2015 Summer Reading Brochure - James B. Conant High School

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/