Summer Reading Requirement!

June 7, 2007

Dear Parents and Students,

Welcome to summer – a time for relaxing, renewing and reading! The purpose of our summer reading program for Charlevoix High School students is to promote continuous reading habits, to encourage reading for pleasure, and to establish a springboard for class discussion in the fall. Our goal is to develop independent readers who will continue lifelong reading habits because they find personal value in reading and sharing good books. We hope you will enjoy the books we’ve selected for your particular class.

Recognizing the interest of parents in their child’s reading development, we encourage parents to nurture that development and to make recommendations to their children throughout the year. We also encourage parents to read along with their children and have discussions about the story.

Students are to choose TWO of the five books below for their 2007-2008 English class or senior Government class. These titles will become an integral part of class studies at the beginning of next year. Class discussions and assessments in early September will focus on these texts.

The titles can be purchased from the local bookstore or an internet source; they can also be checked out at the public library, or the high school will be open on Thursday, June 21 from 9-11 AM when the titles can be checked out for the summer.

We are also asking that students keep a journal as they read each novel. Students are required to write THREE one page entries for each novel (for a total of six entries). Topics can be anything book related such as:

• How is the setting important?
• Is the most significant conflict internal or external?
• What is the author’s attitude toward the main character?
• How do the character’s change in the story?
• Are there any important symbols?
• Make and support a statement of theme.
• Compare/contrast any elements of the two novels you have read: theme, styles, characters, etc…
• Explore your own topic, or provide your own reaction.

Please keep your journals in a spiral notebook, as they will be collected in September.

Thank you and we look forward to discussing these books with you in the fall.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Karen Peterson
Mr. Patrick Conway
Mrs. Kris Schaperkotter
Mrs. Betty Henne
Ms. Jill Tabaczka
Charlevoix High School English Department

English I:
1. The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier
2. Black Boy – Richard Wright
3. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
4. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
5. Anthem – Ayn Rand

English II:
1. A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
2. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
3. A Separate Peace – John Knowles
4. Slaughter House Five – Kurt Vonnegut
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Modern Communications III:
1. The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
2. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
3. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
4. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
5. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood

Advanced English 3
1. A Midsummer Night's Dream – William Shakespeare
2. The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
3. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
4. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
5. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kessey

Modern Communications IV:
1. Catch- 22 – Joseph Heller
2. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
3. 1984 – George Orwell
4. Watership Down – Richard Adams
5. On the Road – Jack Kerouac

Advanced English IV /Government
1. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
2. The Stranger - Albert Camus
3. Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
4. Tess of the D’ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
5. The Awakening - Kate Chopin