other modern resources to help her out. But will it be enough to conquer this age-old evil? ( book description)The Book Thief by Marcus ZusakLexile: 730LIt's just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . . Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel 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 before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul. ( summary)WORLD LITERATURE:World Literature students will choose one book. Honors World Literature students will choose two books.The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (This is a must read for Honors World Literature)Lexile: 840LThe Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. ( book description)Copper Sun by Sharon DraperLexile: 820L (320pgs)When pale strangers enter fifteen-year-old Amari's village, her entire tribe welcomes them; for in her remote part of Africa, visitors are always a cause for celebration. But these strangers are not here to celebrate. They are here to capture the strongest, healthiest villagers and to murder the rest. They are slave traders. And in the time it takes a gun to fire, Amari's life as she's known it is destroyed, along with her family and village. Copper Sun is an unflinching and unforgettable look at the African slave trade and slavery in America.1984 by George OrwellLexile: 1090L (304pgs)Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a "negative utopia," that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world—so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions—a legacy that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la PenaLexile: 680L (256pgs)DANNY is tall and skinny. Even though he's not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. With a 95 mph fastball, the boy is not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it. But at his private school, they don't expect much else from him. Danny's brown; half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can't speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they've got him pegged. Danny's convinced it's his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico. And that's why he's spending the summer with his dad's family. Only, to find himself, he might just have to face the demons he refuses to see right in front of his face.Breaking Through by Francisco JimenezLexile: 750L (208pgs)At the age of fourteen, Francisco Jimenez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for twenty hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice. How they sustain their hope, their good heartedness, and tenacity is revealed in this moving sequel to The Circuit. Without bitterness or sentimentality, Francisco Jimenez finishes telling the story of his youth.A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled HosseiniLexile: 830L (384pgs)Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.Life of Pi by Yann MartelLexile: 830LYann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion." ( book description)Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan PatonLexile: 860LThe most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, "We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony." Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man. ( book description)AMERICAN LITERATURE and AP LANGUAGE/ AMERICAN LITERATUREAll book choices should be written by an American author.Titles that will be read in the course and therefore not acceptable as a summer reading title: The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, Call of the Wild, The Things They Carried, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.In Cold Blood by Truman CapoteLexile: 1040LOn 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.Five years, four months, and twenty-nine days later, on April 14, 1965, Richard Eugene Hickock, aged thirty-three, and Perry Edward Smith, aged thirty-six, were hanged for the crime in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas.In Cold Blood is the story of the lives and deaths of these six people. The book examines the complex psychological relationship between two parolees who together commit this mass murder. It has already been hailed as a masterpiece. The book became the greatest crime seller at the time and is acknowledged as one of the best books of its type ever written. ( book description)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman AlexieLexile: 600LIn his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. ( summary)Blink: The Power of Thinking by Malcolm GladwellLexile: 1100LMalcolm Gladwell revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant – in the blink of an eye-that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work—in the office, in the classroom, and in the kitchen? In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only visualize a slice of Gladwell’s ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. ( book description)Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer /Lexile 1270 (Nonfiction)After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive. They also reflect the attitude of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who eventually shuns all materialism and wealth. The book is one that will encourage young people to think about their own decisions, how their decisions affect others, society’s expectations of them, and the relationships they have with people in their lives. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green/Lexile 850L (Fiction)Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten. Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.Of Mice and Men by John SteinbeckLexile: 630LThey are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. ( book description)The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick DouglassLexile: 1080LBorn into a family of slaves, Frederick Douglass educated himself through sheer determination. His unconquered will to triumph over his circumstances makes his one of America’s best and most unlikely success stories. Douglass’ own account of his journey from slave to one of America’s great statesmen, writers, and orators is as fascinating as it is inspiring. ( book selection)Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy KidderLexile: 1080LTracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created. Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity.” He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.'s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb, "Beyond mountains there are mountains”. As you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too. ( summary)The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra RobbinsLexile: UnmeasuredIn The Overachievers, Robbins explores how our high stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins goes back to her high school, where she follows heart-tugging, likeable students including “AP” Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressure to succeed; Audrey, whose panicked perfectionism overshadows her life; Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn’t attend a name-brand college; Taylor, whose ambition threatens her popular girl status; and the Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar.Robbins tackles teen issues such as intense stress, the student and teacher cheating epidemic, sports rage, parental guilt, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that students are driven to suicide and depression. With a compelling mix of fast-paced narrative and fascinating investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers. ( book description)BRITISH LITERATURE/MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE:British Literature students will choose one book. Honors British Literature students will choose two books.The Tragedy of Othello by William ShakespeareLexile: NPOne of the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies, Othello tells the story of a Moorish general who earns the enmity of his ensign Iago when he passes him over for a promotion. Bleak and unsparing, this play offers a masterly portrait of an arch villain and an astute psychological study of the nature of evil. ( book description)Awaken by Katie KacvinskyLexile: HL700LMaddie lives in a world where everything is done online. She's okay with the solitary, digital life—until she meets Justin. Suddenly, she gets a feeling that maybe there is a better way to live, a way that is different from what her society and parents have told her. Now she must learn to stand up for herself, as she and Justin struggle to find one’s own space. ( book description)The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark HaddonLexile: 1180LChristopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched, and he detests the color yellow.This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years. ( book description)The Help by Katherine StockettLexile: 730LAibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town. ( book description)AP LITERATUREAP Literature students will choose two books.Titles read in the course and therefore not suggested for summer reading: The Stranger, Frankenstein, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hamlet, Oedipus Rex.Beloved by Toni MorrisonLexile: 0870LSet in post-Civil War Ohio, this is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked death in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad: a woman of "iron eyes and backbone to match." Sethe lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing intruder who calls herself Beloved. The past makes itself heard and felt incessantly in memories...in the arrival of Paul D., one of her fellow slaves on the farm where she had once been kept...in the vivid and painfully cathartic stories she and Paul D tell each other of their years in captivity, of their glimpses of freedom...and, most powerfully, in the apparition of Beloved. Sethe's struggle to keep Beloved from gaining full possession of her present--and to throw off the long, dark legacy of her past--is at the center of this profoundly affecting and startling novel. ( book description)Brave New World by Aldous HuxleyLexile: 0870LHuxley?s vision of the future in his astonishing 1931 novel Brave New World -- a world of tomorrow in which capitalist civilization has been reconstituted through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, where the people are genetically designed to be passive, consistently useful to the ruling class. ( book description)East of Eden by John SteinbeckLexile: 700LThe masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is the powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is both family saga and a modern retelling of the book of Genesis. This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. ( book description)One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken KeseyLexile: 1110LBoisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned. ( book description)Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee WilliamsLexile: NPWidely considered a landmark play, A Streetcar Named Desire deals with a culture clash between two symbolic characters, Blanche DuBois, a pretentious, fading relic of the Old South, and Stanley Kowalski, a rising member of the industrial, urban immigrant class. The play presents Blanche DuBois, a fading but still-attractive Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others, but most of all herself, from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors ( book description).Assessment Check List for Summer Reading 2013-14Directions: As you read your selected summer reading book, you are required to complete all of the four tasks as detailed below. The assessment can be handwritten or word processed.Name _________________________________________ Date ___________ Block_________Book Title_____________________________________________________________________TaskCheck when completed1. Examine the themes listed below. As you read, identify the theme of your text, and find three examples in the text that support this theme. For each example, write a paragraph explaining the connection to the theme. Below are common themes you may select or choose a theme of your own. You may choose three different themes and give an example of each or one theme and give three examples of its use. Themesa. Sacrifices bring rewardb. All human beings have the same needs.c. Friendship makes life more meaningful.d. Loneliness leads people to seek companionship.e. The strong often prey on the weak.f. Love is the worthiest of pursuits.g. Death is a part of the life cycle.h. The pressures of society may not align with what makes you happy.i. Adversity can lead to triumph.Worth 20 Points2. Choose two characters from the text. In two to three paragraphs, analyze how these complex characters develop throughout the text. Be sure to provide specific examples from the text. For nonfiction novels, choose two events or situations from the text. In two to three paragraphs, analyze how these complex events or situations develop throughout the text. Be sure to provide specific examples from the text.Worth 10 Points3. Choose three significant and memorable quotes from the novel. Copy the quotes, and cite the page number. In three paragraphs, explain the impact that each quote had on the tone of the text or the meaning of the text.Worth 10 Points4. In-class Essay. After class discussion of novels, and literary techniques, you will be required to write an essay in-class that will require you to focus on topics such as structure, point-of-view, and purpose. Each teacher will share with you the expectation of the essay.Will be administered the week of August 26-29, 2013 for Fall and the week of January 27-31, 2014 for Spring. 40 Points Total (A separate grade will be given for the in-class essay) ................
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