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2021Nutmeg Flyer HS 12-13-2020.pdfThe Morgan School Summer Reading
The Morgan School Summer Reading
The Morgan School Summer Reading Program is designed to serve several purposes. We want to promote the development of strong reading skills and to enrich students’ vocabulary; but even more, we want students to appreciate the pleasures of a good read. While we will not run our “I Love This Book!” Program this year, we are requiring all students to read a book of their choice.
You will find below a list of award-winning books chosen for their readability and for their relevance to teens and teen issues. All of the titles listed are available at Henry Carter Hull Library, and most can be accessed electronically through Hoopla. While these suggested titles were compiled for their wide appeal to varied readers, the list is not exhaustive and students can select a title not on the list. We hope our students read often, choosing books that interest them.
While reading, students are strongly encouraged to keep a reading journal, as these journals could be very helpful in future discussions of the text; the journals, however, will not be collected or graded. During the week of September 7, students will complete an assignment related to their summer reading to be scored by each student’s English teacher.
Summer reading requirements for Honors Students are listed here.
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Part 1 of the Shatter Me series
One touch is all it takes. One touch, and Juliette Ferrars can leave a man gasping for air. One touch, and she can kill.No one knows why Juliette has such incredible power. It feels like a curse, a burden that one person alone could never bear. But The Reestablishment sees it as a gift, sees her as an opportunity. An opportunity for a deadly weapon.Juliette has never fought for herself before. But when she's reunited with the one person who ever cared about her, she finds a strength she never knew she had.
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
Emoni is a high school senior caring for her young daughter and helping to support her grandmother. She’s also a talented cook and is trying really hard to be able to go on her school’s culinary trip to Spain. This novel is brimming with love, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and characters you will never forget.
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott
George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's-and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon-and America itself-in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe
Norris Kaplan is clever, cynical, and quite possibly too smart for his own good. A Black French Canadian, he knows from watching American sitcoms that those three things don’t bode well when you are moving to Austin, Texas.
Plunked into a new high school and sweating a ridiculous amount from the oppressive Texas heat, Norris finds himself cataloging everyone he meets: the Cheerleaders, the Jocks, the Loners, and even the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Making a ton of friends has never been a priority for him, and this way he can at least amuse himself until it’s time to go back to Canada, where he belongs.
Yet against all odds, those labels soon become actual people to Norris…like loner Liam, who makes it his mission to befriend Norris, or Madison the beta cheerleader, who is so nice that it has to be a trap. Not to mention Aarti the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who might, in fact, be a real love interest in the making.
But the night of the prom, Norris screws everything up royally. As he tries to pick up the pieces, he realizes it might be time to stop hiding behind his snarky opinions and start living his life—along with the people who have found their way into his heart.
Plunked into a new high school and sweating a ridiculous amount from the oppressive Texas heat, Norris finds himself cataloging everyone he meets: the Cheerleaders, the Jocks, the Loners, and even the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Making a ton of friends has never been a priority for him, and this way he can at least amuse himself until it’s time to go back to Canada, where he belongs.
Yet against all odds, those labels soon become actual people to Norris…like loner Liam, who makes it his mission to befriend Norris, or Madison the beta cheerleader, who is so nice that it has to be a trap. Not to mention Aarti the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who might, in fact, be a real love interest in the making.
But the night of the prom, Norris screws everything up royally. As he tries to pick up the pieces, he realizes it might be time to stop hiding behind his snarky opinions and start living his life—along with the people who have found their way into his heart.
Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
Part 1 of the Dumplin' series
A powerful novel with the most fearless heroine-self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson. With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine-Dumplin' is guaranteed to steal your heart. Dubbed "Dumplin'" by her former beauty queen mom, Willowdean has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American-beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked . . . until Will takes a job at Harpy's, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn't surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back. Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant-along with several other unlikely candidates-to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she'll shock the hell out of Clover City-and maybe herself most of all.
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
So Monty vows to make this year-long escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores…
Eve of Man by Giovanna & Tom Fletcher
Eve of Man by Giovanna & Tom Fletcher
On the first day, no one really noticed. All those babies wrapped in blue blankets--not a pink one in sight. On the third day, people were scared--a statistic-defying abundance of blue. Not just entire hospitals, not only entire countries, but the entire world. Boys. Only boys.
Until Eve. The only girl born in fifty years. The savior of mankind. Kept protected, towering above a ruined world under a glass dome of safety until she is ready to renew the human race.
But when the time comes to find a suitor, Eve and Bram--a young man whose job is to prepare Eve for this moment--begin to question the plan they've known all along. Eve doesn't only want safety, and she doesn't only want protection. She wants the truth. She wants freedom.
Until Eve. The only girl born in fifty years. The savior of mankind. Kept protected, towering above a ruined world under a glass dome of safety until she is ready to renew the human race.
But when the time comes to find a suitor, Eve and Bram--a young man whose job is to prepare Eve for this moment--begin to question the plan they've known all along. Eve doesn't only want safety, and she doesn't only want protection. She wants the truth. She wants freedom.
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.
In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.
A Danger to Herself and Other by Alyssa Sheinmel
A Danger to Herself and Other by Alyssa Sheinmel
Four walls. One window. No way to escape.
Hannah knows there's been a mistake, she doesn't need to be institutionalized. What happened to her roommate at that summer program was an accident. As soon as the doctor and judge figure out that she isn't a danger to herself or others, she can go home to start her senior year. Those college applications aren't going to write themselves. Until then, she's determined to win over the staff and earn some privileges so she doesn't lose her mind to boredom.Then Lucy arrives. Lucy has her own baggage, and she's the perfect project to keep Hannah's focus off all she is missing at home. But Lucy may be the one person who can get Hannah to confront the secrets she's avoiding and the dangerous games that landed her in confinement in the first place.
Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli
Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli
YES, Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state senate candidate-as long as he's behind the scenes. When it comes to speaking to strangers (or, let's face it, speaking at all to almost anyone) Jamie's a choke artist. There's no way he'd ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes...until he meets Maya. NOMaya Rehman's having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is canceled, and now her parents are separating. Why her mother thinks the solution to her problems is political canvassing-with some awkward dude she hardly knows-is beyond her. MAYBE SOGoing door to door isn't exactly glamorous, but maybe it's not the worst thing in the world. After all, the polls are getting closer-and so are Maya and Jamie. Mastering local activism is one thing. Navigating the cross-cultural crush of the century is another thing entirely.
Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award!. A novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.
But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers-especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class who her family can never know about. When she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems.
Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz
Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz
Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.
One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel
One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel
The three of them—a twelve-year-old boy, his older brother, their father—have won the war: the father’s term for his bitter divorce and custody battle. They leave their Kansas home and drive through the night to Albuquerque, eager to begin again, united by the thrilling possibility of carving out a new life together. The boys go to school, join basketball teams, make friends. Meanwhile their father works from home, smoking cheap cigars to hide another smell. But soon the little missteps—the dead-eyed absentmindedness, the late night noises, the comings and goings of increasingly odd characters—become worrisome, and the boys find themselves watching their father change, grow erratic, then dangerous.
They Both Die In The End by Adam Silvera
They Both Die In The End by Adam Silvera
On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today.
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.
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