Northbridge High School

Summer Reading Program 2006-2007

A note to parents and students

One of Northbridge High School’s most important goals is to provide opportunities for all students to be successful, lifelong learners. Active learning, innovative instructional techniques, and challenging, rigorous curriculum, characterize our classrooms at all levels. Central to a student’s success in high school is the ability to read competently and independently. Whether a student pursues a college education or career, uses computers and the Internet, or participates as an informed citizen in our democracy, reading is fundamental to life’s activities. Students who read regularly achieve at higher levels of competency than students who don’t or won’t read. MCAS and SAT results consistently prove to us that readers succeed; non-readers struggle. We strive to develop a climate that expects students to read all of the time…at school, at home on weekends, and yes, even during the summer months.

Assignment

All students must complete the summer assignment. Each student should read one selection from the suggested list. NHS students must match their summer selection(s) to their scheduled English course for 2006-07. Please review the selection listing carefully. All listed books are age and grade appropriate. Most are suggested by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Massachusetts English/Language Arts Curriculum Frameworks, the School Library Journal, The American Library Association, The National Council Teachers of English and/or the Advance Placement English Suggested Authors’ List.

In addition many are notable books and award winning titles through the following sources: New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, Outstanding Books for the College Bound, Young Adult Library Services Association, Best Books for Young Adults, Kirkus Review, Wilson’s Senior Library Catalog, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, New York, Times Book Review and /or Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.

Most of the titles will be available through the NHS Media Center Library. Main office summer hours are from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Please call ahead to make certain that the office is open. (508-234-6221). Books may be signed out for two weeks. National bookstore chains in the area carry most of the titles listed. Some offer student discounts. Brief book descriptions and ratings are available @amazon.com. This on-line bookseller also offers used copies at greatly reduced prices. The Whitinsville Social Library will also have some titles.

Assessment

Students will be assigned a project-based assessment in the first marking term. The follow-up activity/writing assignment is worth a test grade in the individual English class. The summer reading assignment will be counted in the first grading term.

English I Year of Wonders: Novel of the Plague – Geraldine Brooks Girl with a Pearl Earring- Tracey Chevalier Samurai’s Tale – Erik Hauguaard Shakespeare’s Scribe – Gary Blackwood Stowaway – Karen Hesse Mary, Bloody Mary – Carolyn Meyer The Thief Lord – Cornelia Junke The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants –Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood – Ann Brashares Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card King Dork – Frank Portman The Book Thief – Markus Zusak English II Correlli’s Mandolin – Louis DeBernieres Schindler’s List – Thomas Keneally Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt Daughter of Fortune – Isablle Allende Harry Potter / Books 4, 5, or 6 – J.K. Rowling Shakespeare’s Spy – Gary Blackwood Red Scarf Girl – Ji-li Jiang Night – Elie Wiesel War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells Weedflower – Cynthia Kandohata The Genesis Protocol – Dayton Ward

English III Beloved – Toni Morrison The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown Angels and Demons – Dan Brown The Digital Fortress – Dan Brown The Chamber – John Grisham A Painted House – John Grisham Bleachers – John Grisham The Cider House Rules – John Irving The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Kidd We Were the Mulvaney’s – Joyce Carol Oates A Prayer for Owen Meany –John Irving English IV Grendel – John Gardner My Father Had a Daughter :Judith Shakespeare’s Tale – Grace Tiffany Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Hadd I Know this Much is True – Wally Lamb Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky Becoming Chloe – Catherine Ryan Hyde

English I

Year of Wonders: Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Anna Frith, a housemaid in a small mountain village in England becomes an unlikely hero as her neighbors try to survive the terrible plague of 1666. Mature Themes.

Alex Award 2002 (A.L.A.)

School Library Journal

Library Journal

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Memoir of the author's miserable childhood growing up in the perpetually damp country of Ireland, with the stereotypically long-suffering mother and drunken father who nurtures in his son an appetite for stories. Mature Themes.

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

Pulitzer Prize 1997

Samurai’s Tale by Erik Hauguaard

In turbulent sixteenth-century Japan, orphaned Taro is taken in by a general serving the great warlord Takeda Shingen and grows up to become a samurai fighting for the enemies of his dead family. Graphic Violence.

Notable Children’s Books (A.L.A.)

YALSA Best Fiction

Shakespeare’s Scribe by Gary Blackwood

Sequel to: The Shakespeare stealer. In plague-ridden 1602 England, a fifteen-year-old orphan boy, who has become an apprentice actor, goes on the road with Shakespeare's troupe, and finds out more about his parents along the way.

