New Leadership Charter School Summer Reading List: 2011 Incoming 10th Grade Students

Students are required to read two texts this summer. They must read the required text listed below and must choose one additional text from the suggested reading list.

Students must complete both essays in order to receive full credit for the summer reading assignment.

Required Reading:

The Color of Water by James McBride

Suggested Readings (Choose One) :

2011 Summer Reading List: Incoming Grade 10

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Calling the police to a party is a tough choice, but what made Melinda call is the devastating secret that keeps her locked in silence.

The Lovely Bones

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chbosky

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Caramelo, or, Puro cuento: a novel by Sandra Cisneros

LaLa learns the stories of her Awful Grandmother and weaves them into a colorful family history.  The "caramelo," a striped shawl begun by her Great-Grandmother, symbolizes their traditions.

Push by Sapphire

Push is an emotionally powerful, disturbing novel written from the perspective of a young and poor black woman whose life has been defined by sexual, emotional, and physical abuse.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short by Terry McMillan

As the book begins, Viola is in the hospital recovering from a devastating asthma attack, and she's decided to turn her life around, even if it means causing her large, unruly family a little discomfort. Lewis, Viola's only son, is a drifter, handicapped both by his genius IQ and his alcoholism. Janelle, the youngest child, is perpetually searching for the perfect career, while ignoring signs that her 12-year-old daughter is in trouble. How can this family be put back together?

The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah

Set in the projects of Brooklyn, New York, The Coldest Winter Ever is the story of Winter Santiaga (aptly named because she was born during one of New York 's worst snowstorms ), the rebellious, pampered teenage daughter of a notorious drug dealer . Ricky Santiaga, Winter's father, has attained substantial wealth through his drug empire and lavishes his wife, Winter, and Winter's three younger sisters, Porsche, Lexus, and Mercedes, with the best things money can (and cannot) buy. Unknown to her father, Winter has picked up on all of his hustling tricks and does whatever is necessary to get what she wants. Winter's world is turned upside down, however, on her 16th birthday, when her father suddenly decides to relocate his family and his growing business to Long Island, but she is determined not to sever ties with the old neighborhood.

The Double by Jose Saramago

In an existential novel from Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago, a depressed history teacher rents a video on which he sees his double and goes in search of him. Which one is the original and which one the duplicate? Is one a mistake? This is what the two men must get to the bottom of.

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

Charlotte Simmons is a naive and innocent young woman who wins a scholarship to elite Dupont University. College is a rude awakening for Charlotte. Instead of being a bastion of research and scholarship, athletic, fraternity, and alumni concerns trump everything else at Dupont University. It is awash in booze and sex, and the at the top of the pile of corruption is the basketball program, where cheating and fake courses run rampant. Charlotte's innocence and purity don't stand a chance against this background, and her story mirrors a society undone by fame and money.

The Chosen by Chain Potok

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

Feisty Marietta Greer changes her name to "Taylor" when her car runs out of gas in Taylorville, Ill. By the time she reaches Oklahoma, this strong-willed young Kentucky native with a quick tongue and an open mind is catapulted into a surprising new life. Taylor leaves home in a beat-up '55 Volkswagen bug, on her way to nowhere in particular, savoring her freedom. But when a forlorn Cherokee woman drops a baby in Taylor's passenger seat and asks her to take it, she does. A first novel, The Bean Trees is an overwhelming delight, as random and unexpected as real life.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

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.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

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 two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway chronicles the aimless, hedonistic exploits of a group of literary ex-patriates (known as "The Lost Generation") living in post-World War I Paris and Spain. Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley are attracted to each other, but Jake's war wound prevents a deeper relationship. Cohn loves Brett, who has affairs with a variety of men. Sex, hard drinking, camaraderie, and betrayal combine to create a compelling, memorable novel.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

My Bloody Life by Reymundo Sanchez

In My Bloody Life , Reymundo Sanchez tells a chillingly sad tale, from his birth in the back of a pickup truck in Puerto Rico to the day he quit the Latin Kings gang, 21 years later. From the first page, his narrative is unpretentious, disarmingly honest, and horrifyingly riveting. His early years were so full of pain and abuse that by the time he opts, at age 11, to hang out with the local gang, the Latin Kings, it seems a perfectly logical choice. In his shoes, any one of us--smacked nightly by a mother and beaten ragged whenever the stepfather got the chance--would likely have chosen the same path. The gang was the family that accepted him as well as the peer group that offered girls who didn't say "no." Any violence that went with the territory couldn't match the atmosphere of brutality that permeated his own home.

