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| High Schools Summer Reading Lists 2008 for Grade 10
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Please read this note
on viewing the lists.
The reading lists for summer 2008 can be viewed for Elementary
Grade K or Grade 1, Grade 2 or Grade 3,
Grade 4 or Grade 5; Middle School Grade 6,
Grade 7, Grade 8 or
High School Grade 9,
Grade 10, Grade 11,
Grade 12. Also, the reading lists have a printer friendly link for
students to print the list for use at home during the summer or when
returning to school in the fall. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to
read and print the complete list. If you do not already have Adobe Acrobat
Reader, you can
Get Adobe Acrobat Reader for Free Here 
All required books for summer reading will be available for sale at Barnes and
Noble, Borders, independent book stores and on-line. Please be advised that
there may be a limited number of summer reading books available for circulation
at the Middletown Public Library and the smaller branches (Lincroft, Navesink
and Bayshore) due to the volume of readers. If you are planning to visit the
Monmouth County Library (Shrewsbury Branch), you must have a paid membership
card in order to borrow books.
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| Summer Reading for High School Students entering as a Sophomore 2008 |
You are viewing this High School Summer Reading List displayed in your web
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For a printer friendly link, go to
High School Reading List for Students entering Grade 10.
MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP BOARD OF EDUCATION
High School North and South English Departments
Middletown, NJ 07748
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Carol Buckley
Assistant Principal – North
(732) 706-6061 x1221
| Marie D. Caldaro
Assistant Principal – South
(732) 706-6111 x2162 |
Karen L. Bilbao
Superintendent of Schools |
Marjorie M. Caruso
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum |
June 2008
Parents and Sophomore Students, Class of 2011,
All sophomore studetns entering High School North or High School South
in September 2008 are required to read two novels this summer. Read and
follow the directions below:
10 Honors’ students must read: The Devil in The White City
by Erik Larson
All other grade 10 levels must read: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
by Dee Brown
For the above stated novels, all students must submit a completed reader
response journal to their English teacher on or before the first Monday
of school. The student is to:
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Choose ten (10) quotations from the text and respond to each, explaining their
significance in the overall context of the novel and/or give a personal
response to the quote.
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Quotes must be spread out over the entirety of the book (i.e., the quotes
cannot come from the first few chapters).
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Students may use the
attached reader-response form or type their responses in the same
format.
In addition, all sophomore students must choose and read one book* from
the following list. English teachers will assess the second book in September.
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
Blessings by Anna Quindlen
Manhunt by James Swanson
Slam! by Walter Dean Myers
April Morning by Howard Fast
Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
A Break with Charity by Ann Rinaldi
Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
Books may be borrowed from the Middletown Public Library. They may, also, be
purchased at Barnes and Noble (in Holmdel or Eatontown) or at Borders (in
Eatontown). All locations have received requests from us to have the books in
stock.
*See below for book descriptions.
Please address any questions to the Assistant Principals of Curriculum
indicated below.
Sincerely yours,
Carol Buckley, Assistant Principal
High School North |
Marie D. Caldaro, Assistant Principal
High School South |
April Morning by Howard Fast
Re-creation of the fateful morning of April 19, 1775, on which British soldiers
marched out of Boston to seize and destroy Colonial munitions stockpiled in
Concord, Massachusetts. Although history doesn't record who actually fired the
first shot on the Lexington green, here it is surmised that the skirmish was
initiated by a Colonial zealot named Solomon Chandler. After Concord, Chandler
leads ambushes against the retreating British that prove to be a frightening
rite of passage for 15-year-old Adam Cooper, the mustered son of a patriotic
and principled farmer. (TV Guide, April 23-29, 1988)
A Break with Charity: A Story About the Salem Witch Trials
by Ann Rinaldi
A fictionalized account of the Salem witch trails as told via the story of a
young woman named Susanna English. Although Susanna has been told by one of the
girls "crying out" that they are deliberately making up accusations, Susanna
dares not speak up for fear that she and her family will also be accused of
witchcraft. Will Susanna be able to stand by in silence as she sees other
members of her community falsely accused?
Slam! by Walter Dean Myers
Sixteen-year-old Greg "Slam" Harris can do it all on the basketball court. His
grades aren't so hot, though. And when his teachers jam his troubles in his
face, Slam blows up. He never doubted himself on the court until he found
himself going one on one with his future.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Without a doubt, Little Women remains Louisa May Alcott's best-known
work. Its charm and innocence continue to engage readers, despite the fact that
the social and familial reality depicted is very different from contemporary
domestic life. Jo March is regarded as one of the most complete,
self-possessed, and best-loved characters in children's literature. In fact,
many boys find that they can relate to her almost as easily as girls can. While
some present-day readers find Jo and her sisters too good to be realistic,
according to the standards of Alcott's society, the March girls are flawed and
vulnerable. The author dared to give her characters faults such as selfishness,
vanity, temper, and bashfulness—qualities never seen before in such young
characters.
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Mark Twain's publication in 1876 of his popular novel The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer reversed a brief downturn in his success following the
publication of his previous novel, The Gilded Age. Twain wrote The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer while he and his family were living in
Hartford, Connecticut, and while Twain was enjoying his fame. The novel, which
tells of the escapades of a young boy and his friends in St. Petersburg,
Missouri, a village near the Mississippi River, recalls Twain's own childhood
in a small Missouri town. The friendship of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn is one of
the most celebrated in American literature, built on imaginative adventures,
shared superstitions, and loyalty that rises above social convention. Twain's
American reading audience loved this novel and its young hero, and the novel
remains one of the most popular and famous works of American literature. The
novel and its characters have achieved folk hero status in the American popular
imagination.
