Conant High School Summer Reading A Chinese immigrant excels at school by day, sacrifices her dignity in a art by Kristina Bozhanova We hope you will read and enjoy many of these books, but remember that reading at least one of the books on this list is a requirement and an assessed English assignment. Fiction Choices Ask the Passengers (A.S. King) Digital Fortress (Dan Brown) Girl in Translation (Jean Kwak) An old soul at only 17, Astrid escapes the pressure of her neurotic mom and high dad through her favorite escape: lying in the backyard, imagining the passengers in the airplanes overhead, pondering the questions she would ask them if she could, confiding in them that she is falling in love with another girl, and savoring their lack of judgment. #askthepassengers In this thriller, an NSA cryptographer discovers that an unbreakable code is actually holding the NSA and national intelligence hostage. #digitalfortress Chinatown sweatshop by night, and hides her poverty every minute of her new life. Bearing the burdens of her family’s future and of a mismatched love, she translates not just the new language—but herself back and forth between all the masks she wears. #girlintranslation Ball Don’t Lie Matt de la Pena A city basketball player sees basketball as a way out of his rough background, but confronting racial issues, bad decisions, and old secrets may hold him back. #balldontlie Breathing Underwater (Alex Flinn) A powerful, haunting story of dating violence—told from the abuser’s point of view after he is in court-ordered therapy. #breathingunderwater DJ Rising (Love Maia) When he’s not looking after his heroinaddicted mother or trying to keep up in school, Marley dreams of becoming a professional DJ. Good luck gets Marley a chance to launch his career as "DJ Ice." But disaster at home shatters DJ Ice, who must choose between responsibility and his future. #djrising More selections on back Eleanor and Park (Rainbow Rowell) An oddball from a lousy home and the boy on her bus bond over alternative music and comic books in this adorable story of friendship and the safety it gives us. #eleanorandpark Esperanza Rising (Pam Munoz Ryan) Esperanza lives like a princess in Mexico where her father is a wealthy landowner, but when he is murdered, she and her mother become migrant workers in California. She must adjust to her new surroundings and deal with her own prejudices about social class. #esperanzarisng Full Tilt (Neal Shusterman) The older brother in a dysfunctional family is plunged into a phantom carnival with his wild younger brother, where he must survive seven different carnival rides, each one a different darkness from his past—while his brother’s soul hangs in the balance and depends on Blake’s endurance. #fulltilt Iceman (Chris Lynch) #iceman A hockey player earns the nickname Iceman and a brutal reputation on the ice. Underneath his icy shell, he is burning up with anger at being misunderstood and misjudged his entire life, a razor’s edge away from snapping. I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister (Amelie Sarn) #imissmysister Muslim sisters, one the “good” daughter and one the rebel, bond over the pain of standing up for themselves—sometimes for their faith and sometimes against it. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs) #missperegrine 16-year-old Jacob grew up on his grandpa’s mystical stories and photo albums. A strange letter lures him to Grandpa’s childhood home, where he finds those very same people from the pictures—still children, still alive, and full of strange powers as their only defense against monsters hungering to be inside their shelter. Delightful blend of haunting, adventure, and photo album. Fiction Choices, cnt’d Miracle’s Boys (Jacqueline Woodson) Brothers on their own in New York try to face the world together after the loss of their mother and the return of their other brother from jail. The events of one agonizing weekend finally force the boys to either support each other or give in to the pain living. #miraclesboys StupidFast (Geoff Herbach) Over the summer, a scrawny reject with a weirdo family hits a giant growth spurt, making him taller, bigger, and faster than everyone—the perfect addition to the football team that once teased him. In between the hilarity, awkwardness, and pure football, he starts to wonder what he’s running from.#stupidfast The Selection (Kiera Cass) #selection In a world where people are born into rigid social castes, America was born into one of the lowest castes. To improve their lot in life, her mother enters her into the Selection to find a bride for the prince, but she is already in love. Shadow and Bone (Leigh Bardugo) In an empire torn in half by the Shadow Fold, an impenetrable darkness swarming with unspeakable evils, the magical elite discovers a great magical power in a lonesome orphan. They take her to the court to train her power, where she must learn the dark Grisha secrets and ultimately, the horrors of the Shadow Fold. #shadowandbone Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (David Lubar) A skinny, clueless, nerdy freshman faces the comical ups and depressing downs of freshman year. An amusing, accurate look at the awkwardness of high school. #sleepingfreshmen The Speed of Dark (Elizabeth Moon) A man with autism is offered the chance to try an experimental “cure” for autism in a futuristic society that has eradicated disability and disease. Faced with the chance to lead a typical life, he wonders whether the treatment could alter his entire identity and whether losing who he is would be worth the cost of “normality.”#speedofdark Wintergirls (Laurie Halse Anderson) Best friends with severe eating disorders grow apart after their illnesses turn tragic. Lia’s desire for thinness and her guilt over her role in Cassie’s disorder spiral out of control as she obsessively tries to fool the world about the severity of her condition. Haunting, powerful examination of the despair of anorexia. #wintergirls Non-Fiction Choices Discovering Wes Moore (Wes Moore) This author, a Rhodes scholar and war veteran, analyzes factors that influenced his life and shaped him—as well as another man, also named Wes Moore, who grew up in the same neighborhood but who was drawn into a world of drugs, crime, and a life sentence in prison. #discoveringwesmoore Escape from Camp 14 (Blaine Harden) Shin Dong-hyuk shares his true story of being born inside Camp 14, a North Korean political prison, his life within its walls before his dangerous escape to South Korea. #escapefromcamp14 I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (Malala Yousafazi) When the Taliban took control of part of Pakistan and began violating women’s rights, 15-year-old Malala stood up for girls’ education and was then shot in the head on the school bus by the Taliban. She survived the murder attempt and has gone on to become a global advocate for education, becoming the youngest Nobel Peace Prize Winner. #iammalala Accelerated and AP English English 108 ONLY: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) In this timeless classic, Scout and her brother grow up under the principled guidance of her father, a lawyer defending an African-American man on trial, as the experience shapes the lives and hearts of his children. #mockingbird This book is ONLY for incoming accelerated freshmen. Older students repeating this book from English class will not receive credit for summer reading. English 208: Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) In the future, humans are mass-produced and conditioned for lives in a rigid caste system. Disturbing secrets lie underneath the seeming perfection of this highlyordered world. #bravenewworld English 319: Mississippi: An American Journey (Anthony Walton) #mississippijourney A black Chicagoan travels to Mississippi, contemplating the history of slavery and civil rights in one of America’s most racially charged states, weaving in historical stories and documents, stories of his own family, poetry, songs, and pictures as he considers racial complexity and the impact of a racist past. *Please see website for the specific assignment* Making a late schedule change into AP Language without Mississippi will put you severely behind. If there is even the slightest possibility you will be in AP Language, you NEED to do this assignment. English 419: How to Read Literature Like a Professor (Thomas C. Foster) and selected short stories/poems. ***The assignments for this course are very specific.*** If you are taking English 419, your junior year teacher will provide you with the materials or you can locate them from the CHS website and in the Summer Reading Schoology group. Making a late schedule change into AP Lit without this summer reading will put you severely behind. If there is even the slightest possibility you will be in AP Lit, you NEED to do this assignment. Please be prepared for the rigor of this task and the class. When something strikes you in your book this summer—good scene, great quote, love this character-- tweet about it with #chssummerreading and #(the title)! See you on Twitter! You can also talk about the books with us in the Schoology group online, access code N9GVQ-4KP66 Learn how to check out e-books on your iPad: http://chs.d211.org/academics/me dia-center/ebooks-digital-library/