Summer
Reading Requirements for Masconomet Regional Schools for
Fall 2011
Grade 7
Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen
The Name of this Book is Secret
by Pseudonymous Bosch
ASSESSMENT :
During the first days of school, you will
participate in a grade-wide assessment of your reading in your English
class. Your summer reading will count as
part of your first trimester grade.
Grade 8
Students should read at least two selections from the list
below:
Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
(Fantasy)
Out of the
Dust by Karen Hesse (Historical fiction)
Gathering Blue
by Lois Lowry (Science fiction)
Shakespeare's Scribe by Gary Blackwood (Historical fiction)
Red Badge of
Courage by Stephen Crane
(Historical fiction)
Tuesdays with
Morrie by Mitch
Albom (Biography)
Monster by Walter Dean Myers (Realistic fiction)
The Red
Necklace by Sally
Gardner (Historical fiction)
Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd (Realistic
fiction)
Shooting the
Moon by Frances O’Rourke
Dowell (Realistic fiction)
Scat by Carl Hiaasen (Realistic fiction)
Treasure
Island by
Robert Louis Stevenson (Adventure
fiction)
A Walk in the
Woods by Bill Bryson (Non-fiction)
The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas
Adams (Science fiction)
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris
Crutcher (Realistic fiction)
ASSESSMENT :
During the first days of school, you will
participate in a grade-wide assessment of your reading in your English
class. Your summer reading will count as
part of your first trimester grade.
Grade 9
College Prep students are required
to read one of the following:
The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night-time by Mark Hadden
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Honors students are required to
read one of the following:
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
This Boy’s Life by Tobias
Wolff
All students in Grade 9 are to
read an additional book of their own choosing.
See below (Resources to Help Choose a Book) for suggestions about how to
find an appealing title.
ASSESSMENT :
During the first days of school, you will
participate in a grade-wide assessment of your reading in your English
class. Your summer reading will count as
part of your first quarter grade.
Grade 10
College Prep students are required
to read one of the following:
The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
The Help by Kathryn
Stockett
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Honors students are required to
read one of the following:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Kite Runner by Khalid
Hossieni
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
All students in Grade 10 are to
read an additional book of their own choosing.
See below (Resources to Help Choose a Book) for suggestions about how to
find an appealing title.
ASSESSMENT
:
During the first days of school, you will participate in a grade-wide
assessment of your reading in your English class. Your summer reading will count as part of
your first quarter grade.
Grade 11
Honors
students are required to read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
AND
One of the
following:
The House
of the Seven Gables by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Uncle
Tom's Cabin by Harriet
Beecher Stowe
Age of
Innocence by Edith
Wharton
As I Lay
Dying by William
Faulkner
A Farewell
to Arms by Ernest
Hemingway
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Selected
Poems by Emily
Dickinson (Dover Thrift Edition)
100
Selected Poems by E.
E. Cummings
Everything
That Rises Must Converge by
Flannery O'Connor
ASSESSMENT of Ishmael:
Respond to one of the following and bring it to your first English class
upon returning from summer vacation.
1. Write a
letter to Ishmael in which you respond thoughtfully to his ideas.
2. Write three
challenging questions you would ask Ishmael if you could.
3. Pretend you
are Bill Gates and that you are writing a speech to congress about Ishmael’s
ideas.
4. Explain, in
writing, how the United States would have to change were it to adopt Ishmael’s
ideas.
ASSESSMENT of Book #2: Say
It With Sticky Notes (See Below)
College Prep
students are required to read one of the following:
100
Selected Poems by E.
E. Cummings
A Walk in
the Woods by Bill Bryson
Everything
That Rises Must Converge by
Flannery O'Connor
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip
Roth
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
My Jim by Nancy Rawles
Revolutionary Road by
Richard Yates
Sailing
Alone Around the Room by Billy
Collins
Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson (Dover Thrift Edition)
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
College Prep 2 students should
read one book of the student’s choice.
ASSESSMENT for Honors
choice book and College Prep students, which will count as part of your first
quarter grade:
Say It With Sticky Notes!
