Assigned Reading 2008 - Nashville Public Library

A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway or
Johnny Got His Gun - Trumbo or
Catch 22 - Heller or
Slaughter House Five - Vonnegut or
The Things they Carried- O'Brien (Fiction)
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 - Williams or
The Children - Halberstam or
Silent Spring - Carson (nonfiction)
Student's Free Choice - Read two works of the same genre and compare and explore the works in your journal. The works can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, essays. Enjoy the choice. The works may be related to your extended essay or your historical investigation. They may not be works that are required for other subjects

AP English Literature & Composition (4 Required)

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Thomas Foster
Choose 2 from below
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Black Boy - Richard Wright

Assignment (AP Eng. Lit./ENG IV Honors/IB classes):

These questions will help to focus reading and will provide a guideline to help better understand the text. All answers, except those that specifically call for lists, should be in paragraph form (minimum 5 complete sentences). The answers do not have to be typed, although they should be readable, and they should also be numbered. Journals are due on August Friday, August 31st. AP Language will have assessments in lieu of journals, on that same day.

Title, author, and number of pages read
What is the setting of the text? Is it significant? Why or why not?
What are the turning points? (such as shifts in point of view, plot, character development, mood or tone)
Decide who the main character is and then trace his/her development through the novel. You should be sure to note specific instances in the text where character traits are revealed or events in the plot cause a change in the character.
List five of the major literary elements in the novel and describe how they are used to develop the plot. (Literary elements could include, but are not limited to, the following: metaphor, simile, personification, irony, tone, diction, foreshadowing, imagery, parallelism, and satire.)
What symbols and images are developed in the text? Explain through which types of literary devices these symbols and images are developed.
What conflicts are present in the book? Describe them.
Give your response to the ending of the text.
What is the author's message or theme, and what relevance does it have for contemporary society?
Choose one significant passage (6-12 sentences) and copy on the left half of a page. On the right side, respond to the passage. Why did you view it as significant? Did it cause you to recall a memory? Another book? Etc.

Nashville School of the Arts

View or print the complete list by clicking on the PDF icon.

General Information:

Read all books listed for the specific class you will take.
Be sure you read teh ACTUAL NOVEL -- reading Cliff's Notes, Internet summaries, etc., will not be sufficient to succeed.
Alternative books are listed for those who may be unable for religious or personal reasons to read an assigned selection. You are expected to read the assigned book; alternative selections are neither shorter nor easier than the assigned works.
On the first day of school you will be given the dates for specific assignments and tests on your summer reading.
No written work is required during the summer, except as noted here:
- 10th Grade Honors: : Keep a dialectical journal, or a double-entry reader-response journal that records a conversation between the ideas in the text and the ideas of the reader. Divide a piece of paper into three (3) columns in which you include twenty-five (25) quotations (Column 1), page numbers of those quotations (Column 2), and the reasons why you chose these quotations (Column 3), including insights and questions.
- 12th Grade Honors and AP: A 1,500 word journal will be required for each selection. For CATCHER, write 500 words on the novel’s plot, 500 on character, and 500 on your personal reaction to the novel; these will be due on the first Monday after school begins. AP students should discuss as many of the MYTHOLOGY stories and/or characters as possible in 1500 words; these journals will be due two weeks later. You will be tested on each book on the day that novel’s journals are due.

Ninth Grade
Standard: Monster (Walter Dean Myers)

Honors: Up From Slavery (Booker T. Washington) *required
Cheating Lessons (Nan Williard Cappo)

Alternative Selection: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (Chris Crutcher)

Tenth Grade
Standard: Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)

Honors: Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
Ellen Foster (Kaye Gibbons)

Alternative Selection: Hard Times (Charles Dickens)

Eleventh Grade
Standard: A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

Honors: A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Alternative Selection: Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

Twelfth Grade
Standard: The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

Honors: The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

A.P.: The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Mythology (Edith Hamilton)

Alternative Selection: The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)

Overton High School

View or print the complete list by clicking on the PDF icon.

English I Honors

Gifted hands: The Ben Carson Story—Ben Carson

English II Honors

Fahrenheit 451—Ray Bradbury

English III Honors

Pay It Forward—Catherine Ryan Hyde
The Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck

English IV Honors

Tuesdays with Morrie—Mitch Albom
Angela’s Ashes—Frank McCourt
Hamlet—Shakespeare

AP English III (Language and Composition)

Devil in the White City—Erik Larson, Reading Questions
Seabiscuit: An American Legend—Laura Hillenbrand, Reading Questions

AP English IV (Literature and Composition)

A Lesson Before Dying—Ernest Gaines
The Bean Trees—Barbara Kingsolver
The Awakening—Kate Chopin

AP World History

Guns, Germs, and Steel—Jared Diamond
The Illustrated World’s Religions—Huston Smith