The Between by Tananarive Due

Although set largely in the black and Hispanic communities of Florida's Dade County, Due's first novel, a skillful blend of horror and the supernatural, poses questions about life and identity that transcend racial boundaries. Thirty years after he was saved from drowning by the beloved grandmother who died in his place, Hilton James has built a secure middle-class life for his African American family and saved a few lives himself through his social work in Miami's inner city. His comfortable existence is shattered when his wife, a judge, begins receiving racist death threats and he starts having nightmares of alternate life experiences so authentic that they begin to loosen his grip on reality. Is Hilton a latent schizophrenic, as his therapist thinks? Or are the dreams and death threats both signs of a cosmic scheme in which Hilton is meant to accept the death that he eluded before?

 

Summer Reading Assignment (400 pts.)

 

Both essays must be typed, double-spaced, 12 point Font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins all around.

 

1.) The Color of Water - Discuss the role that the racial tension of the time contributed the development of James, his mother and his siblings. How have their experiences with race and issues of race shaped them into the people they have become? Were their other major influences that contributed to their development? If so, what?

AND

2.) Novel # 2 – What are the key contributors the main character's development? Offer an in-depth analysis of the main character/s of the novel. Who is he/she? Why is he/she that way? What obstacles, forces or experiences contributed to the identity this character has formed? Use specific examples from the text to support your point.

 

 

In order to receive full credit, your essay must meet the following criteria:

•  The paper is clear and focused. It holds the reader's attention. Relevant anecdotes and details enrich the central theme.

•  The organization enhances and showcases the central idea or theme. The order, structure, or presentation of information is compelling and moves the reader through the text.

•  The writer speaks directly to the reader in a way that is individual, compelling, and engaging. The writer crafts the writing with an awareness and respect for the audience and the purpose for writing .

•  Words convey the intended message in a precise, interesting, and natural way. The words are powerful and engaging.

•  The writing has an easy flow, rhythm, and cadence. Sentences are well built, with strong and varied structure that invites expressive oral reading.

•  The writer demonstrates a good grasp of standard writing conventions (e.g., spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, usage, paragraphing) and uses conventions effectively. Errors tend to be so few that just minor touch-ups would get this piece ready to publish.

•  The form and presentation of the text enhances the ability for the reader to understand and connect with the message. It is pleasing to the eye.

Extra Credit (50 pts)

There are two ways you may earn extra credit:

1. Read more than one book from the summer reading list and complete parts 1 and 2 of the reading assignment.
2. Complete one of the projects listed below.

Choose from one of the projects below. Don't forget to have fun!

• Script It: Lights, camera, action! Write a movie script for a favorite scene in your book. At the top of the script you can assign real-life TV or movie stars to play each role. Double bonus (yes, that's 100 points): Video record your script. Create backdrops and costumes for a full effect.

• In the News! Create the front page of a newspaper that tells about events and characters in your book. Include weather reports, an editorial or editorial cartoon, ads, etc. which relate to the book. The title of the newspaper and headlines should be appropriately related to topics/themes from the book.

• Create a comic book! Turn a scene from your book into a comic book, complete with comic-style illustrations and dialogue bubbles.

• Picture Books: Create a picture book version of your book that would appeal to younger students.

• Literary Idol: Write a song with lyrics and melody, related to a character, events or a major theme in the book. (an instrumental background would be excellent but is not required). Sing or rap for your teacher and class during the first week of school. (Standard English conventions do not apply)

• Slam!: Write a poem related to a character, events or a major theme in the book. Present it for your teacher and class during the first week of school, in the poetry slam/spoken words style, with appropriate feeling. (Standard English conventions do not apply)

• Jackdaw. A jackdaw is a crow-like bird known for picking up various brightly colored objects to add to its nest. Create a jackdaw by choosing important aspects of your novel and placing them in a container representative of your character and the times. Example: Based on the book Holes, you might choose a suitcase to hold your items. Include in your container such things as letters, maps, diary entries, drawings, newspaper articles, pictures and any other item significant to the main character. Attach a note to each item describing the significance of each item.

6/11

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