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

School Library Journal starred

Stowaway by Karen Hesse

A fictionalized journal relates the experiences of a young stowaway from 1768 to 1771 aboard the Endeavor which sailed around the world under Captain James Cook.

School Library Journal starred

Wilson's Junior High School

Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer

Mary Tudor, who would reign briefly as Queen of England during the mid-sixteenth century, tells the story of her troubled childhood as daughter of King Henry VIII.

School Library Journal

Books for the Teen Age (NYPL)

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Junke

Orphaned brothers Prosper and Bo, having run away from their cruel aunt and uncle, decide to hide out in Venice where they fall in with the Thief Lord, a thirteen-year-old boy who leads a crime ring of street children.

School Library Journal starred

Kirkus starred

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

Carmen decides to discard an old pair of jeans, but Tibby, Lena, and Bridget think they are great and decide that whomever the pants fit best will get them. When the jeans fit everyone perfectly, a sisterhood and a memorable summer begin.

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

School Library Journal starred

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares

A sequel to "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" in which the four girls, now sixteen, embark on another summer of travels and life lessons charmed by a shared pair of seemingly magical thrift-store jeans.

School Library Journal

Books for the Teen Age (NYPL)

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

An expert at simulated war games, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin believes that he is engaged in one more computer war game when, in truth, he is commanding the last Earth fleet against an alien race seeking Earth's complete destruction.

YALSA Best Books

HUGO Award Best Novel

King Dork by Frank Portman

High school loser Tom Henderson discovers that "The Catcher in the Rye" may hold the clues to the many mysteries in his life.

School Library Journal starred

Publishers Weekly

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

School Library Journal

Booklist

English II

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis DeBernieres

Life changes on the Greek island of Cephalonia as Axis forces invade during World War II, and beautiful Pelagia finds that she must choose between Mandras, a fisherman who joins the resistance and Corelli, a captain with the communist Italian troops.

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Review

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

The story of a man who took incredible risks and spent his considerable fortune to build a factory camp to protect Jews in World War II Germany.

Los Angeles Time Book Prize (Best Fiction)

YALSA Outstanding Books for the College Bound 1999

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Memoir of the author's miserable childhood growing up in the perpetually damp country of Ireland, with the sterotypically long-suffering mother and drunken father who nurtures in his son an appetite for stories.

Pulitzer Prize 1997

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

Daughter of Fortune by Isabelle Allende

Eliza Sommers, a Chilean orphan raised in a Victorian home, follows her lover to California during the dangerous Gold Rush of 1849 and discovers a new life of freedom.

Publishers Weekly starred

Library Journal

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Sequel to: Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. Harry Potter, a fourth-year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, longs to escape his hateful relatives, the Dursleys, and live as a normal fourteen-year-old wizard, but what Harry does not yet realize is that he is not a normal wizard, and in his case, different can be deadly.

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

School Library Journal

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Sequel to: Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. Spine Harry Potter, now a fifth-year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, struggles with a threatening teacher, problematic house elf, the dread of upcoming final exams, and haunting dreams that hint toward his mysterious past.

School Library Journal

New York Times

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Sequel to: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Novice wizard Harry Potter, now sixteen-years-old, begins his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the midst of the battle between good and evil which has heated up with the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort.

School Library Journal

Publishers Weekly starred

Shakespeare’s Spy by Gary Blackwood

Widge, an orphan boy who has joined William Shakespeare's acting company, begins some investigative snooping when several thefts occur backstage.

School Library Journal

Kirkus Review

Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang

The author tells about the happy life she led in China up until she was twelve-years-old when her family became a target of the Cultural Revolution, and discusses the choice she had to make between denouncing her father and breaking with her family, or refusing to speak against him and losing her future in the Communist Party.

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

School Library Journal

Night by Elie Wiesel

The narrative of a boy who lived through Auschwitz and Buchenwald provide a short and terrible indictment of modern humanity

Oprah’s Book Club (Best Fiction)

School Library Journal

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

An English astronomer, in company with an artilleryman, a country curate, and others, struggle to survive the invasion of Earth by Martians in 1894.

Library Journal

Magill Book Review

Weedflower by Cynthia Kandohata

After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.

Kirkus Review

Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.)

English III

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Notes: "Vintage books." Sethe, an escaped slave who now lives in post-Civil War Ohio, has borne the unthinkable and works hard at "beating back the past." She struggles to keep Beloved, an intruder, from gaining possession of her present while throwing off the legacy of her past. Mature themes.

