Summer Reading
Honors English 1 - 2025
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For this summer, you get to choose ONE of the Book Sets below. Then, click on the tab above to see the assignment specific to that book set. You'll read BOTH books for your chosen Book Set.
Watch this VIDEO for an overview.
Book Set One
Book Set One
The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
Inherit the Wind
By Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Novel
Novel
This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.
~ Goodreads
Play
Play
A meaningful play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which a Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution. The accused was a slight, frightened man who'd deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus, the chief gladiators being the two great legal giants of the century. Locked in mortal combat, they bellowed & roared imprecations & abuse. The spectators sat uneasily in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts, barely restraining themselves. America's freedom was at stake. ~Goodreads
Book Set Two
Animal Farm
By George Orwell
Red Scarf Girl
By Ji-Li Jiang
Novel
Novel
A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.
~ Goodreads
Memoir
Memoir
(non-fiction)
Moving, honest, and deeply personal, Red Scarf Girl is the incredible true story of one girl’s courage and determination during one of the most terrifying eras of the twentieth century.
Moving, honest, and deeply personal, Red Scarf Girl is the incredible true story of one girl’s courage and determination during one of the most terrifying eras of the twentieth century.
It's 1966, and twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has everything a girl could want: brains, popularity, and a bright future in Communist China. But it's also the year that China's leader, Mao Ze-dong, launches the Cultural Revolution—and Ji-li's world begins to fall apart. Over the next few years, people who were once her friends and neighbors turn on her and her family, forcing them to live in constant terror of arrest. And when Ji-li's father is finally imprisoned, she faces the most difficult dilemma of her life.
It's 1966, and twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has everything a girl could want: brains, popularity, and a bright future in Communist China. But it's also the year that China's leader, Mao Ze-dong, launches the Cultural Revolution—and Ji-li's world begins to fall apart. Over the next few years, people who were once her friends and neighbors turn on her and her family, forcing them to live in constant terror of arrest. And when Ji-li's father is finally imprisoned, she faces the most difficult dilemma of her life.
~ Goodreads
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