Allatoona High School 9th Grade Lit
Ms. Smolko & Mrs. Fousch
Summer Reading 2017-2018 Select ONE novel to read over summer break. Then, complete ONE Alternative Book Assignment. The assignment will be due Wednesday, August 2nd for the first grade of the semester. Projects will be presented. If you have any questions about any of the listed novels or the assignment itself, contact Ms. Smolko at
[email protected]
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Mystery. When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief, her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor and begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant novelist, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching story about family, memory, love, heaven, and living. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. Sci-fi. Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested. His DNA came from El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium--a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri dish. Then he was placed in the womb of a cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster--except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patrón's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect. Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher. Sports Drama. A varsity letter jacket: it's exclusive, nearly unattainable, revered . . . and everything that's screwed up about Cutter High, as far as T. J. Jones is concerned. That's why T. J. is determined to have the Cutter All Night Mermen—the unlikeliest swim team a high school has ever seen—earn letter jackets of their own. It won't be easy. For one thing, they don't even have a pool. They will fight for their dignity, they will fight with each other, and sometimes they will just fight. And then they will realize that a single moment can bring lifelong heartache or lifelong friendship. For T. J. and his crew of misfits, the quest may be far more valuable than the reward. Every day by David Levithan. Sci-fi Romance. Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl. There’s never any warning about where it
Allatoona High School 9th Grade Lit
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will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere. It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day. Looking for Alaska by John Green. Romance Drama. Before: Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . . After: Nothing is ever the same. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. Mystery/ Comedy. Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years. It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. Comedy Drama. Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life-which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job-Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away. The stress becomes unbearable and Craig stops eating and sleeping-until, one night, he nearly kills himself. Craig's suicidal episode gets him checked into a mental hospital. There, isolated from the crushing pressures of school and friends, Craig is finally able to confront the sources of his anxiety. Ned Vizzini, who himself spent time in a psychiatric hospital, has created a remarkably moving tale about the sometimes unexpected road to happiness. For a novel about depression, it's definitely a funny story. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Drama. An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor. At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting-- he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd-- whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself-- Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
Allatoona High School 9th Grade Lit
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Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Drama. "Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself. The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke. Historical Fiction/ Action. A thrilling tale of betrayal and revenge set against the nineteenth-century American frontier, the astonishing story of real-life trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass. The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier. Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution. \
Alternative Book Reports (remember to pick one assignment to do based on your choice novel). ALL assignments must be typed and printed in MLA format (double spaced, Times New Roman Font, size 12). 1. College Application. Create the application that the main character you have just read about could write and submit to a college. Use all the information you know about the character and infer and create the rest of it. On the application include Name, Academic Rank in Class, High School Courses Taken and Grades, Extracurricular Activities and Personal Activities, and Work Experience. Choose one of the following questions to answer in a two-page essay from the character’s point of view: what experience, event, or person has had a significant impact on your life? Discuss a situation where you have made a difference. Describe your areas of interest, your personality, and how they relate to why you would like to attend this college. 2. Talk Show Invitation. Select a character, think about his or her involvements and experiences, and then figure out which talk show would most want your character on as a guest. What would they want the character to talk about? Who else would they invite on the show to address the issues the character is involved in? Write up the correspondence between the talk show host and the character in which the host explains what the character should focus on while
Allatoona High School 9th Grade Lit
Ms. Smolko & Mrs. Fousch
on the show. After the show, have them exchange one more letter mentioning how they felt about what happened. 3. Yearbook Entries. Imagine what three or four characters from your novel were like in high school. Cut out a picture of a person from a magazine to represent each character. Mount one picture per page and under each picture place the following information which you will create: nickname of character; activities, clubs, sports they were in and what years; class mock award such as “class clown”; quotation that shows something about the person and what is important to him or her; favorites such as colors and foods; a book that has had a great impact on him or her; voted “most-likely-to” what?; plans after high school. 4. Poetry. Write three poems in response to the novel. The poems can be about the characters, where the book took place, or the themes in the book. 5. Talk to the Author. Write a letter to the author of the book explaining to him or her why you think he or she wrote the book and what he or she was trying to show through the book. Be sure to explain what you got out of the book. If the author is still alive, send the letter to the author via the publisher of the book. 6. Current Events. Select five current news or feature stories from television or news magazines that you think your character would be interested in. Then explain how your character would respond to each of the stories and the opinions your character would have about what was happening in the story. 7. CD Collection. Design a CD collection for a character you know well, being sure that the collection includes music that expresses as many aspects of the character as you are aware of. Burn a CD (do you guys know how to do that still?) with TEN songs, and then write an page of explanations for why you chose each track. 8. Photo Album. Think about the events that happened in your novel. Decide which scenes or pictures from the novel a character would want to remember. Then draw several of these “photos” for an album page with typed captions of the specific scenes. Draw five photos. 9. A Character Alphabet. Choose a character you liked and then create sentences based on the alphabet scheme that demonstrate your knowledge of the character. If after reading Spite Fences, you decided to write Zeke’s alphabet it could start like this: A is for the ABUSE Zeke took at the hands of a racist mob. B is for his BENDING OVER BACKWARDS to make sure the visiting civil rights activist could work in obscurity. C is for the CAMERA he gave Maggie so she could begin to look at the world in new ways, etc. 10. Instagram Page. Using the template on Ms. Smolko’s blog (mssmolkoblog.wordpress.com), create the main character’s Instagram page with a clever bio, Insta name, and three drawn pictures with three comments from other characters under each picture. Emojis encouraged.