IB Literature: 2019

Diving into the Complexity and Challenge of Fiction

Enjoy your Summer

We sincerely hope that you have a fun and relaxing summer. Junior year is an important one, and often the first year that many students take on the challenge of one or more accelerated courses. But, it is just as important to have a break as it is to expand your intellect. Speaking as English teachers, however, we do hope very much that part of your summer relaxation is reading for pleasure. That’s certainly what we do with our time off!

Why Read Fiction?

“Our answer is that we don’t just read great books — they read us as well. The human condition is complex and contradictory, layered like an ice-cream parfait, with flavors blending among the layers. A great novel reflects that complexity. We may read it several times, as we do with our favorites, and each time it is like finding an old friend and gaining new insights from that friend. We put it down with new understandings of the world around us and, most important, of ourselves” (Ehrlich and Fu, Forbes Magazine, June 2015).

The First Day of School:

On the first day of school, you do need to come prepared with two things: a high quality notebook and a preference for a book club book.

The Notebook: This course will require you to keep a journal of sorts of your experiences in both years of the class. Consequently, you need a high quality and highly durable notebook that can handle 2 years of being lugged around, tossed in cars, shoved in and yanked out of backpacks, coffee spills, campus floods, and all manner of bizarre things you do with your stuff.

This means your notebook must: have sewn in pages (not flimsy bendy spirals or perforated pages), be regular notebook size or larger (not small journal sized), and have a durable cover (paper and cardboard covers tend to fold, bend, tear, and peel apart). The paper can be lined or unlined, so it can be an art notebook if you prefer. If you make a purchase online, be sure to confirm the size and materials of the purchase. You might be happier visiting a stationary store such as Paper Source (South Coast Plaza) or Typo (Irvine Spectrum). Target and office supply stores do have workable notebook, but likely not as wide a variety.

Book Club: Throughout the year you will complete independent reading for a grade. Your first independent reading book must come from the below choice of texts. Because the campus book store will be on the second A/B day of school, you must be ready to provide your teacher your preference of book choice on day one so that your teacher can create the groups and you can make any appropriate purchases on day two. Do not pre-buy this text. We need to make the groups relatively balanced, so we can't have everyone showing up with the same book. You should choose the book that sounds most engaging to you. Do not choose based upon length. Everyone will be required to read 200-300 pages a month, of which this book will be a part, so book length is irrelevant.

All of these books have mature content. If there are particular topics which you may find upsetting or difficult, you must do your due diligence in selecting your preferred story. Please click the images/links below to read about them. There will be 1-2 MORE books added to this list during the summer, so be sure to check back shortly before school to read about the latest editions!

Ms. Corbett can be reached at qcorbett@nmusd.us

Mr. Sigafoos can be reached at jsigafoos@nmusd.us

Have a fabulous Summer, and we cannot wait to meet you in the Fall!

Literarily Yours,

Ms. Corbett and Mr. Sigafoos

Strictly speaking, there is no required summer work for IB Literature Year 2; we hope you will take the summer to rest and prepare for your final year of high school. Students often tell us that the first semester of senior year is a heavy one, when the stress and workload of college applications pile on top of what you're already expected to manage for your classes. With that in mind, we recommend getting started on the application process over the summer -- consider researching and/or visiting schools, as well as thinking about, brainstorming, or even starting to draft your essays. Here are links to the prompts most of you will be using:

• The UC “Personal Insight” questions, available on the UC Admissions website.

and/or

• The Common Application essay, available on the Common Application website.

and/or

• The Coalition for Access essay, available on the Coalition's website.

More than anything, though, we hope you'll find time this summer to read. Choose whatever you'd like -- novels, poetry, plays, memoirs, serious or funny, long or short -- but we'd encourage you to try new things. Explore literature from different parts of the world or different time periods, from different perspectives or about different subjects than you're used to. Most importantly, read things you're excited to read. IB Literature is at its best when we can come together as a community of enthusiastic readers, people who read for fun and for enlightenment.