English 2013 Summer Reading

Cover of Nectar in a Sieve (Signet Classics)

Each student must complete summer reading for Sophomore English. The purpose of these additional readings is to promote independent life-long learning. Every student must read two books, one from each group of books listed. In addition to reading the books, a combination of activities must be completed to demonstrate comprehension of text and application to prior learning.  Both activities are required for both books read during the summer.

 

• Reader’s Journal: The journal needs to be hand written
• Contained within a single notebook
• Include a reflective summary of daily readings
• Book review: 1-2 pgs should include student opinions and
  • Reading Projects selected from the list below
  • Must be completed for both readings.
  • The same project may not be completed for both readings.

All activities are due the second Friday of the school year, and it is the student’s responsibility to turn in the assignments on time. Any students, who enroll after August 1, must speak with Mr. Wilson about completing the assignment.

Project 1: Comic Strip      Create and draw a comic strip showing a brief summary of the story. Your comic should be at least sixteen action panels + a Title and End Panel with speech or thought bubbles and fill an entire sheet of unlined computer paper.

Project 2: Major Characters Collage  Choose two main characters and create a collage of their personality traits using images from magazines and your own drawings. Choose at least one passage/quote that typifies each character’s point of view.

Project 3: Illustrator Extraordinaire Chose a major scene and create a mini poster (approx 15”x 20”) illustration of the scene. Be sure to write a brief caption on the back. It should be completed on unlined poster paper.

Ì Project 4: Gossip Rags Ì  (May be completed with a partner)     Create a mini-tabloid newspaper. Become the gossip columnist that is updating the people about the story. Look at Us Weekly or the National Enquirer for examples

Ì Project 5: TMZ Ì  (May be completed with a partner)                    Create a tabloid video blog, 3-5 minutes long. Be sure to explain the “gossip” issues of the story and make some suggestions of how the Gods and Goddess intervening.

Project 6: Joseph Cornell Boxes                      Select one of the major characters and create a collection of items that represent the character. The box should be a combination of items and designs.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achibe

Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries.

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya

Rukmani, a peasant from a village in India, lives a life of constant struggle, yet she is a source of strength for many. At age twelve she marries a man she has never met and moves with him to his rented farmland. Over the years their marriage fills with love, mutual respect, and children: one daughter and many sons. The changes in village life from an agricultural to an industrial community frighten Rukmani; her life becomes one of “Hope and fear.

 

Divergent Veronica Roth.

In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

 

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Free e-book available online)

Interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus is released into what is now a police state, and decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.

 

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys.

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author’s family, includes a historical note.

 

Unwind By Neal Shusterman

Unwind takes place in the United States, somewhere in the near future. Parents can sign an order form for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 years old to be unwound—taken to “harvest camps” and having their body parts harvested for later use.

 

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor.

Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of hideous, frightening monsters–the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known.

 

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

Sixteen-year-old Jacob, having traveled to a remote island after a family tragedy, discovers an abandoned orphanage, and, after some investigating, he learns the children who lived there may have been dangerous and quarantined and may also still be alive.

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