Pulitzer Prize 1988

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Notes: Huck, escaping from his father, who had imprisoned him in a lonely cabin, meets Jim, a runaway slave, on Jackson's Island on the Mississippi River. Together they float down the Mississippi.

Wilson’s Senior High School

Notable/Best Books (A.L.A.)

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

Notes: Investigating the murder of a Louvre curator, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu find clues painted into a Da Vinci work, inadvertently uncovering a plot involving the Holy Grail and the secret society known as the Priory of Sion. Mature themes.

School Library Journal

Booklist

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Notes: World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol seared into the chest of a murder victim, where he discovers evidence of the resurgence of an ancient brotherhood with a vendetta against the Catholic Church. Mature themes.

School Library Journal

Booklist

The Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Notes: "Thomas Dunne books." Cryptographer Susan Fletcher finds herself fighting for her country, her life, and the life of the man she loves when she is called in by the National Security Agency to decipher a mysterious code and discovers a plot that has the power to cripple U.S. intelligence.

Booklist

Publisher’s Weekly

The Chamber by John Grisham

Notes: In Mississippi in 1967 Klan member, Sam Cayhall is accused of bombing Marvin Kramer's law offices killing his two sons. In 1990 just weeks before his execution, a young lawyer asks to work on his case.

Booklist

Wilson’s Senior High School

A Painted House by John Grisham

Notes: Seven-year-old Arkansas farm boy Luke Chandler loses his innocence over the course of a contentious and strenuous cotton harvest in 1952, during which time Luke's family hires several Mexicans and an Ozark family and Luke begins keeping dangerous secrets.

Booklist

Publisher’s Weekly

Bleachers by John Grisham

Notes: When his old coach dies, high school football star Neely Crenshaw returns to his hometown after fifteen years, reunites with his former teammates, and struggles to resolve his mixed feelings about the man.

School Library Journal

Booklist

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch, an obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds and of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

School Library Journal

Outstanding Books for the College Bound

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Kidd

Notes: Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared from Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find asafe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina, at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August.

Voice of Youth Advocates

Books for the Teen Age –NYPL

School Library Journal

Booklist

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

Notes: "Oprah's book club"--Cover.;"A William Abrahams book." Tells of a seemingly ordinary, successful family who is nearly torn apart when tragedy strikes but finds a way to remain happy and loyal despite rumors, secrets and strife.

School Library Journal starred

Booklist

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Notes: Tells the story of Owen Meany who believes he is God's instrument and his friendship with John Wheelwright; beginning at age eleven when Owen hits a foul ball that kills John's mother during a Little League game in 1953.

Notable/ Best Books (A.L.A.)

Booklist

English IV

Grendel byJohn Gardner

Notes: Grendel, the monster, tells his side of the Beowulf story, and compares his values with the chief values of human beings.

Outstanding Books for the College Bound

School Library Journal

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Notes: Sequel to: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.;"Year 6"--Spine. Novice wizard Harry Potter, now sixteen-years-old, begins his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the midst of the battle between good and evil which has heated up with the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort.

Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.)

School Library Journal

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mard Hadd

Writing his first novel from the point of view of an autistic 15-year-old, Mark Haddon takes the reader into the chaos of autism and creates a character of such empathy that many readers will begin to feel for the first time what it is like to live a life in which there are no filters to eliminate or order the millions of pieces of information that come to us through our senses every instant of the day. For the autistic person, most stimuli register with equal impact, and because these little pieces of information cannot usually be processed effectively, life becomes a very confusing mess of constantly competing signals.

Whitbread Book of the Year Award – UK

Library Journal

Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.)

I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 899-901). For most of his life Dominick Birdsey has been living in the shadow of his schizophrenic identical twin, Thomas, but when Thomas commits a violent act that affects both their lives, Dominick decides to leave his home and search for his true identity. Mature themes.

School Library Journal

Kirkus Review

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Notes: Nitta Sayuri, a young Japanese woman who was taken from her home at the age of nine and sold into slavery as a geisha, discovers a rare opportunity for freedom when the outbreak of World War II forces an end to the only life she has ever known. Mature themes.

School Library Journal

Wilson’s Senior High School

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Notes: Charlie, a freshman in high school, explores the dilemmas of growing up through a collection of letters he sends to an unknown receiver. Mature themes.

Voice of Youth Advocates (V.O.Y.A.)

NYPL Books for the Teen Age

Becoming Chloe by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Notes: A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place. Mature themes.

Booklist

Kirkus starred