Incoming 10, 11, 12th Grade
Academic students:
Students entering 10th, 11th, & 12th grade (not including students in CSJ & CGI) will have the choice to read one of the books listed below.
Honors students:
*Honors students entering 10th, 11th, & 12th grade (not including students in CSJ & CGI) will be required to read both books listed below.
Summer Book Choices:
- Fiction: If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
- Non-fiction: Educated by Tara Westover
While reading...
1. Read the book actively, by underlining, highlighting, using post-it notes, and writing margin notes to indicate areas of interest and importance as you see it. In other words, respond to what you read, as you read. Some examples of reading actively are:
- Defining new vocabulary words;
- Asking questions of the text and the author;
- Making connections between the text and the reader, the text and other texts, and the text and the world;
- Commenting on what is conveyed; and
- Responding to the book at the end. Why did you like or dislike the book?
2. Identify themes in the book as they become apparent. Themes involve the subject of the text or an idea that recurs in that work. For example, a theme may involve racial bias, redemption or school issues. Your English teacher may ask you to write an essay on these themes when you return in the fall.
3. Record five (5) quotes (with page numbers) that you like from the book. Why did you choose those quotes? Perhaps you liked the writing or the content. Be prepared to explain in class why you chose these quotes.
Fiction Choice:
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.
Nonfiction Choice:
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.