Manhunt by James L. Swanson
Has any other month in American history been as tumultuous as April 1865? In a
matter of weeks, Richmond fell; the Confederacy collapsed and surrendered;
President Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed; and, for 12 days, Lincoln's
assassin, famed actor John Wilkes Booth, outraced and outsmarted his would-be
captors before he was cornered in a barn and shot dead. In Manhunt, James
L. Swanson retraces the search for a celebrity who succeeded in changing our
history.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Shockingly original and completely unforgettable, The Lovely Bones is
the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by
the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice
Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished
exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure. The details of
the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in
heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one
December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground
hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family
does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family,
desperate for the killer to be found and punished. Sebold creates a heaven
that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they
enjoyed when they were alive -- and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release
her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as
they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her
great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers
in contemporary literature.
The Devil in The White City by Erik Larson
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an
element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the
twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s
brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most
important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union
Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor
who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just
west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas
chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles
and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles
McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the
White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own
satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the
story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of
that dream city by the lake. The Devil in the White City draws the
listener into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a
supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore
Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and
others.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully
documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during
the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover
for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four
million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this
elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition -- published in both hardcover and
paperback -- Brown has contributed an incisive new preface. Using council
records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great
chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to
tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that
finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative
told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our
vision of how the West was really won.
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, leading
to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's moment of celebrity draws her into a
crisis of historical proportions that will envelop not only her and her mother,
Taylor, but everyone else who touched their lives in a complex web connecting
their future with their past. With this wise, compelling novel, the acclaimed New
York Times bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees,
and Animal Dreams vividly renders a world of heartbreak and redeeming
love as she defines and defies the boundaries of family, and illuminates the
many separate truths about the ties that bind us and tear us apart.
Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara
The story of Gods and Generals begins with Michael Shaara, author of
the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic The Killer Angels. A native of New
Jersey, Michael Shaara grew to be an adventurous young man: over the years, he
found work as a sailor, a paratrooper, a policeman, and an English professor at
Florida State University. In 1952, his son Jeff was born in New Brunswick, New
Jersey. Michael's interest in Gettysburg was prompted by some letters written
by his great-grandfather, who had been wounded at the great battle while
serving with the 4th Georgia Infantry. In 1966, he took his family on a
vacation to the battlefield and found himself moved. In 1970, Michael Shaara
returned to Gettysburg with his son Jeff. The pair crisscrossed the historic
site, gathering detailed information for the father's novel-in-progress. In
1974, the novel was published with the title The Killer Angels. This
gripping fictional account of the three bloody days at Gettysburg won Michael
Shaara a Pulitzer Prize and a vast, appreciative audience. To date it has sold
two million copies. When Michael Shaara died in 1988, his son Jeff began to
manage his literary estate. It was a legacy he knew well, having helped his
father create it. When director Ron Maxwell filmed the movie Gettysburg,
based on The Killer Angels, he asked Jeff to serve as a consultant.
Maxwell encouraged Shaara to continue the story his father began; inspired,
Jeff planned an ambitious trilogy, with The Killer Angels as
thecenterpiece, following the war from its origins to its end. With Gods and
Generals, Jeff Shaara gives fans of The Killer Angels everything
they could have asked--an epic, brilliantly written saga that brings the
nation's greatest conflict to life.
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Elphaba's With a husky voice and a gentle, dramatic manner that will call to
mind the image of a patient grandfather reading to an excited gaggle of
children, McDonough leisurely narrates this fantastical tale of good and evil,
of choice and responsibility. In Maguire's Oz, Elphaba, better known as the
Wicked Witch of the West, is not wicked; nor is she a formally schooled witch.
Instead, she's an insecure, unfortunately green Munchkinlander who's willing to
take radical steps to unseat the tyrannical Wizard of Oz. Using an
appropriately brusque voice for the always blunt Elphaba, McDonough relates her
tumultuous childhood (spent with an alcoholic mother and a minister father) and
eye-opening school years (when she befriends her roommate, Glinda.
Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
In 1865 Boston, the members of the Dante Club -- poets and Harvard professors
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell
Lowell, along with publisher J.T. Fields -- are finishing America's first
translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's
remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard
College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the
infiltration of foreign superstitions onto American bookshelves will prove as
corrupting as the immigrants living in Boston Harbor. As they struggle to keep
their sacred literary cause alive, the plans of the Dante Club are put in
further jeopardy when a serial killer unleashes his terror on the city. Only
the scholars realize that the gruesome murders are modeled on the descriptions
from Dante's Inferno and its account of Hell's torturous punishments. With the
lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the
Dante Club must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret.
The Dante Club is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a
brilliantly realized paean to Dante, his mythic genius, and his continued grip
on our imaginations.
Blessings by Anna Quindlen
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on
the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who
live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a
baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while
Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to
help him. Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect
decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person or a life legitimate or
illegitimate and who decides; and the unique resources people find in
themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption,
and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about whom The
Washington Post Book World said, “Quindlen knows that all the things
we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family.”
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