2013 - 2014 English 8 Summer Reading Choices. Rising English ... requirements
before joining us in English 8 in August. Please .... Anguished English/Lederer.
2013 - 2014 English 8 Summer Reading Choices Rising English 8 students, We are pleased to offer you a series of choices as you fulfill your summer reading requirements before joining us in English 8 in August. Please note that you will select at least ONE text from each category listed. All texts have been selected with your 8th grade studies in mind. We hope that you will find texts that satisfy your interests and that you will bring your insights and opinions about the books you choose to our first days of class together. Happy reading! The English 8 teaching team
Classics: Select 1 Watership Down/Adams This stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Emma/Jane Austen Meet the witty, imaginative, self-deluded Emma, a heroine who has been much loved by generations of readers. Fahrenheit 451/Bradbury Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. The Good Earth/Buck When O-lan, a servant girl, marries the peasant Wang Lung, she toils tirelessly for their family's survival. The Alchemist/Coehlo
Santiago, a young shepherd, journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist. Rebecca/Du Maurier A dark psychological tale of secrets and betrayal, dead loves and an estate called Manderley Lord of the Flies/Golding Classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island A Separate Peace/Knowles A lonely, introverted intellectual and taunting, daredevil athlete experience a loss of innocence one fateful summer. Lonesome Dove/McMurtry The main protagonists are a drunken and inarticulate pair of former Texas Rangers turned horse rustlers. Yet when the cattle trail begins, the story picks up energy and a drive that makes heroes of these men.
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2013 - 2014 English 8 Summer Reading Choices The Chosen/Potok In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, and despite their differences, a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father and a brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S. The Pearl/Steinbeck Pearl: Retelling of an old Mexican folk tale: the story of the great pearl, how it was found, and how it was lost. Old Man and the Sea/Hemingway Santiago, an aging fisherman, struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream The Joy Luck Club/Tan In 1949, four Chinese women begin meeting in San Francisco for fun. Nearly 40 years later, their daughters continue to meet as the Joy Luck Club. Their stories ultimately display the double happiness that can be found in being both Chinese and American. Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court/Twain Hank Morgan, a resident of 19th century Hartford Connecticut, is inexplicably transported to the early medieval England of King Arthur. A classic satire.
Contemporary Young Adult Literature: Select 1 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian/Alexie Tells the heartbreaking, hilarious, and beautifully written story of a young Native American teen as he attempts to break free from the life he was destined to live. Speak/Anderson Award-winning, highly acclaimed, and controversial novel about a teenager who chooses not to speak rather than to give voice to what really happened to he Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie/Bradley Young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Mexican Whiteboy/De La Pena Danny's arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot;, but every time he gets up on the mound he loses it. To find himself, he might just have to face the demons he refuses to see right in front of his face. The Fault in our Stars/Green Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. 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. The Curious Incident of the Boy in the Nighttime/Haddon Murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone, mathematically gifted and socially hopeless.
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2013 - 2014 English 8 Summer Reading Choices The Secret Life of Bees/Kidd Lily Owens is taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household.
Sunrise over Fallujah/Myers Robin "Birdy" Perry, a new army recruit from Harlem, isn't quite sure why he joined the army, but he's sure where he's headed: Iraq to help secure and stabilize the country and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. Karma/Ostlere
This epic novel, written in free verse poems in a diary format, straddles two countries and the clash of Indian cultures in the tale of 15-year-old Maya. Between Shades of Gray/Sepetys Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Graphic Novels, Poetry, and Nonfiction: Select 1 Graphic novels (from Maverick List) Daytripper/Moon and Ba What if you seized every opportunity to live every day as if it were your last? Join Bras de Olivias Dominguez on the nine diverse journeys his life may have taken. Feynman/Ottaviani and Myrick Entertaining graphic biography of Nobel-winning quantum physicist Richard Feynman. Covers his life as a scientist as well as his life as an adventurer and musician. Page by Paige/Gulledge Paige just moved, and through her sketchbook, she expresses the experiences, emotions, and decisions that come with adjusting to a new place. The Odyssey (based on Homer’s epic poem)/Gareth Hinds. Fresh from his triumphs in the Trojan War, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, wants nothing more than to return home to his family. Instead, he offends the sea god, Poseidon, who dooms him to years of shipwreck and wandering. Evolution: the story of life on earth/Hosler, Cannon and Cannon The award-winning illustrations of the Cannons render the complex clear and everything cleverly comedic. Hosler is an award-winning biology teacher whose science comics have earned him a National Science Foundation grant. Americus/Reed and Hill Neal doesn’t care about reading much except reading his favorite fantasy series. But when a conservative group attempts to ban the books, he realizes there are things worth defending.
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2013 - 2014 English 8 Summer Reading Choices Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats/T.S. Eliot Famous collection of nonsense verse about cats; the inspiration for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats Ode to Common Things/Pablo Neruda Bilingual collection of 25 newly translated odes by the century's greatest Spanish-language poet, each accompanied by a pair of exquisite pencil drawings. From bread and soap to a bed and a box of tea, the "odes to common things" collected here conjure up the essence of their subjects clearly and wondrously. Wild Gratitude/Hirsch Unfurls a kaleidoscope of inventive poems that honor other artists and writers, confront urban life, as well as eulogizing his grandparents and recollecting his youth. Why I Wake Early/Oliver The forty-seven new works in this volume include poems on crickets, toads, trout lilies, black snakes, goldenrod, bears, greeting the morning, watching the deer, and, finally, lingering in happiness.
Nonfiction The Water is Wide/Conroy Extraordinary drama based on his own experience–the true story of a man who gave a year of his life to an island and the new life its people gave him. The Grand Design/Hawking This startling and lavishly illustrated book reveals the most recent scientific thinking about these and other abiding mysteries of the universe in nontechnical language marked by brilliance and simplicity. Anguished English/Lederer
From bloopers and blunders, here is an outrageous treasury of assaults upon our common language that will leave you roaring with delight and laughter. The Story of Stuff/Leonard Offers an astonishing, galvanizing exploration of the stuff we use every day, revealing how overconsumption threatens the planet and our health, and providing hope that change is within reach. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie/Stone There's no question she's influenced generations, but to what end? Acclaimed nonfiction author Tanya Lee Stone takes an unbiased look at how Barbie became the icon that she is, and at the impact that she's had on our culture (and vice versa).
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life/Tharp Whether you are a painter, musician, dancer or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, Based on the lessons Twyla Tharp has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career. Annotations courtesy Amazon.com
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