While you are reading your summer
reading book, you should have a stack of Post-It Notes handy. Respond to at
least 5 of the bullets below at some point during your reading (one on each
Post-It), sticking each Post-It to the page to which you are referring. Bring
in your sticky-noted book to class on the first day of school, when you will
use your book and notes to complete a summer reading in class assignment based
on your note-taking.
Thinking about how you read
q I got stuck when...
q I was confused/focused today because...
q One strategy I used to help me read this better was...
q When I got distracted I tried to refocus myself by...
q These word(s) or phrases were new/interesting to me...I
think they mean...
q When reading I should...
q When I read today I realized that...
q I had a hard time understanding...
q I’ll read better next time if I...
Thinking about what you read
q Why does the character/author...
q Why doesn’t the character/author...
q What surprised me most was...
q I predict that...
q This author’s writing style is...
q The main character wants/is...
q If I could, I’d ask the author/character...
q The most interesting idea in this book is...
q I realized...
q The main conflict/idea in this book is...
q One theme that keeps coming up is...
q I found the following quote interesting...
Elaborating on what you think
q I think__________ because...
q A good example of _______ is...
q This reminded me of ______because...
q This was important because...
q One thing that surprised me was__because I always
thought...
q The author is saying that...
From Reading
Reminders by Jim Burke (Boynton/Cook, 2000).
Grade 12
Advanced Placement students
should read two books from the list below and one book from the list of titles
suggested for one of the electives listed below.
A Prayer for
Owen Meany by John Irving
Emma by
Jane Austen
No Country for
Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
All the King’s
Men by Robert Penn Warren
Corelli’s
Mandolin by Louis DeBernieres
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor
Dostoevsky
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez
Poetry
All students should read Poetry
180: A Turning Back to Poetry by Billy Collins.
In addition, honors students
should read one of the following:
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Leaves of Grass: The First
(1855) Edition by Walt Whitman, Ed. Malcolm Cowley
Selected Poems by Edna St.
Vincent Millay
The Collected Poems of W. B.
Yeats by W. B. Yeats
The Graphic Novel
Required reading for ALL students: Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative (copies
available at Masco and local libraries)
Choose two titles from the list
below if you are taking the course for honors credit, one if you are enrolled
in college prep. If this is your first time reading graphic novels, I recommend
avoiding the challenging titles (for now). You will have the opportunity to
read these titles during the course.
The Adventures of Kavalier and
Clay by Michael Chabon (not a graphic novel; challenging)
Watchmen by Alan Moore
and David Gibbons (challenging)
Ghost World by Daniel
Clowes
Blankets by Craig
Thompson
American Splendor by
Harvey Pekar
The 911 Report by Sid
Jacobson & Ernie Colon or The Diary
of Anne Frank by the same authors
Asterios Polyp by David
Mazzuchelli (challenging)
Stitches by David Small
Pride of Baghdad by Brian
K. Vaughan
How I Made it to Eighteen
by Tracy White
The Best American Comics Series
2010 by editors Neil Gaiman, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden
Sandman by Neil Gaiman (any one book in the
series, but I recommend volume 3; challenging)
Palestine by Joe Sacco
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
(easy)
Smile by Raina Telgemeier
(easy)
Gothic Literature
If you have selected this course
for College Prep credit, read one novel from the list below. If you have selected this course for Honors
credit, read two.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar
Wilde
The Shining by Stephen King
It by Stephen King
Global Literature
Students taking Global Literature
for College Prep credit will read one title from the list below. Students
taking the course for Honors credit will read two titles.
White Tiger by Aravind
Adiga
Things Fall Apart by Chinua
Achebe
Nervous Conditions by
Tsitsi Dangarembga
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
ASSESSMENT
for all grade 12 courses:
During the first days of school, you will participate in a grade-wide
assessment of your reading in your English class. Your summer reading will count as part of
your first quarter grade.
OBTAINING BOOKS:
The following places have copies
of our Summer Reading Books: